A New York Times Editors' Choice * A New Yorker Best Books of 2023 * Inaugural Tennessee Book Award
An intimate portrait of a small town living through tumultuous times, this propulsive piece of forgotten civil rights history—about the first school to attempt court-ordered desegregation in the wake of Brown v. Board—will forever change how you think of the end of racial segregation in America.
In graduate school, Rachel Martin was working with a Southern oral history project. One day, she was sent to a small town in Tennessee, in the foothills of the Appalachians, where locals wanted to build a museum to commemorate the events of September 1956, when Clinton High School became the first school in the former Confederacy to undergo court-mandated desegregation.
But not everyone wanted to talk. As one founder of the Tennessee White Youth told her, “Honey, there was a lot of ugliness down at the school that year; best we just move on and forget it.”
For years, Martin wondered what it was some white residents of Clinton didn’t want remembered. So she went back, eventually interviewing over sixty townsfolk—including nearly a dozen of the first students to desegregate Clinton High—to piece together what happened back in 1956: the death threats and beatings, picket lines and cross burnings, neighbors turned on neighbors and preachers for the first time at a loss for words. The national guard rushed to town, along with national journalists like Edward Morrow and even evangelist Billy Graham. But that wasn’t the most explosive secret Martin learned….
In A Most Tolerant Little Town, Rachel Martin weaves together over a dozen perspectives in a kaleidoscopic portrait of a small town living through a tumultuous turning point for America. The result is a spellbinding mystery, a riveting piece of forgotten civil rights history, and a poignant reminder of the toll on those who stand on the frontlines of social change.
You may never before have heard of Clinton, Tennessee—but you won’t be forgetting the town anytime soon.
“Nashville hot chicken is what best represents the soul of the city, and Rachel Martin describes its storied history. With a crunchy, spicy exterior, and a warm, melting center, it embodies what Nashville is all about.” —Maneet Chauhan, James Beard Award–winning chef and author
These days, hot chicken is a "must-try" Southern food. Restaurants in New York, Detroit, Cambridge, and even Australia advertise that they fry their chicken "Nashville-style." Thousands of people attend the Music City Hot Chicken Festival each year. The James Beard Foundation has given Prince's Chicken Shack an American Classic Award for inventing the dish.
But for almost seventy years, hot chicken was made and sold primarily in Nashville's Black neighborhoods--and the story of hot chicken says something powerful about race relations in Nashville, especially as the city tries to figure out what it will be in the future.
Hot, Hot Chicken: A Nashville Story recounts the history of Nashville's Black communities through the story of its hot chicken scene from the Civil War, when Nashville became a segregated city, through the tornado that ripped through North Nashville in March 2020.
"This book serves as a comprehensive guide to a great city and to the people who were positively influenced by the very African American culture it sought, so often, to undermine. The delicacy of hot chicken is a thread between two cultures and gives historical perspective to this culinary craze."—Carla Hall, chef and author
Forthcoming:
A Biography of Rosalynn Carter
From Simon & Schuster in 2027 (if I make my deadline).
In Rosalynn Carter’s story, I see hope — a hope that is unfortunately rare in the current American political landscape. The eldest white daughter of an impoverished widow raised in the rural South during the Great Depression, for all her school smarts, Rosalynn wasn’t the kid who others would have predicted would achieve international acclaim. But she did.
Rosalynn didn't steal power through scheming, backchannel deals or cutthroat machinations, however. In an era of growing individualism, she believed in the importance of working for her own community, and she continually expanded who she included in that list. She began with her family, then her hometown of Plains, then Georgia, then the nation. By the end of her life, her neighborhood was the world.
At the root of everything Rosalynn did was a deeply-rooted faith that emphasized compassion, kindness, redemption and outreach. She and her family left their Southern Baptist church when it refused to accept Black members, a decision that did not match Jesus’s life and teachings. Through it all, Rosalynn never became embittered nor did she lose her beliefs.
Lives like Rosalynn Carter's show how one person can unlearn the ugliness of the society around them and use their journey to challenge the wider world to become better. She became one of the most important women of the twentieth century because of her imperfect goodness.
Stay tuned for more ...