Harmony and Harassment

Harmony and Harassment traces the headwaters of critical race theory (CRT) to the rural community of Harmony, Mississippi, at the height of the 1960s US civil rights movement. As Aja Y. Martinez and Robert O. Smith explore these headwaters, readers meet key community leaders such as Behonor McDonald, Winson Hudson, and Dovie Hudson. These Black women's activism for civil rights, voting rights, and educational access transformed their community while also providing the foundations for Derrick Bell's legal theories, Alice Walker's womanist concept, and the enduring educational program now known as Head Start. Building on extensive archival research and a web of deeply human relationships, Martinez and Smith argue for renewed appreciation of counterstory as central to CRT methodology. Harmony and Harassment shows how CRT developed from the ground up; from this foundation, its insights continue to hold great potential for strengthening education, legal studies, and the humanities and social sciences.