One of the central through-lines of Lewis’s memoir is that “each generation stands on the shoulders of the previous one” (494). To him, “this is the way we move ahead, as individuals, as families and as a nation” (494).

Through backbreaking labor and in the face racial violence and segregation, previous generations paved the way for the CRM. Lewis gives the example of his own family: Over a lifetime of, Lewis’s great-grandfather, Frank Carter, worked his way up to sharecropping arrangement in which he “owned his own mules and equipment and paid a preset amount of money to rent the farm” (13); Lewis’s parents built on this, buying their own land. Lewis credits his parents with his strength, and argues that because many civil rights leaders came from similar backgrounds, the strength of their ancestors collectively gave them spirit. To Lewis, “Nothing can break you when you have the spirit” (11).

Lewis calls the brave members of the previous generation the unsung heroes of the CRM. These men and women played a fundamental role in the movement, though their contributions do not often make the history books. Septima Clark, whose father had been enslaved in South Carolina, taught Black women sharecroppers with little formal education to read, as a first step toward becoming voters.