Four Spirits Read Free

1964:
Louis Allen: witness to murder of civil rights worker, assassinated. Liberty, MS.
23 March 1964:
Johnnie Mae Chapell: shot by 4 white men along a roadside. Jacksonville, Fla.
07 April 1964:
Rev. Bruce Klunder: killed protesting construction of segregated school. Columbus, OH.
02 May 1964:
Henry Hezekiah Dee, Charles Eddie Moore: killed by Klan. Meadville, MS.
20 June 1964:
Freedom summer brings 1,000 young civil rights volunteers to Mississippi.
21 June 1964:
James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner: Civil Rights workers abducted and slain by Ku Klux Klan. Philadelphia, MS.
02 July 1964:
President Johnson signs Civil Rights Act of 1964.
11 July 1964:
Lt. Col. Lemuel Penn: killed by Ku Klux Klan while driving north. Colbert, GA.
26 February 1965:
Jimmie Lee Jackson: Civil Rights marcher killed by state trooper. Marion, AL.
07 March 1965:
State troopers beat black marchers at Edmund Pettus Bridge. Selma, AL.
11 March 1965:
Rev. James Reeb: march volunteer beaten to death. Selma, AL.
25 March 1965:
Civil Rights march from Selma to Montgomery completed.
25 March 1965:
Viola Gregg Liuzzo: killed by Ku Klux Klan while transporting marchers. Selma Highway, AL.
02 June 1965:
Oneal Moore: black deputy killed by Nightriders. Varnado, LA.
09 July 1965:
Congress passes Voting Rights Act of 1965.
18 July 1965:
Willie Wallace Brewster: killed by Nightriders. Anniston, AL.
20 August 1965:
Jonathan Daniels: seminary student killed by deputy. Hayneville, AL.
03 January 1966:
Samuel Younge Jr.: student civil rights activist killed in dispute over whites-only restroom. Tuskegee, AL.
10 January 1966:
Vernon Dahmer: black community leader killed in Ku Klux Klan bombing. Hattiesburg, MS.
10 June 1966:
Ben Chester White: killed by Klu Klux Klan. Natchez, MS.
30 July 1966:
Clarence Triggs: slain by Nightriders. Bogalusa, LA.
27 February 1967:
Wharlest Jackson: Civil Rights leader killed after promotion to white job. Natchez, MS.
12 May 1967:
Benjamin Brown: Civil Rights worker killed when police fired on protesters. Jackson, MS.
02 October 1967:
Thurgood Marshall sworn in as first black Supreme Court Justice.
08 February 1968:
Samuel Hammond Jr. Delano Middleton, Henry Smith: students killed when highway patrolmen fired on protestors. Orangeburg, SC.
04 April 1968:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Assassinated. Memphis, TN.

E-Book Extra
Reading Group Guide:
Discussion Points for Four Spirits
A Novel by Sena Jeter Naslund
    Transporting us to a time and place that tested the American dream in unprecedented ways, Four Spirits portrays a remarkable group of women and men living in Birmingham, Alabama, during the 1960s. This was the site of some of the nation’s most brutal attempts to quash the Civil Rights Movement, most horrifically in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Yet Birmingham was also where a triumphant swell of courage was born, one that award-winning novelist Sena Jeter Naslund witnessed first-hand while coming of age there.
    On the pages of Four Spirits , we meet an array of compelling characters—black and white, racist and integrationist, rich and poor, pacifist and terrorist. Through these fictional faces, this astonishing fight for freedom emerges in a storyline that pays beautiful tribute to unrecognized heroes. By turns exhilarating and poignant, Four Spirits is a novel that is meant to bring readers together, stirring emotions, recollections, and vibrant conversation.
    We hope that the following questions will enhance your discussion of this powerful and important book.
    Discussion Topics
Two quotations, one from William Faulkner and one from Victoria Gray, an African-American Mississippi civil rights activitist, mark the beginning of Four Spirits. What is the contemporary relevance of these epigraphs? In what way is America’s past still present? Has the promise of a “rich harvest” been fulfilled?
The novel’s prelude presents the only scenes in which Stella’s parents are with