The battle for black equality in the United States draws heavily from the stories of Free State women and men. C. Fraser Smith's lively account includes the grand themes and the state's major players in the movement--Frederick Douglass, Harriett Tubman, Thurgood Marshall, Walter Sondheim, Theodore R. McKeldin, and Parren J. Mitchell, among others--and also tells the story of the struggle via several of Maryland's important but relatively unknown men and women--such as Lillie May Jackson, John Prentiss Poe, William L. "Little Willie" Adams, and Gloria Richardson--who prepared Jim Crow's grave and waited for the nation to deliver the body.

"While the book elaborates on Maryland's role in the beginning and end of the Jim Crow era, the most compelling aspect of the book is the stories Smith gleaned from dozens of interviews with Marylanders, black and white, who lived with segregation and fought to end its practices."--Baltimore Sun

"Hand it to your students . . . and make sure their parents read it, too. It's a road map of America's long political struggle from slavery to a black man running for president."--Michael Olesker, Baltimore Examiner

"By its very nature a moving but difficult and painful read. Painful or not, it is a book that helps one see present-day Maryland with a greater depth of understanding, and is certainly worth whatever discomfort it creates."--Baltimore City Paper