How Bright the Path Grows

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Franchise comes the untold story of the pioneering Black women who were seen, but barely heard, at the 1963 March on Washington

There is no shortage of footage immortalizing the men who spoke at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, when 250,000 Americans gathered beneath the Lincoln Memorial to call for an end to segregation. There were reverends and rabbis, activists and Rat-Pack icons—and of course the day’s headliner, whose prophetic dream of a post-Jim Crow world has forever defined the Civil Rights Movement. But there is no “class photo” of the Black women who helped organize the march, performed on its main stage, or were honored during its Tribute to Negro Women Fighters for Freedom.

In How Bright the Path Grows, Marcia Chatelain weaves a gleaming group portrait of these unsung women. Among this cohort were several household names: vaudeville icon Josephine Baker, civil rights activist Rosa Parks, gospel legend Mahalia Jackson, and Daisy Bates, champion of the Little Rock Nine. But many were relative unknowns, including Eva Jessye, the choir director who designed the day’s musical program; and Anna Hedgeman, the coordinator who pushed in the eleventh hour for a tribute to Black women’s work.

The first in a trilogy of histories exploring the long shadow of Dr. King’s life and legacy, How Bright the Path Grows is a scintillating group biography, rendering the lives of thirteen Black women visionaries—some famous, others soon to be—in novelistic detail and like never seen before.