<p>In the 1960s, students of Spelman College, a black liberal arts college for women, were drawn into historic civil rights protests occurring across Atlanta, leading to the arrest of some for participating in sit-ins in the local community. A young Howard Zinn (future author of the worldwide best seller A People&#39;s History of the United States) was a professor of history at Spelman during this era and served as an adviser to the Atlanta sit-in movement and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Zinn mentored many of Spelman&#39;s students fighting for civil rights at the time, including Alice Walker and Marian Wright Edelman.</p><p>As a key facilitator of the Spelman student movement, Zinn supported students who challenged and criticized the campus&#39;s paternalistic social restrictions, even when this led to conflicts with the Spelman administration. Zinn&#39;s involvement with the Atlanta student movement and his closeness to Spelman&#39;s leading student and faculty activists gave him an insider&#39;s view of that movement and of the political and intellectual world of Spelman, Atlanta University, and the SNCC.</p><p>Robert Cohen presents a thorough historical overview as well as an entr&eacute;e to Zinn&#39;s diary. One of the most extensive records of the political climate on a historically black college in 1960s America, Zinn&#39;s diary offers an in-depth view. It is a fascinating historical document of the free speech, academic freedom, and student rights battles that rocked Spelman and led to Zinn&#39;s dismissal from the college in 1963 for supporting the student movement.</p>