Greater Freedom offers a groundbreaking long-term community study of Wilson County, North Carolina. Charting the evolution of Wilson's civil rights movement, Charles McKinney argues that African Americans in Wilson created an expansive notion of freedom that influenced every aspect of life in the region and directly confronted the state's reputation for moderation. Through exhaustive research and a compelling narrative, McKinney chronicles the approaches and perspectives that blacks in this eastern North Carolina county utilized to confront white supremacy. In the face of violence, intimidation, and marginalization, voting rights activists, educational reformers, the collaboration of union members, students, and working class black women activists in Wilson built a grassroots movement that helped shape the course of the national civil rights movement in America.

"McKinney’s book is meticulous in its research and is a welcome treatment, in language and assessment, of the vitality of local civil rights struggles to a unified national movement that changed America." - Journal of American History

"Greater Freedom is more than just a compelling narrative of the efforts of the black citizens of Wilson and Wilson County to achieve civil and economic rights. Charles McKinney has skillfully demonstrated the value of detailed local studies in understanding how the entire civil rights movement became a sum of all of its parts. This work challenges scholars to pay attention to temporal boundaries and also to be aware that the many unknown actors in local studies are perhaps the true heroes and heroines of the black freedom struggle. McKinney has made an important contribution to the overall synthesis of civil rights studies and set a high standard for those wishing to follow in his footsteps." - North Carolina Historical Review

"A notable addition to the growing body of 'bottom up' civil rights studies is Charles McKinney's Greater Freedom: The Evolution of the Civil Rights Struggle in Wilson, North Carolina. McKinney succeeds in providing civil rights scholarship with a concisely written and thoroughly researched local study. . . .Greater Freedom, which sprang forth from over a decade of research and writing, provides its audience with a noteworthy grassroots chronicle. MicKinney's activist history responsibly employs a cross-social approach in chronicling the aims and empowerment of people from varied economic, educational, occupational, and gender backgrounds. This academic piece is a valuable addition to the expansive field of local civil rights study." - The Journal of the North Carolina Association of Historians