‘It’s good to think strategically’: Thomas E Ricks on civil rights and January 6

‘This book, I wrote because I had to,’ Thomas E Ricks says of Waging a Good War. ‘I had to get it out of my head.’ Photograph: Alessandro Vulcano

There is a direct connection from Freedom Summer to the January 6 committee,” says Thomas E Ricks as he discusses his new book, Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968.

Freedom Summer was a 1964 campaign to draw attention to violence faced by Black people in Mississippi when they tried to vote. The House January 6 committee will soon conclude its hearings on the Capitol riot of 2021, when supporters of Donald Trump attacked American democracy itself.