"With the founding of the Child Development Group of Mississippi in the 1960s came a major shift for black, working-class women. CDGM was a federally funded program for low-income preschoolers; in addition to helping children, it also suddenly allowed women who had been working as maids and sharecroppers to find jobs as teachers and use their positions to challenge the status quo. The teachers' jobs came with higher salaries that now enabled them to vote, buy food stamps, and send their children to previously all-white schools. Moreover, they organized communities, petitioned officials, and sat on community action boards. The teachers challenged the pervasive white power structure, but local and state governments fought back, ultimately diminishing the power of Head Start and similar programs in the South.Crystal Sanders traces the stories of the more than 2,500 women who staffed Mississippi's CDGM preschool centers and strove for change"--