"[7] In The Journal of American History, professor Clayborne Carson of Stanford University noted that Tuck "succeeds in identifying both general patterns and exceptional factors that distinguished civil rights activism in different parts" of Georgia.
[12] Reviewing it for The Florida Historical Quarterly, professor Erica L. Ball of California State University, Fullerton noted that Tuck highlights the movement's insistence on cultural emancipation, not just agency in the political realm.
[13] Ball concluded by calling it, "an extraordinary achievement: richly detailed while broad in scope, immensely useful, and destined to serve as the standard survey of African American history for a long time to come.
"[16] Reviewing it for the Financial Times, professor Christopher Phelps of the University of Nottingham noted that "Tuck handles Malcolm X’s Muslim faith deftly but his emergent socialism, developed on visits to such African nations as Ghana, is barely mentioned.
"[18] In a review for Labour/Le Travail, professor Daniel McNeil of Carleton University dismissed the book as "more similar in tone and content to articles in the (neo)liberal media that have marked the anniversary of X’s speech and assassination by asking pundits and historians to provide pithy accounts of race relations in Britain and the United States during the past fifty years.
[19] In The Journal of American History, professor John Keith of Binghamton University added that the book showed how Malcolm X's socialist politics "has been lost", though he concludes that Tuck offers "many suggestive avenues" in that direction.