M. J. O’Brien is a writer and researcher who served for twenty-five years as the chief communications and public relations officer for a national not-for-profit cooperative. He is author of the award-winning The Tougaloo Nine: The Jackson Library Sit-In at the Crossroads of Civil War and Civil Rights and We Shall Not Be Moved: The Jackson Woolworth’s Sit-In and the Movement It Inspired, both published by University Press of Mississippi.