An unsung hero of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s inner circle reveals the true story behind the Citizenship Education Program--a little-known training program for disenfranchised citizens--reflecting on its huge importance to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and explaining its indisputable relevance to our nation today.

"Nobody can ride your back if your back's not bent," Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., famously proclaimed at the end of a Citizenship Education Program (CEP), an adult grassroots training program born of the work of the Tennessee Highlander Folk School, expanded by King's...