James Jackson and Esther Cooper Jackson devoted their lives to the fight for equality, serving as career activists throughout the black freedom movement. Having grown up in Virginia during the depths of the Great Depression, the Jacksons also saw a path to racial equality through the Communist Party-- a choice that would come to shape and define their participation in the black freedom movement and the course of their marriage as the Cold War years unfolded. Haviland reveals a portrait of a remarkable pair whose story offers a vital narrative of persistence, love, and activism across the long arc of the black freedom movement.