M. J. O’Brien is the author of The Tougaloo Nine: The Jackson Library Sit-In at the Crossroads of Civil War and Civil Rights.

Winner of the Mississippi Historical Society’s 2026 Book of the Year Award, The Tougaloo Nine chronicles Mississippi’s first student-led sit-in during the civil rights era. In March 1961, during three crucial days that intersected with the state’s centenary celebration of its secession from the Union and its joining the Confederacy, nine students from historically Black Tougaloo College offered the first public demonstration that Mississippi’s Black populace would not go along with the heritage hoopla and would instead start agitating for change.

O’Brien is also the author of We Shall Not Be Moved: The Jackson Woolworth’s Sit-In and the Movement It Inspired, which won the Lillian Smith Book Award in 2014. It tells the dramatic story of the May 1963 Jackson Woolworth’s sit-in and the two-weeks of protest that followed, culminating in the horrifying assassination of NAACP leader Medgar Evers.

A graduate of American University (B.A., Communications) and St. Mary’s Seminary College (B.A., Philosophy), O’Brien worked from 1982 to 2013 in the not-for-profit cooperative space as the chief communications and public relations officer for the National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corporation (CFC).

O’Brien has appeared in several civil rights documentaries, including An Ordinary Hero: The True Story of Joan Trumpauer Mulholland and George Raymond: Thirst for Freedom. A documentary about the Tougaloo Nine is under development.

M. J. lives in Vienna, Virginia with his wife, Allyson. For seven of the past 10 years, he has served as Secretary of the Fairfax County NAACP during which time the group has won the NAACP’s coveted Thalheimer Award three times for its activism and community engagement. He is also an emeritus director of Teaching for Change. the Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation, and the Foster & Adoptive Parent Advocacy Center.

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“Fred Blackwell’s iconic photograph of the Jackson Woolworth’s sit-in captivated me and inspired me to delve deeper into the story of what happened on that game-changing day in Mississippi movement history.”

— M.J. O’Brien

It was while visiting the Martin Luther King Center for Social Change in Atlanta, Georgia in 1991 that M. J. O’Brien conceived the work that has become We Shall Not Be Moved. As part of its civil rights display, the King Center showed a photograph of the 1963 Jackson, Mississippi Woolworth’s sit-in–a photograph that has become the image used in history books and magazine articles to show what a sit-in was like. O’Brien was captivated by the photograph because at its center was a woman, Joan (Trumpauer) Mulholland, whom he had known for a number of years. For much of that time, Mulholland had been reticent about her civil rights experiences. Seeing the photograph in such an esteemed environment made O’Brien realize that there was much more of a story behind the photograph than Mulholland was letting on. O’Brien was inspired to tell the story of the nine individuals who sat-in that day–May 28, 1963–and to fully explore the grassroots civil rights movement in Jackson that the sit-in sparked to life.

M. J. O’Brien is an independent writer and scholar who lives and works in Fairfax, Virginia. His interest in the civil rights era was sparked as a Catholic seminarian during the late 1960s and further deepened as he studied the nonviolent philosophies of Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Dorothy Day. He excelled at English and History during his undergraduate pastoral studies at St. Mary’s Seminary & University in Catonsville, Maryland, and graduated in 1973. He went on to earn a second bachelor’s degree from The American University’s School of Communication in Washington, D.C. A practicing corporate communications executive for the past 30 years, Mr. O’Brien–along with his wife AllysonMcGill–adopted three children of African-American descent and through that experience has developed a keen interest in race relations in the United States. This is his first book.

Buy Now

Is available and can be purchased or ordered wherever you buy new books, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and University Press of Mississippi.

Thanks in advance.

FOLLOW US

AUTHOR

“Fred Blackwell’s iconic photograph of the Jackson Woolworth’s sit-in captivated me and inspired me to delve deeper into the story of what happened on that game-changing day in Mississippi movement history.”

— M.J. O’Brien

It was while visiting the Martin Luther King Center for Social Change in Atlanta, Georgia in 1991 that M. J. O’Brien conceived the work that has become We Shall Not Be Moved. As part of its civil rights display, the King Center showed a photograph of the 1963 Jackson, Mississippi Woolworth’s sit-in–a photograph that has become the image used in history books and magazine articles to show what a sit-in was like. O’Brien was captivated by the photograph because at its center was a woman, Joan (Trumpauer) Mulholland, whom he had known for a number of years. For much of that time, Mulholland had been reticent about her civil rights experiences. Seeing the photograph in such an esteemed environment made O’Brien realize that there was much more of a story behind the photograph than Mulholland was letting on. O’Brien was inspired to tell the story of the nine individuals who sat-in that day–May 28, 1963–and to fully explore the grassroots civil rights movement in Jackson that the sit-in sparked to life.

M. J. O’Brien is an independent writer and scholar who lives and works in Fairfax, Virginia. His interest in the civil rights era was sparked as a Catholic seminarian during the late 1960s and further deepened as he studied the nonviolent philosophies of Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Dorothy Day. He excelled at English and History during his undergraduate pastoral studies at St. Mary’s Seminary & University in Catonsville, Maryland, and graduated in 1973. He went on to earn a second bachelor’s degree from The American University’s School of Communication in Washington, D.C. A practicing corporate communications executive for the past 30 years, Mr. O’Brien–along with his wife AllysonMcGill–adopted three children of African-American descent and through that experience has developed a keen interest in race relations in the United States. This is his first book.