Acclaimed historian Adam Fairclough's Better Day Coming chronicles the struggle of black Americans to achieve civil rights and equality in a society that, after the collapse of Reconstruction, sanctioned racial segregation, racial discrimination, and white political supremacy.

Beginning with the campaign against lynching launched by Ida B. Wells in the 1890s, Fairclough examines the tradition of militant protest that in 1909 led to the formation of the NAACP, which over the next fifty years formed a powerful foundation for civil rights efforts. He focuses on the South, where white repression often inhibited open protest, and also discusses the efforts of black women and teachers to promote racial equality through education, self-help, and interracial cooperation. Offering a fresh interpretation of Booker T. Washington, Fairclough emphasizes the tactical wisdom and political realism of the gradualist strategy often condemned as "accommodationism."

Better Day Coming also provides a sympathetic portrait of Marcus Garvey, while concluding that black nationalism, both in the 1920s and the 1960s, was doomed to failure. Fairclough critiques the role of the Communist Party in raising the fight against racism to a higher level of militancy during the 1930s, and goes on to analyze the contradictory effects of World War II, the Cold War, and McCarthyism on black activism.

He provides a detailed account of the Civil Rights Movement and the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr., and explains how black Southerners staged an open revolt against white supremacy that shook America to its foundations in the 1950s and 1960s. Concluding with an assessment of Black Power, Fairclough balances the achievements of the Civil Rights Movement against the persistence of racial and economic inequalities.