Good Trouble: The Selma, Alabama and Derry, Northern Ireland Connection 1963-1972  by Forest Jones 

THROUGH oral history based on numerous interviews, award-winning author
Forest Issac Jones shows in his groundbreaking new book 'Good Trouble: The Selma, Alabama and Derry, Northern Ireland Connection 1963-1972' the strong connection between the Black Civil Rights Movement in the United States and the Catholic Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland – specifically the influence of the Montgomery to Selma march on the 1969 Belfast to Derry march.

2025 commemorates the 60th anniversary of the Selma march. Jones interviews Richard Smiley and Sheyann Webb-Christburg, who were both at Bloody Sunday in Selma and in the march to Montgomery at ages sixteen and eight respectively, as well as relatives of the Courageous Eight, whose family members were Selma citizens who started the movement and invited Dr. King to Selma to help fight with them.

Jones also travelled to Dublin, Belfast and Derry to conduct interviews with those who were involved in that movement, including Billy McVeigh – featured in the BAFTA winning documentary, Once Upon A Time In Northern Ireland. Jones was able to talk with civil rights activist Eamonn McCann, one of the organisers of the Belfast to Derry march which concluded at the infamous Burntollet Bridge attack in 1969, strikingly similar to Bloody Selma on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965.

'Good Trouble' focuses on the pivotal incidents at Burntollet Bridge and the Battle of the Bogside and provides one of the few objective, comprehensive histories of the connection between the two movements that have transformed both countries. With clarity and precision, Forest Issac Jones examines the movements’ origins, its links, marches, protests, riots and dangerous confrontations, and the roles of individuals that helped bring change in both countries.

Julieanne Campbell (award-winning author of On Bloody Sunday) contributed the introduction, which sets up the story of how the Catholics saw the courage of the Black civil rights movement on television and found inspiration.

Good Trouble: The Selma, Alabama and Derry, Northern Ireland Connection 1963-
1972 is published by First Hill Press, an Anthem Press imprint.