Product Description
From A. Philip Randolph's defiant call in 1941 for African Americans to march on Washington to Alice Walker in 1973, Reporting Civil Rights presents firsthand accounts of the revolutionary events that overthrew segregation in the United States. This two-volume anthology brings together for the first time nearly 200 newspaper and magazine reports and book excerpts, and features 151 writers, including James Baldwin, Robert Penn Warren, David Halberstam, Lillian Smith, Gordon Parks, Murray Kempton, Ted Poston, Claude Sitton, and Anne Moody. A newly researched chronology of the movement, a 32-page insert of rare journalist photographs, and original biographical profiles are included in each volume

Roi Ottley and Sterling Brown record African American anger during World War II; Carl Rowan examines school segregation; Dan Wakefield and William Bradford Huie describe Emmett Till's savage murder; and Ted Poston provides a fascinating early portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. In the early 1960s, John Steinbeck witnesses the intense hatred of anti-integration protesters in New Orleans; Charlayne Hunter recounts the hostility she faced at the University of Georgia; Raymond Coffey records the determination of jailed children in Birmingham; Russell Baker and Michael Thelwell cover the March on Washington; John Hersey and Alice Lake witness fear and bravery in Mississippi, while James Baldwin and Norman Podhoretz explore northern race relations.

Singly or together, Reporting Civil Rights captures firsthand the impassioned struggle for freedom and equality that transformed America. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

America's Struggle for Civil Rights (II)
This book is the second volume of the Library of America's documentary, journalistic history of the Civil Rights Movement.The first volume covers the years 1941-1963 and takes the story up to the March on Washington in August, 1963. The second volume covers a shorter time span, 1963 - 1973, but an equally momentous series of events.Volume II is easily important enough for its own short notice and review here.

The centerpiece of the two volumes is the March on Washington which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year.Indeed, the 1963 March, led by Dr. King, may be the watershed event of the Civil Rights Movement as a whole.There are three eyewitness accounts of the March presented in this book offering three different perspectives.The 1963 March, and the moment of idealism, justice and peace it has come to represent pervades and suggests worlds of commentary upon the rest of the volume.

The articles in this book have an emphasis on Congressional action. In 1964, following the 1963 events in Birmingham Alabama and the 1963 March, Congress passed the Civil Rights Law which, in time, would effectively end segregation in the South.In 1965, following events in Selma, Alabama and the March from Selma to Montgomery Alabama, Congress enacted voting rights legislation which at long last fulfilled the promise of the 15th Amendment to protect the voting rights of blacks.The events in Selma, and the manner in which they galvanized the nation are well documented in this book.

The story recounted in this volume is marked by assasination, violence and discord. There are two major assassinations highlighted here. The volume describes Malcom X's break from the Black Muslim movement and his assassination in February, 1965.A great deal of space is given to the assasination of Dr. Martin Luther King in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1965 and to its tragic aftermath.

There is much space given to the violence that haunted the struggle for Civil Rights.In particular, many articles are given over to the murder of three young Civil Rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi: Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Cheney during June, 1964.Their murder involved the FBI in a massive manhunt which ultimately led to the conviction of Klansmen and of local law enforcement officials.

There is a great deal of material in the volume on the riots in Watts and Detroit and with the rise of Black Power and the Black Panther movement.

There are articles in this volume that draw excellent portraits of the leaders of the Civil Rights movement, including Malcom X, Stokely Carmichael, Bayard Rustin, Ralph Abernathy, Jesse Jackson, and, of course, Dr. King.

There are pictures of dusty roads and small towns in the South.Many articles are given to pictures of the South before and after the victories of the Civil Rights Movement.There is a suggestion in more than a few articles that the South may have, given its past, an ultimately easier time of moving towards a unified, racially egalitarian and united society than will the North.Time still needs to tell whether this is will in fact bethe case.

These are two indespensible volumes on the most important social movement of 20th Century America.The Civil Rights Movement is an essential component in the formation of the American dream and the American ideal.

A Priceless Documentary of America's Civil Rights Struggle
America's largest, most continuous, and most pressing domestic issue has been the treatment it has accorded black Americans. Similarly, the most important and valuable social movement in our country in the Twentieth Century was the Civil Rights movement which began, essentially, in the 1940's with WW II, received its focus with the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, and continued through the 1950s 60s, and 70s.

The Library of America has published a two-volume history of the American Civil Rights Movement which focuses on contemporaneous journalistic accounts. The LOA's collection centers around the March on Washington in August 1963 which opens the second volume. The publication of the volumes, indeed, was timed to coincide with the 40th Anniversary of the March on Washington. This March is best known for Dr. Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech.

The first volume of the series, which I am discussing here, begins in 1941 and ends in the middle of 1963. In consists of about 100 articles and essays documenting the Civil Rights struggle during these momentous years. Given the centrality of the March on Washington to the collection, the volume opens with a "Call to Negro America" dated July 1, 1941 calling for 10,000 Black Americans to march on Washington D.C. to secure integration and equal treatment in the Armed Forces. Philip Randolph, then the President of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters" was primarily responsible for this attempt to organize the 1941 march, and he participated prominently 22 years later in the 1963 March on Washington.

The volume documents other ways in which Civil Rights activities in the 1940s foreshadowed subsequent events. For example, there is an article detailing how Howard University students used the "sit-in" technique to desegregate Washington D.C. restaurants beginning in 1942. (see Pauli Murray's article on p. 62 of this volume). The sit-in technique was widely used beginning in the early 1960s to desegregate lunch counters in Southern and border states. There are many articles in this volume documenting these later sit-ins and their impact, as well as the original sit-in organized by Pauli Murray.

Among the many subjects covered by this book are Thurgood Marshall's early legal career for the NAACP, the Supreme Court's decision in "Brown", the lynching of Emmett Till in 1954 and the acquittal of the guilty parties by an all-white Mississippi jury, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, in which Martin Luther King first gained prominence, of 1956, the integration of Little Rock High School in 1957, the lunch counter sit-ins that I have already mentioned, the "Freedom Rides" the admission of James Meridith to the University of Mississippi in 1962, the Birmingam riots, and the murder of Medgar Evars, Missippi Field Secretary for the NAACP. on June 12, 1962. There is a great deal more, and the articles given in the volume address Civil Rights in the North as well as in the South.

There is an immediacy and an eloquence to this collection that gives the reader the feel of being there and participating at the time. The cumulative effect of reading the book through is moving and powerful. By reading the book cover-to-cover and as the articles are presented the reader will get a better feel for the Civil Rights Movement and Era that can be gotten anywhere else. The book records a seminal Era in our Nation's history and an idealism and a sprit that is difficult to recreate or recapture.

I would like to point out some of the longer articles that the reader should notice in going through the book. I enjoyed James Poling's 1952 essay "Thurgood Marshall and the 14th Amendment" which chronicles Marshall's early career. Another important essay is William Bradford Huie's "Emmett Till's Killers Tell their Story: January, 1956." which recounts the confession to Till's murder of the individuals acquitted by the Mississippi jury. Robert Penn Warren's 1956 book-length essay "Segregation: the Inner Conflict in the South" is reprinted in the volume in full. There is a lengthy excerpt from James Baldwin's 1962 "The Fire Next Time" which recounts Baldwin's meeting with Elijah Muhammad and his thoughts about the Black Muslim Movement. Norman Podhoretz's 1963 essay "My Negro Problem and Ours" remains well worth reading. Probably the most significant single text in this volume is Martin Luther King's "Letter from the Birmingham Jail" written in 1963. In this famous letter, Dr. King responds eloquently to criticism of his movement and his techniques voiced by eight Birmingham clergymen. The letter is a classic, not the least for Dr. King's writing style.

The book contains a chronology which will help the reader place the articles in perspective, and biographical notes on each of the authors. I found myself turning to the biographies and the chronology repeatedly as I read the volume. The Library of America has also posted excellent study material for this book and its companion volume on its Website.

This is a book that documents American's history and our country's continuing struggle to meet and develop its ideals. ... Read more

Product Description
No other book about the civil rights movement captures the drama and impact of the black struggle for equality better than Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1968. Two of the most respected scholars of African-American history, Steven F. Lawson and Charles Payne, examine the individuals who made the movement a success, both at the highest level of government and in the grassroots trenches. Designed specifically for college and university courses in American history, this is the best introduction available to the glory and agony of these turbulent times. ... Read more

Product Description
This book examines the representation of blackness on television at the height of the southern civil rights movement and again in the aftermath of the Reagan-Bush years. In the process, it looks carefully at how television's ideological projects with respect to race have supported or conflicted with the industry's incentive to maximize profits or consolidate power.

Sasha Torres examines the complex relations between the television industry and the civil rights movement as a knot of overlapping interests. She argues that television coverage of the civil rights movement during 1955-1965 encouraged viewers to identify with black protestors and against white police, including such infamous villains as Birmingham's Bull Connor and Selma's Jim Clark. Torres then argues that television of the 1990s encouraged viewers to identify with police against putatively criminal blacks, even in its dramatizations of police brutality.

Torres's pioneering analysis makes distinctive contributions to its fields. It challenges television scholars to consider the historical centrality of race to the constitution of the medium's genres, visual conventions, and industrial structures. And it displaces the analytical focus on stereotypes that has hamstrung assessments of television's depiction of African Americans, concentrating instead on the ways in which African Americans and their political collectives have actively shaped that depiction to advance civil rights causes. This book also challenges African American studies to pay closer and better attention to television's ongoing role in the organization and disorganization of U.S. racial politics. ... Read more

Product Description
Drawing on scores of interviews with black and white tobacco workers in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Robert Korstad brings to life the forgotten heroes of Local 22 of the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers of America-CIO. These workers confronted a system of racial capitalism that consigned African Americans to the basest jobs in the industry, perpetuated low wages for all southerners, and shored up white supremacy.

Galvanized by the emergence of the CIO, African Americans took the lead in a campaign that saw a strong labor movement and the reenfranchisement of the southern poor as keys to reforming the South--and a reformed South as central to the survival and expansion of the New Deal. In the window of opportunity opened by World War II, they blurred the boundaries between home and work as they linked civil rights and labor rights in a bid for justice at work and in the public sphere.

But civil rights unionism foundered in the maelstrom of the Cold War. Its defeat undermined later efforts by civil rights activists to raise issues of economic equality to the moral high ground occupied by the fight against legalized segregation and, Korstad contends, constrains the prospects for justice and democracy today. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Wonderful work of civil rights and labor history
This book uses oral history, company, and union archives to tell a riveting story about an attempt by poor (mostly black) workers to build a union against heavy odds.This book tells us so much about twentieth century American history, and it does it with great skill.All the great themes of labor's downfall are here.The inability to organize the South.The racism and anti-communism of high union officials.The failure of Operation Dixie.The vicious backlash of employers and the Democratic party against the movement for working class power.This book is a great example of micro history used to illuminate important national trends.I cannot recommend a book more highly.

Fascinating history, important analysis--read it!
This is a terrific book--an important history that brings together a story of race, labor unions, economic change, politics, and culture, but never loses sight of the actual people involved.Very well written--not dry and academic like some history, but also very rich analytically.Buy it and read it!

Fabulous story, fabulous storytelling
In this wonderful book, African American tobacco workers tell their own story of civil rights struggle and union organizing.It is long, but so was the struggle, and I couldn't put it down.Oral interviews give us the black workers' own accounts, sending, for once, the white supremacists to the back of the bus.
Read it.You will find a South you never thought you would find. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Very, Very Helpful
Aldon Morris writes the history of the Civil Rights Movement as the gradual organization of black communities in the South in response to Jim Crow.Morris' account begins with early protests in North Carolina, Tennessee and other peripheral states that multiplied and culminated in the more well-known actions in Alabama and Georiga.Throughout the account, Morris emphasizes the indigenous nature of the movement - black communities organizing around black institutions (the black church) with their own financial and infrastructural resources.

The research for the project was conducted via interviews with many of the movement's leaders, so Morris is able to give first-hand accounts of the way protests were conducted and of the motivations for organizing in certain ways at certain times.His account is extraordinarily rich and touches on the interplay between the often conflicting personalities of movement leaders.He describes the means and motivation of the adoption of the non-violent protest method and, to a lesser extent, the roles played by women in the movement.He also deals in passing with the ideological treatment of homosexuality by movement leaders.

As an account of how the civil rights movement developed in the South, Morris' book is exceptional.It reads as well as a novel and uses the input of first-hand sources to make its story as much personal as academic, without losing its integrity.

Some have argued that Morris neglects the role of women in the movement and this might be a fair criticism.But inasmuch as he argues that the civil rights movement was organized around and by the leaders of the black church, he justifies his focus on the (male) Baptist minister as a principle leader of movement activities.I recommend this book to anyone who wants to better understand how the Civil Rights Movement was carried out in the United States.

Origins of the Civil Rights Movement
Articulate and provocative, Aldon Morris' study of the American CivilRights Movement is a comprehensive and comprehensible analysis of astrategic struggle for human survival and essential dignity.Emphasizingthat African Americans have rarely accepted the subordinate position forcedupon them, that the Civil Rights Movement was carefully orchestrated ratherthan a series of random events, and that women played a critical role inthe organization and implementation of the movement, Morris incisivelyresurrects and dismantles official discourses.In the tradition of JohnHope Franklin's "From Slavery to Freedom", Lerone Bennett's"Forced into Glory", and Ivan Van Sertima's "They CameBefore Columbus", Morris reconstructs history with a freshperspective.Morris' extensive use of the interview technique enablesthe reader to probe the minds of the makers and shakers of the movement, aswe hear them speak in their own words.Somewhat academic in its approach,yet eminently readable, "Origins of the Civil Rights Movement"can be understood and appreciated by middle school students, academicians,and history buffs alike.It is a must-read for those interested in acomplete understanding of American history in general and of AfricanAmerican history in particular. ... Read more

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"An intriguing look at the interplay of race and class, this work is both scholarly and jargon-free. A sophisticated study." -- Library Journal

"This is an exciting book... combining... dramatic episodes with an insightful analysis... The use of concepts of class is subtle and effective." -- Peter N. Stearns

"... ambitious and wide-ranging... " -- Georgia Historical Quarterly

"... excellent historical analysis... " -- North Carolina Historical Review

"Historians should welcome this book. A well-written, jargon-free, interpretive synthesis, it relates impersonal political-economic forces to the human actors who were shaped by them and, in turn, helped shape them.... This refreshing study reminds us how much the American dilemma of race has been complicated by problems of class." -- American Historical Review

"... a broad historical sweep... skillfully surveys key areas of historiographical debate and succinctly summarizes a good deal of recent secondary literature." -- Journal of Southern History

"... Bloom does a masterful job of presenting the major structural and psychological interpretations associated with the Civil Rights Movement... It will make an excellent general text to welcome undergraduates and reintroduce old-timers to the social ferment that surrounded the Civil Rights Movement." -- Contemporary Sociology

A unique sociohistorical analysis of the civil rights movement, analyzing the interaction between the economy and political systems in the South, which led to racial stratification.

Customer Reviews (1)

a must-have reference
There are hundreds of books on this era, and they all cover the same core topics -- Montgomery bus boycott, SCLC, SNCC, Black Power, ghetto revolts,etc.Bloom's book stands out from the rest, however, because of itsrazor-sharp class analysis in the first half of the book, called "TheChanging Political Economy of Racism."Bloom begins after the CivilWar, when the southern landowners need to replace the old slave-basedeconomy with a new economy, and a new ruling class.From this vantagepoint he picks apart the shifting allegiances of ruling bodies, and thedeliberate use of racist ideology to prevent political unrest.

In thebook's second half, "The Black Movement," all the familiar eventsare there, but they flow more clearly because of Bloom's historical set-up. Bloom is not a Marxist, but this book is a marvelous example of how amaterialist class analysis can be used to better understand history.Theanalysis is not shallow or deterministic, but it clearly shows that whiteworkers have nothing to gain by clinging to racist prejudices.

Bloomisn't sure what kind of activism will bring black liberation, but his bookhelps us answer that question.It is essential reading for those who wantto learn from the past and build the movements of the future. ... Read more

Product Description
Now abridged for courses, this edition of Hugh D. Graham's groundbreaking history of national policy during the battle for civil rights recreates the intense debates in Congress and the White House that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 banning discrimination against minorities and women.Following the implementation of these policies through a thickening maze of federal agencies and court decisions, the text reveals how the classic liberal agenda of non-discrimination evolved into the controversial program of affirmative action, surprisingly enough, under Richard Nixon.Based on extensive, groundbreaking research in the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon presidential archives and special collections of the Library of Congress, Civil Rights and the Presidency will be invaluable for courses in American history, political science, and black and women's studies. ... Read more

Product Description
A record of the American civil rights movement. Included are speeches by Martin Luther King Jr, and his "Letter from Birmingham City Jail", an interview with Rosa Parks, selections from "Malcolm X Speaks"; Black Panther Bobby Seale's "Seize the Time", a piece by Herman Badillo on the infamous Attica prison uprising; addresses by Harold Washington, Jesse Jackson, Nelson Mandela and much more. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Interesting and Informative
I took a history of civil rights course in college, and this book was one of the required reading materials. I started reading it and couldn't put it down. I liked how the author included first hand accounts from individuals who actually lived during the civil rights movement. Before I read this book I only knew about two civil rights leaders- MLK Jr. and Malcolm X. I learned about other leaders and organizations such as Thurgood Marshall, SCLC, SNCC, and CORE. This is a must read because it will open your eyes to the civil rights struggle.

Another great one.
This was another one that I am glad I read, new stuff,and things you won't find any other place. A must read.

First Hand Documents Bring You There
When you get involved in studying political events and movements, ultimately there is going to be some disagreement on interpretations.While the Civil Righs Movement has suffered less revisionist history than many events of the last century, it is still valuable to go to the source documents and read about events in the words of those who participated in history or who made history. I agree that this book works well in tandem with another more narrative history, such as Eyes on the Prize, or Partin the Waters.But the compilers have done an excellent job of grouping by topics, with clear introductions putting the pieces that follow into proper place.I was surprised - I feared that this would be more dry of a read than it was. Instead I found myself pulled along, especially by some riveting first hand accounts of events such as the Attica riots. Another big plus for the book is that it brings the documents and the struggles into the 1980's, when first published.Many books ont he Civil Rights Movement cover until 1965, or 1968, this one keeps events in the 1970's and 80's relevant to what came before. I highly recommend this for anyone who is looking to feel as if they were there for these struggles, and understand our history.

Great Book to Begin Learning
This is a great book to get get a background on the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950's and 60's.I read it when I began trying to learn about the CRM and some of the key players.

A valued companion to the study of the Civil Rights Movement
I think that this book is a valued companion to Taylor Branch's epic work"Parting the Waters". Together, they make an unbeatable pair of study aids for one of America's most turbulent periods.

While P.T.W. is amore dispassionate third person chronicle, E.O.T.P. is more personallydriven.It brings to life individuals like Bayard Rustin, StokleyCarmichael, John Lewis and other giants (known and obscure) of themovement.Events from the Till lynching to the Attica riots as seenthrough the eyes of those on the scene (sometimes, those making thescene).

Fascinating reading. ... Read more

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It is now more than three decades since the historic Supreme Court decision on desegregation, Brown v. Board of Education. Thomas Sowell takes a tough, factual look at what has actually happened over these decades -- as distinguished from the hopes with which they began or the rhetoric with which they continue, Who has gained and who has lost? Which of the assumptions behind the civil rights revolution have stood the test of time and which have proven to be mistaken or even catastrophic to those who were supposed to be helped?

Customer Reviews (18)

Timeless
Never have I read something by Thomas Sowell that has left me disappointed.This book from 1984 is no different.

The author pounds the opposition with their greatest enemy, facts.It has great information in the debate on civil rights for black and women.

Ever wonder what is with the feminist talk about a pay gap between men and women?Read this book.

Wheel out the heavy artillery
When heavy artillery is needed in the fight against collectivist propaganda, then it's time to wheel out Thomas Sowell. Now in his late seventies, this distinguished economist and political philosopher has devoted much of his career to combating the myths of political correctness.

A prime example is his 1984 book, "Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality." In this monument to common sense, Sowell examines the disastrous turn in the American civil rights movement from equality of opportunity to equality of results.

Equality of opportunity is represented by the landmark 1954 lawsuit, Brown v. Board of Education, in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down racial segregation in the public schools. The spirit of equal opportunity also was present in the formulation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Sowell brings several examples of Congressional sponsors of the bill (such as Hubert Humphrey) assuring their colleagues and the public that the legislation would not introduce quotas, preferences, or any other results-oriented mandate. The only target was to be intentional discrimination, and the burden of proof would be on the complainant.

It did not take long, however, before the Supreme Court began its crusade to re-introduce racial considerations into education and other spheres of American life. In the 1968 case of Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, the Court ruled that a Virginia school district was in violation of the Brown decision because its schools were still either predominantly white or predominantly black--even though families now had the choice of sending their children to any school they desired. In other words, racial barriers had been dismantled, and equal opportunity was in force.

But the results of the school district's new rules were not in keeping with the vision of Brown, said the Court. And thus the decision in Green paved the way for that great social catastrophe, the forced busing of children to achieve racial balance.

Three years later, in 1971, we witness the advent of quotas, as the Department of Labor issued "goals and timetables" to

"'increase materially the utilization of minorities and women'...Employers were required to confess to 'deficiencies in the utilization' of minorities and women whenever statistical parity could not be found in all job classifications, as a first step toward correcting this situation. The burden of proof--and remedy--was on the employer. 'Affirmative action' was now decisively transformed into a numerical concept, whether called 'goals' or 'quotas'."

This approach was soon rubber-stamped by the Supreme Court in the Weber case, in which the Civil Rights Act was stretched and distorted to allow affirmative action as we now know it.

All of this, asserts Sowell, was latent from the outset in the "civil rights vision of the world," which interprets statistical disparity as the work of discrimination and various "root causes." According to this view, the so-called under-representation of blacks (or women or Hispanics or the victim group du jour) in a given domain is ipso facto evidence of discrimination, regardless of the intent of the authority in question. If a department of physics at a major university does not have a single black faculty member, then racism is lurking somewhere, even if no qualified black person ever submitted a resume.

Sowell thoroughly deconstructs the madness behind this obsession with statistical disparity and its endless harvest of victim claims. Aggregate statistics on income prove nothing about underlying causes. An ethnic group can be poor in conditions of complete equality, or well-to-do in conditions of extreme adversity. The émigré Chinese communities are a classic case. Says Sowell:

"Throughout southeast Asia, for several centuries, the Chinese minority has been--and continues to be--the target of explicit, legalized discrimination in various occupations, in admission to institutions of higher learning, and suffers bans and restrictions on land ownership and places of residence...Yet in all these countries, the Chinese minority--about 5 percent of the population in southeast Asia--owns a majority of the nation's total investments in key industries...In Malaysia, where the anti-Chinese discrimination is written into the Constitution, is embodied in preferential quotas for Malays in government and private industry alike, and extends to admissions and scholarships at the universities, the average Chinese continues to earn twice the income of the average Malay."

Sowell also tackles the myth that women are underpaid and targets of discrimination in the workplace. When all the feminist hype is stripped away, we see that women are paid the same wages for the same work. True, women on average earn less then men, but this is due to (a) their greater tendency to work part-time; (b) interruptions in career due to the demands of motherhood; and (c) type of chosen profession.

If we compare apples to apples, that is, men who have never married to women who have never married,

"...an entirely different picture emerges. Women who remain single earn 91 percent of the income of men who remain single, in the age bracket from 25 to 64 years old. Nor can the other 9 percent automatically be attributed to employer discrimination, since women are typically not educated as often in such highly paid fields as mathematics, science, and engineering...This virtual parity in income between men who never marry and women who never marry is not a new phenomenon, attributable to affirmative action. In 1971, women who had remained unmarried into their thirties and who had worked since high school earned slightly higher incomes than men of the very same description. In the academic world, single women who received their Ph.D.'s in the 1930s had by the 1950s become full professors slightly more often than male Ph.D.'s as a whole."

A particularly biting testament against the travesty of affirmative action comes from Sowell's own personal experience. In the book's epilogue, he answers his critics. One of their many attacks is that Sowell (who is black) allegedly benefited in his own career from affirmative action. The fact that a scholar of Sowell's stature must rebut such a demeaning slander is a chilling reminder of the extent to which the apostles of the victim industry--from Supreme Court Justice William Brennan to Senator Barack Obama--have polluted American culture with their intellectual dross.

We can only sigh with Thomas Sowell as he writes:

"If there is an optimistic aspect of preferential doctrines, it is that they may eventually make so many Americans so sick of hearing of group labels and percentages that the idea of judging each individual on his or her own performance may become more attractive than ever."

Thomas Sowell, Exposer of False Dichotomies
If you will get one message from this book, it will be that there is no dichotomy between the innate inferiority of a group X and socially-institutionalized discrimination against group X to explain the statistical disparities between the achievements of members of X and individuals who are not included in X. If this dichotomy were true, then this would mean that the American public school system is blatantly biased in favor of students of Asian descent, as this minority group outperforms students of non-Asian descent to a statistically significant degree. However, the allegation of pro-Asian discrimination in this respect is ludicrous. Unfortunately, as Thomas Sowell so eloquently argues, the aforementioned false dichotomy forms the basis for much of the anti-discrimination legislation in existence today.

Thomas Sowell refutes many of the claims that are used to justify ongoing anti-discrimination laws. For example, the claim that statistical disparities in income and academic achievement imply that current society is still inherently (and possibly subconsciously) biased against blacks. However, Sowell argues that this cannot be true, as the fact that there are no statistically significant disparities between blacks from the West Indies and non-blacks serves as a counterexample.

Another claim refuted by Sowell is that institutionalized discrimination against a minority group prevents that minority group from obtaining a high standard of living. Although this claim might be true depending on the level of institutionalized discrimination, Sowell provides counterexamples to this as well, as the Han Chinese are heavily legally discriminated against in Malaysia and yet they disproportionately enjoy a higher standard of living in that region.

Sowell also challenges the claim that government programs that are designed to help a minority group, such as Affirmative Action, actually help that group. For example, instead, Sowell argues, by lowering admission standards for members of certain minority groups, universities merely ensure that these groups remain below their peers.

There are plenty more examples of the above nature in this book.

What explains these differences if not innate inferiority or institutionalized racism? Sowell argues that volitionally embraced cultural values explains these differences. Some cultures are almost entirely confined within a certain race. For example, redneck culture is considered entirely a white phenomenon.

Fortunately, since individuals have free will, if an individual wishes to be successful then they merely need to embrace values such as diligence, ambition and perseverance and eschew values that are antagonistic to such ends.

Stellar.
A piercing eye-opener. Sowell systematically illuminates and picks apart the cloud of unquestioned assumptions, faulty axioms, and bogus 'foregone conclusions' on which so much social policy dogma and more importantly, countless political careers, hangs.

I seem to need to know "why" . . . again.
In the days following 9/11, after the initial shock and anger, I found myself spending hours on the internet trying to figure out who Al Qaeda were and what would motivate such a hideous attack on innocent Americans. Why?!

What does this have to do with Thomas Sowell and Civil Rights?Well, although I am neither a Democrat nor a liberal, politically speaking, my opinion of Senator Obama was that maybe he was a candidate who deserved consideration over the alternatives of Clinton or McCain.But then came the revelation that Senator Obama was a 20-year congregant and an apparent friend and admirer of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.And once again, I found myself surprised and completely baffled, asking myself "why"-- why would Sen. Obama, apparently in the main stream of current American politics (or any reasonable American of any race) find the hate-filled racial rhetoric of Rev. Wright a source of inspiration, spiritual, social or otherwise?

One of Thomas Sowell's more recent columns on the topic of race led me to the purchase his book.Written more than 20 years ago, Sowell's insights into the Civil Rights movement of the 60's, and its mutation from the ideal of "equal opportunity" to the social and racial politics of the present seem to resonate.After reading "Civil Rights", I believe Thomas Sowell clearly knows and also forcefully and logically explains, better than any other authority I have found, the "why" of our current social and racial politics.

Read and draw your on conclusions.I believe it will be well worth the time, irrespective of one's race and politics. ... Read more

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Life, liberty, property, free speech, freedom of conscience, and religion are all considered inalienable rights. Yet rights are now routinely claimed to include health care, employment, housing, even vacations. This audio examines if we do indeed have a right to all the things we need for a full life, even if it obligates others to provide them. 2 cassettes. ... Read more

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The movement for civil rights in America peaked in the 1950s and 1960s; however, a closely related struggle, this time over the movement's legacy, has been heatedly engaged over the past two decades. How the civil rights movement is currently being remembered in American politics and culture--and why it matters--is the common theme of the thirteen essays in this unprecedented collection.

Memories of the movement are being created and maintained--in ways and for purposes we sometimes only vaguely perceive--through memorials, art exhibits, community celebrations, and even street names. At least fifteen civil rights movement museums have opened since 1990; Mississippi Burning, Four Little Girls, and The Long Walk Home only begin to suggest the range of film and television dramatizations of pivotal events; corporations increasingly employ movement images to sell fast food, telephones, and more; and groups from Christian conservatives to gay rights activists have claimed the civil rights mantle.

Contests over the movement's meaning are a crucial part of the continuing fight against racism and inequality. These writings look at how civil rights memories become established as fact through museum exhibits, street naming, and courtroom decisions; how our visual culture transmits the memory of the movement; how certain aspects of the movement have come to be ignored in its "official" narrative; and how other political struggles have appropriated the memory of the movement. Here is a book for anyone interested in how we collectively recall, claim, understand, and represent the past.

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Remembering the Civil Rights movement
I really enjoyed this book.I think that it is very important for us to recover what we've "forgotten" about the civil rights movement and how that impacts us today.

From heroic icons to methods of display and memory
Numerous books have been written on American Civil Rights history: The Civil Rights Movement In American History differs in its blend of overview of events and how the movement is currently being remembered in American politics and culture. This dual focus offers a wider-ranging survey than most, blending memories of the movement with surveys of how it's being remembered, through museums, exhibits, film, TV and more. From heroic icons to methods of display and memory, this holds important lessons on how we incorporate culture change as a whole.
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"But for Birmingham," Fred Shuttleworth recalled President John F. Kennedy saying in June 1963 when he invited black leaders to meet with him, "we would not be here today." Birmingham is well known for its civil rights history, particularly for the violent white-on-black bombings that occurred there in the 1960s, resulting in the city's nickname "Bombingham." What is less well known about Birmingham's racial history, however, is the extent to which early city planning decisions influenced and prompted the city's civil rights protests. The first book-length work to analyze this connection, "The Most Segregated City in America": City Planning and Civil Rights in Birmingham, 1920-1980 uncovers the impact of Birmingham's urban planning decisions on its black communities and reveals how these decisions led directly to the civil rights movement.

Spanning over sixty years, Charles E. Connerly's study begins in the 1920s, when Birmingham used urban planning as an excuse to implement racial zoning laws, pointedly sidestepping the 1917 U.S. Supreme Court Buchanan v. Warley decision that had struck down racial zoning. The result of this obstruction was the South's longest-standing racial zoning law, which lasted from 1926 to 1951, when it was redeclared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. Despite the fact that African Americans constituted at least 38 percent of Birmingham's residents, they faced drastic limitations to their freedom to choose where to live. When in the1940s they rebelled by attempting to purchase homes in off-limit areas, their efforts were labeled as a challenge to city planning, resulting in government and court interventions that became violent. More than fifty bombings ensued between 1947 and 1966, becoming nationally publicized only in 1963, when four black girls were killed in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

Connerly effectively uses Birmingham's history as an example to argue the importance of recognizing the link that exists between city planning and civil rights. His demonstration of how Birmingham's race-based planning legacy led to the confrontations that culminated in the city's struggle for civil rights provides a fresh lens on the history and future of urban planning, and its relation to race. ... Read more

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This text places the legal issues of constitutional law in the larger context of the American political framework, recognizing that the decisions of the Supreme Court grow from a dynamic political process. 195 cases are contained in this edition. Boxes are used to summarize and highlight important points, making it easier to focus on key points in every chapter, and essays within chapters are subdivided by sets of readings. ... Read more

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The Black Power Movement remains an enigma.Often misunderstood and ill-defined, this radical movement is now beginning to receive sustained and serious scholarly attention.Peniel Joseph has collected the freshest and most impressive list of contributors around to write original essays on the Black Power Movement.Taken together they provide a critical and much needed historical overview of the Black Power era.Offering important examples of undocumented histories of black liberation, this volume offers both powerful and poignant examples of "Black Power Studies" scholarship. ... Read more

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A Forgotten History
This book was purchased for a class, but has become one of my favorite historical books. The text covers all the black social movements, but in particular it avoids most of the mainstream Martin Luther King Jr. moments, instead concentrating on the inner city problems and racial tension that had been ongoing since the Emancipation Proclamation.An excellent read to keep from forgetting America's sordid past.

Great anthology of essays about the Black Power Movement
Peniel Joseph has compiled a wonderful collection of essays pertaining to the Black Power Movement (BPM) and how the BPM was much more than a struggle by mostly male leaders at a national level.Instead, this collection argues, it was a coalition of people that joined together to press for Black Power.

Most of the essays pertain exclusively to the Black Power Movement, but there are plenty of tantalizing sidebars that tie well into the BPM, such as an essay regarding Kwanzaa, and (my personal favorite) an essay entitled "Rainbow Radicalism".Rainbow Radicalism focuses on how the BPM affected other ethnic groups, such as the Chicano/as in the Southwest, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and even Southern Whites.

Overall, this collection is a spectacular grouping and is well worth reading, whether simply for self-edification or as part of an educational exercise.Highly recommended to anyone interested in the history of Civil Rights America or African-American history. ... Read more

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In this book, Thomas Adams Upchurch presents the true story of a white youths experiences with race relations in the early years of integration in Mississippi. Upchurch, a first-generation product of the integrated public schools in Mississippi, describes what it was like to be white in a public school that wasblack. ... Read more

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Long before the modern civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s made a frontal assault on the reigning segregationist order, African American workers had to struggle against both their employers and fellow white workers. Because their efforts to secure their workplace rights pitted them against the broader structures of racial oppression, their activism constituted nothing less than a form of civil rights struggle. Uniting the latest scholarship on race, labour, and civil rights, "The Black Worker" aims to establish the richness of the African American working-class experience, and the indisputable role of black workers in shaping the politics and history of labour and race in the United States.To capture the complexity of African Americans' experiences in the workplace, this reader examines workers engaged in a wide array of jobs, including sharecropping, coal mining, domestic service, longshoring, automobile manufacturing, tobacco processing, railroading, prostitution, lumbering, and municipal employment. The essays' subjects include black migration, strikebreaking, black conservatism, gender, and the multiple forms of employment discrimination in the South and North.Other contributions deal explicitly with state policy and black workers during the transition from slavery to freedom, World Wars I and II, and the 1960s. The variety of challenges made by these workers, both quiet and overt, served as clear reminders to the supporters of white supremacy that, despite their best efforts through violence, fraud, and the law, as long as they insisted upon racial inequality, the 'race question' would never be fully resolved. ... Read more

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Carry It On is an in-depth study of how the local struggle for equality in Alabama fared in the wake of new federal laws--the Civil Rights Act, the Economic Opportunity Act, and the Voting Rights Act. Susan Youngblood Ashmore provides a sharper definition to changes set in motion by the fall of legal segregation. She focuses her detailed story on the Alabama Black Belt and on the local projects funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), the federal agency that supported programs in a variety of cities and towns in Alabama. Black Belt activists who used OEO funds understood that the structural underpinnings of poverty were key components of white supremacy, says Ashmore. They were motivated not only to end poverty but also to force local governments to comply with new federal legislation aimed at achieving racial equality on a number of fronts.

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Social movements have wrought dramatic changes upon American society. This observation necessarily raises the question: Why do some movements succeed in their endeavors while others fail? This book answers this question by introducing an analytical framework that begins with a shift in emphasis away from the characteristics of movements toward the targets of protests and affected bystanders, their interests, and why they respond as they do. Such a shift brings into focus how targets and other interests assess both their exposure to movement disruptions as well as the costs of conceding to movement demands. From this vantage point, diverse outcomes stem not only from a movement's capabilities for protest but also from differences among targets and others in their vulnerability to disruption and the substance of movement goals. Applied to the civil rights movement, this approach recasts conventional accounts of the movement's outcome in local struggles and national politics, and also clarifies the broader logic of social change. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

Very well written highly readable and informative
This book is essential reading for anyone interested in politics and civil rights generally. For those with a specific interest in the Northern Ireland or American civil rights movements of the 60s, this is one of the best books written on this subject.

A very unique book that credibly draws parallels between the concurrent campaigns.

Highly recommended.

making a record of remembered bridges
While most educators and textbooks in the US would have us believe the polarization of oppression and race along lines of skin pigmentation is the natural, inherent, and historical condition of ethnic interaction, Dooley's book suggests otherwhise._Black and Green_ looks at the common link forged by oppression and the struggle for liberation between white Irish and black Americans since the 1800s.

Dooley examines the political, social, and ideological connections between the civil rights struggle in Ireland and America.His analysis results in a picture of reciprocal interchange with both sides influencing, shaping, and supporting the other.The end result is that this "other" demarcated through pigmentation was hardly an "other" during the historical moment.Angela Davis and Bernadette McAliskey support each other while in prison. When McAliskey later receives the keys to the city of New York for her work in Ireland, she gives them to the Black Panther Party.Frederick Douglas and O'Connell heavily influence each other's political thought and speak out in support of each other's cause.Marcus Garvey claims the color scheme of his movement reflects the struggle of various liberation moments of different races all over the world, including the Irish (Red for the reds of the world, green for the Irish struggle, and black for the African American, or, as he puts it at the time, the "Negro struggle." )

Dooley's writing is lucid, engaging, and often narrative.As his innovative and perhaps contentious claims demand, Dooley's research is heavily documumented, often cites primary sources, and features hundreds of foot notes at the book's end.Educators and researchers may use this book with the confidence that they can ascertain with some degree of certainty the primary sources from which Dooley's arguments arise.Further, Dooley's writing is eminently accessible and multi-layered.I have used sections of chapters in my middle school classroom in the Bronx and cited Dooley extensively in papers for graduate school._Black and Green_ is an invaluable resource for race studies, American or Irish history, and civil rights seminars.

An American Perspective on the Irish Struggle
The key to understanding who the oppressed are and who the oppressors are is determined by looking at who the domestic workers are and for whom they work.Who is it that picks up after whom? Bernadette Devlin McAlisky'skeen political sense with activists in the civil rights struggle andaffluent Irish-Americans is very revealing.Catholic women pick up afterProtestant families in Ireland.African-American women pick up afteraffluent Irish-American families in America.She felt more at home withmembers of The Black Panther Party than with these affluent IrishAmericans. The support of the abolition struggle by Irish republicans suchas Daniel O'Connell is of historic import.The support the Irish struggleby fighters such as Frederick Douglas and Marcus Garvey is also of historicinterest.However, the interchange of tactics by both struggles is mostrevealing.The historic Belfast-Derry March in January 1969 was modeledafter the Selma-Montgomery protest four earlier.The Montgomery busboycott got its name from Captain Boycott an avaricious Irish landlord. Michael Farrell set up the Young Socialist Alliance in Ireland modeledafter the Young Socialists Alliance in the United States. Black and Greenhas much more of interest for American understanding of the Irish struggleand is must reading for fighters struggling against oppression and bigotry. ... Read more