the48er

Race and Human Rights

A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and
The Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution by David A. Nichols

The court of popular history has long judged Dwight Eisenhower to have been AWOL in the struggle against Jim Crow apartheid; a Southwestern College dean (emeritus) now rehabilitates Ike's legacy in that regard. Nichols shows that Eisenhower, advised and aided by AG Herbert Brownell, "resisted engaging in partisan demagoguery" regarding civil rights, instead delivering "less oratory, and more action." Says Nichols,

Eisenhower's great contribution to civil rights during his presidency was his bold support for the courts, their judges, and their decisions, with Little Rock the symbol. In 1861, Abraham Lincoln preached preservation of the union, not ending slavery, as justification for making war on the South. Eisenhower argued for obeying the federal courts, not integration, as justification for intervention in Little Rock. ... Neither said what the activists of his day wanted to hear, but both led the nation in a new direction. [ ¶ ] Eisenhower's policy in Little Rock reinforced the verdict of the Civil War -- the supremacy of federal authority, including federal court orders -- over the states. While the gains for civil rights during his administration were limited, a revolution had truly begun.

A Matter of Justice ... published September 4, 2007 by Simon & Schuster

Being a Black Man: At the Corner of Progress and Peril
by Washington Post staff writers

From June to December 2006 the Washington Post ran a series under the aegis Being a Black Man. The articles are collected here with some additions, including an introduction by Edward P. Jones. The (sub)title article, "At the Corner of Progress and Peril," is still available online, as are "A Portrait Shaded with Promise and Doubt," "The Young Apprentice," "Singled Out" and "The Meaning of Work." The project asks,

What does it mean to be a black man? Imagine three African American boys, kindergartners who are largely alike in intelligence, talent, and character, whose potential seems limitless. According to a wealth of statistics and academic studies, in just over a decade one of the boys is likely to be locked up or headed to prison. The second boy -- if he hasn't already dropped out -- will seriously weigh leaving high school and be pointed toward an uncertain future. The third boy will be speeding toward success by most measures. [ ¶ ] Being a black man in America can mean inhabiting a border area between possibility and peril.

Being a Black Man ... published August 7, 2007 by PublicAffairs

Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of
Japanese American Internment edited by Linda Gordon and Gary Y. Okihiro

Dorothea Lange's photos of America's WWII internment of Japanese residents had for many years been "impounded" by the U.S. government that had hired her to take them. Now over 100 of Lange's 800 internment photos are collected here with essays about the photographer and the anti-Japanese racism that pervaded America. Says Gordon,

[Y]ou could count on your fingers the number of "whites" who spoke publicly against sending Japanese Americans to internment camps. Liberals and leftists, even those who explicitly opposed racism, remained silent because they swallowed the claim that this was a necessary measure to defeat the Nazi-Japanese-Italian alliance -- a claim made by their beloved President Roosevelt. The Communist Party was then willing to accept any policy that purported to aid the Soviet resistance to the Nazi invasion. Even the liberal Dr. Seuss contributed a racist anti-Japanese cartoon.

Impounded ... published November 1, 2006 by W. W. Norton

After the Storm: Black Intellectuals Explore
The Meaning of Hurricane Katrina edited by David Dante Troutt

Many worthwhile books about Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans have appeared in recent months, but because the storm and its aftermath most personally and deeply devastated New Orleans' poor African-Americans, this collection of original essays by African-American intellectuals is of particular interest. Edited by a Rutgers law prof, the book's a fine catalyst for the kinds of serious, good-faith discussions about race, class and the social contract that America needs to have, but that most white Americans either passively avoid or derisively scorn. But there's also much here that rescues what has happened -- and what continues to happen -- to New Orleans' poor from the glib, simple-minded generalizations and caricatures that the mainstream media typically applies to features relating Katrina and New Orleans. Troutt and one of the book's contributors, Cheryl Harris, were featured on MPR's Midmorning.

After the Storm ... published September 1, 2006 by New Press

Justice in Mississippi: The Murder Trial of Edgar Ray Killen
by Howard Ball

Killen is the Mississippi Klansman who organized the murders of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman in 1964. He was finally tried and convicted last year -- 41 years to the day after the crime. Ball, an author and academician who lived in Mississippi between 1976 and 1982, reports on the trial as well as its context, significance and portents. This book's a follow-up to Ball's Murder in Mississippi (2004), which detailed the circumstances of the 1964 crime and the reasons those responsible had to that point received either light sentences or (in Killen's case) none at all. He shows, however, that with last year's trial, Mississippi prosecutors accomplished two critical tasks: they 1) convicted a murderer; and 2) "placed truth in the record" -- a first step in the truth and reconciliation process for a state and regional "culture" that was until very recently the embodiment of evil. It must never be forgotten that in 1980, when Ronald Reagan reached out to white Southern voters, he made a major "state's rights" speech in Philadelphia, Miss. -- the scene the 1964 murders.

Justice in Mississippi ... published July 25, 2006 by University Press of Kansas

Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of
Black Power in America by Peniel E. Joseph

A young Africana studies prof at SUNY-Stony Brook explores the Black Power movement that unfolded in America from the 1950s through the 1970s. He says that despite the movement's often overblown rhetoric and self-destructive male chauvinism, it did much to combat the deep racism that permeated post-WWII America. Central to the tale is Stokely Carmichael, who popularized the phrase "Black Power" with a speech he gave in the Mississippi Delta on the evening of June 16, 1966. Also integral to the story is the reality that the Black Power movement both influenced and was influenced by the more conservative Civil Rights movement; some participants moved freely between the two camps. Joseph does a fine job of presenting and contextualizing such well known movement figures as Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, and Angela Davis. But his scholarship also reveals less famous but compelling and historically significant people, including Albert Cleage, John Henrik Clarke and John Oliver Killens.

Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour ... published July 25, 2006 by Henry Holt and Co.

No One Is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State Violence
On the U.S.-Mexico Border by Justin Akers Chacón and Mike Davis

In the wake of Congress's latest lunacies regarding "illegal immigration," two socialist scholars suggest America quit obsessing about the non-existent Brown Menace. Of greater concern should be the racism of white Americans that grounds many calls for "immigration reform" and Corporate America's exploitation of powerless workers. Featuring the work of award-winning photographer Julián Cardona, No One is Illegal shows an infinitely more human and humane face of Mexican immigrants than one generally saw during Congress's recent gyrations. It also explores the American Southwest's long, ugly history of white racism aimed at Hispanics and Asians. Chacón says that labor unions should help secure workers' rights for immigrant laborers, and that "illegal" immigrants should receive a general amnesty and be put on straight roads toward full citizenship. (1, 2, 3). I'm not certain that I agree with everything the authors have to say, but their cogently argued and too seldom voiced perspectives are refreshing to read and important to consider.

Chacón was interviewed on Wisconsin Public Radio.

No One Is Illegal ... published July 15, 2006 by Haymarket Books

Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall,
And Redemption of the Black Athlete by William C. Rhoden

"You're nothing but a $40 million slave," a heckler yelled at pro basketball star Larry Johnson in 2000. A veteran NY Times sportswriter and columnist shows that the heckler spoke truer than he knew about black athleticism -- and white ownership and control -- going back centuries in America. Money's not the main issue. Says Rhoden:

There were a lot of slaves -- particularly jockeys and trainers -- who made a lot of money. ... Charles Stewart made so much money training horses ... that he had to have an agent - in the early 1800s. But the fact remains that he was still a slave. There were a lot of jockeys who were making a lot of money and they'd finish a race and find out they had been sold to another plantation. But they made a lot of money. ... Curt Flood says it's kind of like share cropping: when you don't own the enterprise and you can be treated like chattel, that's essentially what you are.

The author was interviewed on NPR's News & Notes with Ed Gordon.

Forty Million Dollar Slaves ... published July 11, 2006 by Crown

The Bystander: John F. Kennedy
And the Struggle for Black Equality by Nick Bryant

A former BBC Washington correspondent marshals an impressive array of research and interviews to show that at least before Birmingham, JFK was no friend to African Americans. It wasn't that he was some kind of closet racist; it was simply that prior to seeing Bull Connor's boys at their best, he just didn't much care. Kennedy was, however, masterful at politically symbolic gestures relating to racial issues. One reason he rose so quickly through Congress is that he used such symbolism not only to attract black voters, but also to curry favor with racist Southern Democratic leaders such as John Patterson. He even went so far as to help dilute the Civil Rights Act of 1957. By failing to take the initiative to confront Southern racism when he took office, Kennedy may have exacerbated later racial tumults by encouraging Southern bigots and pushing African Americans toward greater militancy than some might otherwise have supported.

The Bystander ... published June 30, 2006 by Perseus Books Group

Mirror to America by John Hope Franklin

At the age of 90, one of America's most respected historians recalls "a life spent at the intersection of scholarship and public service." Franklin's From Slavery to Freedom (1947; now in its 8th edition) is still widely regarded as the foremost history of African-Americans. He also won early notoriety as an advisor to Thurgood Marshall and the legal team that won the Brown vs. Board of Education case.

For the last 50 years, Franklin has been a prolific author and speaker, in demand worldwide, on behalf of African-American rights, history, and legacies. Says he,

Living in a world restricted by laws defining race, as well as creating obstacles, disadvantages, and even superstitions regarding race, challenged my capacities for survival. For ninety years I have witnessed countless men and women likewise meet this challenge. Some bested it; some did not; many had to settle for any accommodation they could. ... [I]t was armed with the tools of scholarship that I strove to dismantle those laws, level those obstacles and disadvantages, and replace superstitions with humane dignity.

*Also available, in abridgement, on Audio CD

Mirror to America ... first published June 27, 2006 by HarperCollins

The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of
America's First Black Dynasty by Lawrence Otis Graham

Blanche K. Bruce was the first African-American elected to serve a full term in the United States Senate. The author traces his rise from slave origins to financial and political power in Mississippi, following his service not only in the Senate but also in various other high government positions in association with several presidents. Graham's subject would be sufficiently compelling if taken only that far, but it's the generations that followed Bruce that make the story unusually compelling. The "first black dynasty," we see, spirals downward toward dissolution and prison. The author's spent lots of time and energy reflecting, talking, and writing about race and class in America (as he did in Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class); his personal -- sometimes self-conscious -- observations in those regards are fascinating.

The Senator and the Socialite ... published June 27, 2006 by HarperCollins

Gay Marriage: For Better or for Worse? What We've Learned from The Evidence William N. Eskridge & Darren R. Spedale

One of the Right's most common arguments against gay marriage is that it's been tried in Scandinavia, and the results have been disastrous for children and the institution of marriage. As usual, though, the Right's lying through its mossy teeth. Registered unions have in fact worked well in Scandinavia, and Eskridge and Spedale prove it. The authors show that traditional marriage "was in deep decline long before 1989" (when registered unions were recognized in Denmark; Norway and Sweden followed in 1993 and 1995, respectively). This was due largely to the steadily increasing ease with which couples could divorce, and had nothing to do with gay unions. Since 1989 in Denmark, however,

the marriage rate has increased, the divorce rate fell, and the rate of childbirths outside of marriage declined for the first time in half a century. Similar trends occurred in the other Scandinavian countries that recognized same-sex partnerships.

Gay Marriage ... published June 18, 2006 by Oxford University Press, USA

Lockout: Why America Keeps Getting Immigration Wrong When Our Prosperity Depends on Getting It Right by Michele Wucker

A senior fellow at the World Policy Institute argues that America's increasingly restrictive immigration policies and practices are succeeding mainly in keeping out people likely to benefit the United States. She says that we need to rescue

the debate over immigration from the extremists: both those who would ... reserve America for those of Anglo-Saxon heritage [and] those who will not countenance attempts to bring immigration to moderate levels and who refuse to give any credit at all to the Anglo-Saxon cultural and political influences that enabled us to incorporate other cultures -- however imperfectly -- into one nation.

Wucker shows that half of America's R&D community and a fourth of its doctors and nurses are foreign-born. Ominously for the United States, however, from 2001 to 2003, both student visas issued and skilled workers entering the country fell by over a fourth.

Lockout ... published May 8, 2006 by PublicAffairs

The Forgotten Fifth:
African Americans in the Age of Revolution by Gary B. Nash

A top historian (UCLA emeritus; director, National Center for History in the Schools) serves up a well-crafted look at the lives of Revolutionary War-era African Americans, who then comprised one-fifth of America's population. The Revolution, observes Nash,

marked the first mass slave rebellion in American history, initiated the first civil rights movement, produced the first reconstruction of black life, brought forth the first written testimonies from African Americans who wanted the world to hear of their strivings and their claims to freedom, and involved the first budding of what W.E.B. DuBois would call "the talented tenth."

Nash brings a vast range of knowledge to bear, but without sacrificing good storytelling to showy erudition. A couple interesting samples of his work: one from Time, another from Boston Review.

The Forgotten Fifth ... published February 28, 2006 by Harvard University Press

Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario

Each year, nearly 50,000 children travel from Central America to the United States in search of mothers who have preceded them on the increasingly treacherous trip north. Sonia Nazario, a Los Angeles Times projects reporter, won a Pulitzer Prize for chronicling one such journey in a Times series (which won an additional Pulitzer for photographer Don Bartletti) -- that forms the basis for this powerfully affecting book.

While the work's central story is riveting in itself, Enrique's Journey is also exceptionally effective at illuminating and humanizing broader underlying issues. By bringing the reader face to face with Enrique and his family as they contend with some of the hardships and dangers they share with hundreds of thousands of other migrants, the author brings tremendous immediacy and reality to circumstances that, on this side of the border at least, are too easily reduced to bland abstractions or arid cliches.

Terry Gross interviewed Nazario on NPR's Fresh Air.

Enrique's Journey ... first published February 21, 2006 by Random House

Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and Their Global Quest for Liberty by Cassandra Pybus

The American Revolution may have been liberating for white, male Americans, but for African-American slaves it was catastrophic, institutionalizing the slavery that enriched some "Founding Fathers" -- whose Constitution would explicitly accommodate slavery. Tens of thousands of African-American slaves saw the writing on the wall during the Revolution and fled to the British lines; when the Brits lost, loyalist blacks were obliged to seek refuge in the British Empire, leading to yet another global black diaspora. Pybus succeeds dramatically in her effort to humanize -- rather than merely quantify -- the plight Revolutionary War-era African-American slaves faced in America and later in Nova Scotia, London, Sierra Leone, Australia, and elsewhere. Among the freedom-seekers whose lives she investigates are those who'd been personally enslaved by some of America's founders.

Epic Journeys of Freedom ... published February 1, 2006 by Beacon Press

Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice
by Raymond Arsenault

The need for this definitive history of the Freedom Riders was summed up neatly by John Wilkens in the San Diego Union-Tribune:

[D]etails of the Rides are frequently lost in the public's memory of the civil rights movement. They drift fuzzily somewhere between Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus and Martin Luther King Jr. telling the world he had a dream.

With scrupulous attention to detail, Arsenault recounts the story that unfolded in the Deep South from May through December of 1961 (five years after the boycott that Parks catalyzed, two before "I Have a Dream"), when 436 people -- white and black, young and old, from the North and the South -- tested recent federal rulings that mandated the desegregation of interstate transportation systems and facilities. Southern merchants and authorities not only failed to comply with or enforce the rulings, they stood idly by while white mobs beat, stabbed, and firebombed the Riders -- who responded with Gandhian nonviolence.

Terry Gross featured Arsenault on Fresh Air.

Freedom Riders ... first published January 15, 2006 by Oxford University Press, USA

At Canaan's Edge by Taylor Branch

Taylor Branch draws to a close his magnificent America in the King Years trilogy, which began with his Pulitzer Prizewinning Parting the Waters (1988) and continued with Pillar of Fire (1998). Branch has spent over 20 years immersed in the study of King and his brief, 14-year career. That being the case, it's worth noting that At Canaan's Edge both begins and ends with discussions of nonviolence. He concludes,

King himself upheld nonviolence until he was nearly alone among colleagues weary of sacrifice. To that end, he resisted incitements to violence, cynicism, and tribal retreat. He grasped freedom seen and unseen, rooted in the ecumenical faith, sustaining patriotism to brighten the heritage of his country for all people. These treasures abide with lasting promise from America in the King years.

Liane Hansen interviewed Branch on for NPR's Weekend Edition; Terry Gross spoke with him on Fresh Air.

*Also available, in abridgement, on Audio CD

At Canaan's Edge ... first published January 10, 2006 by Simon & Schuster

With Liberty and Justice for All: A Life Spent
Protecting the Right to Choose by Kate Michelman

As Madeleine Albright said, "Kate Michelman's name is synonymous with pro-choice and women's rights." In this inspirational memoir, the long-time head of NARAL not only tells her life story, but also calls on future generations to write their own histories and to protect some hard-won and crucial human rights. Michelman concludes,

Decades ago, when Roe was not yet imagined and abortion was in so many places illegal, a small but passionate movement of Americans decided to transform the world. They did. Today the movement they have bequeathed to the next generation of pro-choice activists is large and powerful and vast; the freedom they left us is in jeopardy; and to save at, we need only activate, with a sense of personal responsibility and dire urgency, the movement they built. ... [ ¶ ]This is our moment. This is our responsibility. If we shun it, a dreadful society so many women and I once knew will return. If we embrace it, another society -- a very different society -- a society that values women and supports children and protects the fundamental freedoms that animate what America is about -- awaits.

With Liberty and Justice for All ... first published Dec. 29, 2005 by Hudson Street Press

Embracing the Infidel by Behzad Yaghmaian

Could it be that the "clash of civilizations" between Islam and the West is sometimes, in reality, a matter of Muslims reaching out to the West only to be slapped away? Sometimes. But as Yaghmaian shows, the reasons for and experiences of Muslims migrating Westward vary. He spent two years interviewing migrants along the routes taken by Muslim migrants from the Middle East and Africa to Europe and America.

For example, in an interview with NPR's Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition two weeks ago, he synopsized the story of one man he met in Greece:

When I met him he was living in an abandoned truck. He was a political refugee from Iran. He was jailed in Iran three times, tortured by the Islamic Republic -- when I met him he showed me the scars on his body. He escaped Iran -- he left his family behind -- he went to Turkey and from there he went to Greece hoping he would be given political asylum, but the Greeks did not give him that. So then he chose to move forward -- to go to Italy. He succeeded in hiding in a truck carrying watermelon from Greece to Italy. The truck boarded a ship, the ship was on the way, in the sea, for nearly 40 hours. When he got out of the truck he was dizzy, he fell down, they took him to the hospital, two hours later he was pronounced dead.

Embracing the Infidel ... first published November 29, 2005 by Delacorte Press

Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction
by Eric Foner and Joshua Brown

Reconstruction is one of America's most crucial -- and one of the most misunderstood -- eras in American history, says a neoabolitionist Columbia history prof. Foner maintains that, at least until the mid-20th century, the story white America told itself about Reconstruction was largely a web of half-truths and lies tailored to suit the tastes of Southern whites. Says Foner,

Ignorance of Reconstruction is unfortunate because, whether we realize it or not, it remains very much part of our lives. ... Every year, Congress and the Supreme Court debate issues arising from Reconstruction laws and constitutional amendments. The rights of American citizens, the proper roles of the state and federal governments, the possibility of interracial political coalitions, affirmative action, reparations for slavery, the proper ways for the government to protect citizens against terrorist violence, the relationship between political and economic democracy -- these and other issues of our own time cannot be properly understood today without knowledge of how they were debated during the Reconstruction era.

Incorporated into this exceptionally readable volume are six "visual essays" that feature about a dozen graphics each, edited and annotated by Joshua Brown, that "chart the ways American visual culture embraced, ignored, and distorted issues of race and equality from the 1840s to the 1920's." In addition to Brown's aggregations, dozens of excellent period graphics also accompany Foner's text.

Forever Free ... first published November 1, 2005 by Knopf

The Thunder of Angels by Donnie Williams and Wayne Greenhaw

Fifty years after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala. bus, two writers with deep Alabama roots (one runs a Montgomery grocery store and owned the historic bus in which Parks held her ground) recount the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the groundwork that preceded it. Says veteran journalist Greenhaw of collaborator and one-time bus owner Williams,

[H]e convinced me ... that the true, inside story of the bus boycott had never been told. According to most historians and journalists who had viewed the subject, the civil rights movement leapt full-blown onto the stage in the days after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the Montgomery city bus. They failed to look at the years building up to that fateful night in 1955, and they overlooked the actions of the man who had been setting the stage for years and years, through one small struggle after another, until the right moment was upon him. Too many times ... E. D. Nixon's role in the birth of the civil rights movement has been ignored or downplayed.

The Thunder of Angels ... published October 28, 2005 by Lawrence Hill Books

Vindication by Lyndall Gordon

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97) is often called the mother of feminism, mainly for her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. An earlier tract, A Vindication of the Rights of Men, had chided no less than Edmund Burke for his opposition to the French Revolution. Wollstonecraft died at the age of 38 shortly after bearing William Godwin's daughter Mary (who would write Frankenstein and marry the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley).

Wollstonecraft's writings affected the course of world events during an especially tumultuous period, but she was also influential for the unprecedented independence and remarkable courage she exercised in the conduct of her own life. She objected to the institution of marriage on the grounds that it was essentially legal prostitution and that encouraged women to become inconsequential idiots; she bore the first of her two daughters out of wedlock. Because her ideas were so radical for their day, her reputation almost inevitably suffered unjustly after her death -- a biographical wrong that Ms. Gordon succeeds in righting convincingly.

Vindication ... published May 3, 2005 by HarperCollins