| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.1

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 238 words from this article are provided below; about 350 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two-hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Divided Minds: Intellectuals and the Civil Rights Movement. By Carol Polsgrove. (New York: Norton, 2001. xxi, 296 pp. $26.95, ISBN 0-393-02013-4.)

Divided Minds is both a fascinating and a frustrating book. The fascination inheres in the story Carol Polsgrove tells of the complicated relationship between American intellectuals and the struggle for racial equality in the 1950s and 1960s. At a time when moral leadership from leading intellectuals might have advanced the cause of civil rights, Polsgrove argues, their voices were disappointingly quiet and guarded. Explaining the constraints that shaped the intellectuals' responses to the civil rights movement is the largest part of Polsgrove's task; accounting for the handful of individuals who broke free of those constraints is the other part of her purpose. 1

In part the constraints were personal: intellectuals who counseled moderation in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education were themselves moderate people, some of whom surely lacked firsthand knowledge of the realities of black life. In part the constraints were political: the Cold War and McCarthyism narrowed the limits of permissible expression, and active, outspoken support of racial justice was seen to be dangerous, disruptive of the status quo, and threatening to one's economic security. In part, too, the constraints were institutional: major publishing houses and national magazines chose their authors, and commissioned and edited those authors' works, within limits of what they construed to be "safe" and commercially viable. . . .

There are about 350 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.