| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

John A. Kirk. Redefining the Color Line: Black Activism in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1940–1970. (New Perspectives on the History of the South.) Gainesville: University Press of Florida. 2002. Pp. xx, 243. $39.95.

Millions of Americans remember the violent scenes outside Little Rock's Central High School in September 1957 as segregationists mobbed nine African-American students attempting to integrate the school. Younger people may have seen the television footage in the Eyes on the Prize documentary series or read the account of a participant. Now John A. Kirk has crafted a concise chronological narrative of the events surrounding that dramatic confrontation. He argues persuasively that the story is best understood from the viewpoint of the African-American activists, that a longer time frame helps to illuminate the movement, and that a local rather than national context puts the events into proper perspective. His monograph is clearly written, based in a wide range of sources, fairminded, and attractive to a broad audience. 1

Kirk highlights the work of early civil rights activists and shows how they laid a groundwork for the post-Brown v. Board of Education period. Arkansas blacks challenged, with varying degrees of success, the white primary, segregation in higher education, police brutality, and teacher pay inequality. Through these struggles, new leaders and organizations emerged, and older ones, like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), were strengthened. Local activists such as John Marshall Robinson, William Harold Flowers of Pine Bluff, and Wiley Branton made possible the emergence of militant editor Daisy Bates as state leader of the NAACP in 1952. . . .

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