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Review
| Reporting Civil Rights: Part One: American Journalism, 1941–1963 and Reporting Civil Rights: Part Two: American Journalism, 1963–1973. New York: Library of America, 2003. 996 and 986 pages, respectively. $40 per volume, cloth.
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| These two volumes, part of the Library of America's superb American history series, provide an extraordinary window onto the most significant social and political reform movement in modern American history, the African-American freedom struggle. Starting with A. Philip Randolph's 1941 plan (as described in The Black Worker, a union paper) to organize a march on Washington in order to end discrimination in the military and in the defense industry, and concluding with an autobiographical piece by Alice Walker (which appeared in the New York Times in 1973), Reporting Civil Rights traces the way America's newspapers and magazines covered the decades-long crusade. To suggest that these volumes contain a wealth of fascinating material is to understate just how absorbing they are. Indeed, both books overflow with gripping news accounts, compelling essays, and moving reminiscences penned by the men and women (black and white) who witnessed—and in some cases, participated in—the unfolding campaign to end racial oppression in the United States. One is hard-pressed to find a dull entry in nearly two thousand pages of material. |
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The books are replete, of course, with riveting accounts of the well-known episodes from these years (the Brown decision, the Montgomery bus boycott, the crisis at Little Rock, the sit-ins, the March on Washington), but time and again one is reminded that the struggle for racial justice included countless other stories less familiar, less grand, but undeniably significant. A 1945 piece by Langston Hughes, which appeared in the Chicago Defender (a leading black paper), considers the tribulations of a black man trying to get a meal on a passenger train in Jim Crow America. Hughes describes his "adventures" in dining cars south of the Mason-Dixon line, noting that southern whites obviously "did not think that colored travellers ever got hungry while travelling, or if they did...they were not expected to eat." But the distinguished writer was determined to eat just like any white passenger. On a train out of Chattanooga, Hughes sought dinner, a service the uncomfortable white steward was not inclined to provide. "Say, fellow, are you Puerto Rican?" Hughes was asked. "No, I'm American," he replied. The steward persisted, asking if Hughes was an "American Negro." In a loud voice, Hughes replied, "I'm just hungry," and finally he received a menu and then a meal. In concluding, Hughes tells his black readers to make "sure they eat in the diner." Even if you are not hungry, he observes, it will help establish the right to do so; moreover, it "will be fun to see how you will be received." As the piece makes clear, the battle for racial justice was waged on many fronts (I, 68–70). |
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In addition to many such offerings culled from the white and black press, Reporting Civil Rights contains numerous longer pieces, such as Charlayne Hunter's June 1961 essay recounting her experience as a college student seeking to desegregate the University of Georgia in 1959. Hunter's memorable story, including the description of a Coke bottle and a brick crashing through her dormitory window, is a sobering reminder of the indignities—and perils—blacks confronted in the Jim Crow South. But there is cause for optimism, it seems, as Hunter concludes in a hopeful vein, looking toward a future when blacks will walk the Georgia campus "unnoticed, except for their abilities or the impact of their individual personalities" (I, 597). |
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Either of these volumes would provide a marvelous way for students to encounter the civil rights movement as it developed over the course of more than thirty years. One can readily imagine undergraduates and advanced high school students finding this material extraordinarily interesting. It is readable and dramatic, and the human dimension of racial oppression and the quest to abolish it is embedded in practically every page. Beyond this, the volumes possess a narrative quality as the events unfold month by month, year after year. For those who teach courses in civil rights history, as well as those who treat the subject in the U.S. survey, more engaging primary texts would be difficult to find, either of which will allow students to hear the voices of blacks and whites, activists and observers, who together were players in one of the more ennobling dramas in the history of modern America. |
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| Hunter College of the City University of New York |
Jonathan Rosenberg |
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