Books

New Crisis, The, Jan/Feb 2000 by Mansart, Tom

A number of new and not-so-new books detail the history of the civil rights movement, illuminating some little-known corners that history has passed by Some of these books will entertain and educate you - some will frighten you. None tell you how to keep your man or love your woman. All prepare you to better understand the struggle for democracy, and all remind us that we must each fight it in our own ways.

Aaron Henry: the Fire Ever Burning by Connie Curry, University Press of Mississippi, gives NAACP stalwart Aaron Henry his due at last. Henry ( 1922-'97) was a major grassroots freedom fighter on local, state and national levels. Despite an impressive record as a civil rights activist, he considered himself a small-town druggist; for years he owned and operated the Fourth Street Drug Store in Clarksdale, Mississippi. While Henry was a key figure in bringing Head Start, jobs, housing and health care to his state, he never received the headlines granted some of his contemporaries. He became NAACP State President in 1959 and was able to attract and unite Mississippi blacks across lines of age and circumstance. He was jailed 33 times and his drugstore bombed.

NAACP readers and all interested in learning more about one of the most influential - and most fascinating figures of the 20th century freedom movement - will want to read this book.

Black Workers Remember by Michael Keith Honey from the University of California Press puts working class blacks in proper perspective as major resistors of American apartheid. In chapters on labor organizing, Jim Crow in the workplace, police brutality, union racism and civil rights struggles, Honey asks us to rethink the conventional narrative of civil rights history lead primarily by young people and ministers. Instead we see the freedom struggle as the product of generations, including workers whose resistance help make the movement. Honey also demonstrates the devastating impact globalization has had on black workers and how necessary labor organizing is to fighting poverty

The State of Black America 1999; the Impact of Color Consciousness in the United States from the National Urban League is the league's latest annual report. In chapters on unemployment and wage gaps, black americans and health, education and other topics this small volume demonstrates how pervasive racism is and what a great toll it has taken on black Americans. This is a must-read for anyone who wants facts and figures to argue the case for increased vigilance.

Freedomways Reader, edited by Esther Cooper Jackson with Constance Pohl, from Westview Press, contains a rich collection of articles from this important journal. The Reader is full of forgotten gems - W E. B. DuBois's 1964 `Behold the Land'; Paul Robeson's 1971 `The Battleground is Here'; Pablo Neruda's `Ode To Paul Robeson'; Martin Luther King's 1968 'Honoring Dr. DuBois' Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah's 1961 `Address to the United Nations'; Julius Nyerere's 1970 `Socialism is not Radical' and many many more. Freedomways argued convincingly that the central problem was race, complicated by greed, and that it would take organized mass action to carry the day for freedom. There is sadly no other journal like it today

Grace Elizabeth Hales Making Whiteness; the Culture of Segregation In the South, from Random House, is an indispensable study of the making of the segregationist culture from 1890 to 1940. Hale shows how what DuBois called the `color line' came to define America, and examines the roots of racial mythology and ideology She shows how white Southerners established their identity through a cultural system of violence and imposing physical separation based on skin color, creating a culture of whiteness that was soon adopted by the entire nation, a culture which still shapes the nation today.

Also from Random House are two indispensable readers, edited by Sondra K. Wilson - The Crisis Reader: Stories, Poetry and Essays from the NAACP's Crisis Magazine and The Opportunity Reader: Stories, Poetry and Essays from the Urban League Opportunity Magazine.

Opportunity and Crisis were once the influential and significant journals of black America; in their pages appeared James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Jessie Fauset, Charles Chestnutt, Alain Locke, W E. B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, Charles Johnson, Dorothy West, Nella Larsen - a true who's who of who was who in black America's literary and political circles. These are priceless and belong in every literate person's library.

Shared Dreams: Martin Luther King and the Jewish Community by Rabbi Marc Schneier, from Jewish Lights Publishing, goes beyond the standard story of cooperation between blacks and Jews. Rabbi Schneier tells an unknown story of Martin Luther King's involvement as an advocate supporting the human and civil rights of Jews at critical moments.

Lawrence Hill Books brings us The Fiction of Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka with a forward by Greg Tate. This volume includes a long out-of-print novel and short stories from the man known chiefly for his poetry and dramas, as well as four previously uncollected short stories and an unpublished novel. For Baraka's many fans - this is a new look at one of our most prominent writers.