Back Reporting Civil Rights (boxed set)

Reporting Civil Rights (boxed set)

200 vivid eyewitness accounts that trace the history of the Civil Rights movement from the 1940s to the 1970s More

“If only civil rights were taught this way in our classrooms! Personal narratives, together with gripping newspaper accounts and essays written between 1941 and 1973, make the two-volume Reporting Civil Rights a vital national resource.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents
Contributors

Overview

Interviews “Jim Crow Was a Cash Grab”: Tyina L. Steptoe on the Harrowing History of the American Color Line
July 10, 2024

Story of the Week Kenneth L. Dixon, “Courthouse Square Is Authentic Picture of Occupied Town”
January 16, 2023

Interviews Nicholas Kristof shifts his focus to the crisis at home: “Attention does make a difference”
December 16, 2019

This landmark two-volume anthology chronicles more than thirty tumultuous years in the African American struggle for freedom and equal rights. Here, in brilliant and inspiring dispatches from some of the finest reporters in the history of American journalism, is a panoramic portrait of the fight to overthrow segregation in the United States. Nearly 200 newspaper and magazine reports, book excerpts, and features by 151 writers—David Halberstam, Carl Rowan, Robert Penn Warren, Gordon Parks, Ralph Ellison, and Anne Moody among them—provide vivid firsthand accounts of all the revolutionary events: the rising activism of the 1940s; the Brown decision; the Montgomery bus boycott; Little Rock; the sit-in movement and Freedom Rides; Birmingham, the March on Washington (August 28, 1963), Freedom Summer, and Selma; and the emergence of “Black Power.”

Each volume contains a detailed chronology of the civil rights movement, biographical profiles of the journalists, notes, an index, and thirty-two pages of photographs, many never before published.

The advisory board for Reporting Civil Rights includes Clayborne Carson, senior editor, The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.; David J. Garrow, Presidential Distinguished Professor, Emory University; Bill Kovach, chairman, Committee of Concerned Journalists; and Carol Polsgrove, professor of journalism, Indiana University.

Each Library of America series volume is printed on acid-free paper and features Smyth-sewn binding, a full cloth cover, and a ribbon marker.
News & Views

Interviews “Jim Crow Was a Cash Grab”: Tyina L. Steptoe on the Harrowing History of the American Color Line
July 10, 2024

Story of the Week Kenneth L. Dixon, “Courthouse Square Is Authentic Picture of Occupied Town”
January 16, 2023

Interviews Nicholas Kristof shifts his focus to the crisis at home: “Attention does make a difference”
December 16, 2019

The Moviegoer Freedom Riders: Terror and profundity in eyewitness history of an epochal era
December 13, 2019

Story of the Week George McMillan, “The Ordeal of Bobby Cain”
January 25, 2019
Table of Contents

March on Washington Committee
Call to Negro America: “To March on Washington for Jobs and Equal Participation in National Defense” (May 1941)
Roi Ottley
Negro Morale (November 1941)
Tolly R. Broady
“Will Two Good White Men Vouch for You?” (November 1941)
Bayard Rustin
Non-Violence vs. Jim Crow (July 1942)
L. O. Swingler
Thrown from Train, Attacked (August 1942)
Sterling A. Brown
Out of Their Mouths (November 1942)
Thomas Sancton
The Race Riots (July 1943)
Ralph Ellison
Eyewitness Story of Riot: False Rumors Spurred Mob (August 1943)
Lucille B. Milner
Jim Crow in the Army (February 1944)
Pauli Murray
A Blueprint for First Class Citizenship (1942–1944)
Langston Hughes
Adventures in Dining (June 1945)
Charles H. Loeb
Our G.I.‘s in S. Pacific Fiercely Resent “Uncle Tom” Roles (1945)
Wendell Smith
It Was a Great Day in Jersey (April 1946)
Tom O’Connor
Lynch Law Back in Georgia—4 Murdered (July 1946)
George Mcmillan
Race Justice in Aiken (November 1946)
Jack H. Pollack
Literacy Tests: Southern Style (May 1947)
James Peck
Not So Deep Are the Roots (April–September 1947)
Lillian Smith
When I Was a Child (1949)
George S. Schuyler
Jim Crow in the North (1949)
Ralph Mcgill
Men Who Shame Our State and Flag (August 1949)
Ted Poston
Florida’s Legal Lynching (September 1949)
Homer A. Jack
Cicero Nightmare (July 1951)
Hodding Carter
Mrs. Means Married Woman (1951–1952)
James Poling
Thurgood Marshall and the 14th Amendment (1952)
Carl T. Rowan
from Jim Crow’s Last Stand (November-December 1953)
Robert J. Donovan
Supreme Court, 9–0, Bans Segregation in Schools (May 1954)
Marty Richardson
Charge Two with Lynch Death of 14-Year-Old (September 1955)
Murray Kempton
He Went All the Way (September 1955)
Dan Wakefield
Justice in Sumner (September 1955)
Dan Wakefield
Respectable Racism (October 1955)
Joe Azbell
At Holt Street Baptist Church (December 1955)
William Bradford Huie
The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi (January 1956)
Murray Kempton
“When the Riots Came” (February 1956)
Langston Hughes
A Brickbat for Education—A Kiss for the Bedroom in Dixie (March 1956)
L. D. Reddick
The Bus Boycott in Montgomery (March 1956)
Ted Poston
from The Negroes of Montgomery (June 1956)
Samuel L. Gandy
Tallahassee Spirit: Tired of Being Pushed Around (July 1956)
Robert Penn Warren
Segregation: The Inner Conflict in the South (1956)
Murray Kempton
“If You Got the Guts . . .” (September 1956)
George Mcmillan
The Ordeal of Bobby Cain (September, 1956)
Richard B. Stolley
A Sequel to Segregation (October 1956)
Wilma Dykeman & James Stokely
Montgomery Morning (December 1956)
Ted Poston
Martin Luther King: Where Does He Go from Here? (April 1957)
Harry L. Golden
A Rabbi in Montgomery (May 1957)
Relman Morin
Violence at Central High (September 1957)
James L. Hicks
“We Were Kicked, Beaten” (September 1957)
Anthony Lewis
President Sends Troops to Little Rock, Federalizes Arkansas National Guard; Tells Nation He Acted To Avoid Anarchy (September 1957)
James N. Rhea & Ben H. Bagdikian
from We Went South (October 1957)
Ted Poston
The 19-Day Ordeal of Minnie Jean Brown (February 1958)
Murray Kempton
The Book (May 1958)
Harry L. Golden
How to Solve the Segregation Problem (1956–1958)
David B. Bittan
Ordeal in Levittown (August 1957–August 1958)
John Howard Griffin
from Black Like Me (November 1959)
Albert L. Rozier Jr.
Students Hit Woolworth’s for Lunch Service (February 1960)
Claude Sitton
Negro Sitdowns Stir Fear of Wider Unrest in South (February 1960)
David Halberstam
“A Good City Gone Ugly” (March 1960)
Harrison E. Salisbury
Fear and Hatred Grip Birmingham (April 1960)
Dan Wakefield
Eye of the Storm (May 1960)
James Baldwin
They Can’t Turn Back (May 1960)
Louis E. Lomax
The Negro Revolt Against “The Negro Leaders” (1960)
James Baldwin
Fifth Avenue, Uptown: A Letter from Harlem (1960)
Howard Zinn
Finishing School for Pickets (August 1960)
John Steinbeck
“Ain’t Those Cheerleaders Something” (December 1960)
David Halberstam
“Good Jelly’s” Last Stand (January 1961)
Fred Travis
The Evicted (February 1961)
Julian Mayfield
Challenge to Negro Leadership: The Case of Robert Williams (1959–1961)
Hannah Lees
The Not-Buying Power of Philadelphia’s Negroes (1960–1961)
Stuart H. Loory
Reporter Tails “Freedom” Bus, Caught in Riot (May 1961)
Murray Kempton
Tear Gas and Hymns (May 1961)
Bob Duke
2 Mob Victims Ready to Die for Integration (May 1961)
Charlayne Hunter
A Walk Through a Georgia Corridor (July 1959–June 1961)
Frank Holloway
Travel Notes from a Deep South Tourist (June 1961)
George Collins
Everybody Eats But Americans (August 1961)
Tom Hayden
from Revolution in Mississippi (July–October 1961)
William Kennedy
Dixie’s Race Signs “Gone With the Wind” (December 1961)
Trezzvant Anderson
Over 500 Negro Arrests in Albany (November–December 1961)
Bettye Rice Hughes
A Negro Tourist in Dixie (November 1961–April 1962)
John Herbers
The Reporter in the Deep South (April 1962)
Claude Sitton
Sheriff Harasses Negroes at Voting Rally in Georgia (July 1962)
Murray Kempton
The Hostile Witness (August 1962)
W. F. Minor
Meredith Blocked at Ole Miss (September 1962)
James L. Hicks
On the Mississippi Warfront: Oxford’s a Town All Shook Up (September 1962)
Rick Tuttle
“It Was War—and Marshals Were Losing” (October 1962)
Kenneth L. Dixon
Courthouse Square Is Authentic Picture of Occupied Town (October 1962)
George B. Leonard, T. George Harris, & Christopher S. Wren
How a Secret Deal Prevented a Massacre at Ole Miss (September–October 1962)
Howard Zinn
Kennedy: The Reluctant Emancipator (December 1961–November 1962)
James Baldwin
Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind (1962)
Norman Podhoretz
My Negro Problem—and Ours (February 1963)
Martin Luther King Jr.
Letter from Birmingham Jail (April 1963)
Len Holt
Eyewitness: The Police Terror at Birmingham (May 1963)
Raymond R. Coffey
Waiting in the Rain at the Birmingham Jail (May 1963)
Claude Sitton
Rioting Negroes Routed by Police at Birmingham (May 1963)
Hedrick Smith
9-Block Area Lies Devastated; Buildings Still Burn after Riot (May 1963)
Michael Dorman
from We Shall Overcome (May 1963)
Cliff Mackay
Police Dogs in Ala. Spur N.C. Unrest (May 1963)
Claude Sitton
Alabama Admits Negro Students; Wallace Bows to Federal Force (June 1963)
Claude Sitton
N.A.A.C.P. Leader Slain in Jackson; Protests Mount (June 1963)
Fannie Lou Hamer, Annell Ponder, & June Johnson
from Mississippi Black Paper (June 1963)
Tom Dent
Portrait of Three Heroes (January–June 1963)
Anne Moody
from Coming of Age in Mississippi (September 1962–June 1963)
Reese Cleghorn
Epilogue in Albany: Were the Mass Marches Worthwhile? (July 1963)
George W. Collins
Blazing Guns Mark Freedom Fight: Embattled Defenders Fire from Rooftops (July 1963)
Marlene Nadle
The View from the Front of the Bus (August 1963)
Russell Baker
Capital Is Occupied by a Gentle Army (August 1963)
E. W. Kenworthy
200,000 March for Civil Rights in Orderly Washington Rally; President Sees Gain for Negro (August 1963)
Claude Sitton
Birmingham Bomb Kills 4 Negro Girls in Church; Riots Flare; Boys Slain (September 1963)
James D. Williams
First of 4 Birmingham Bomb Victims Is Buried (September 1963)
Karl Fleming
Birmingham: “My God, You’re Not Even Safe in Church (September 1963)
Ruth & Edward Brecher
The Military’s Limited War Against Segregation (September 1963)
Howard Zinn
The Battle-Scarred Youngsters (August 1962–October 1963)
Murray Kempton
Gloria, Gloria (November 1963)
Michael Thelwell
The August 28th March on Washington (May–November 1963)
Hunter S. Thompson
A Southern City with Northern Problems (1963)
Marc Crawford
The Ominous Malcolm X Exits from the Muslims (March 1964)
Jerry Demuth
Tired of Being Sick and Tired (May 1964)
John Herbers
Martin Luther King and 17 Others Jailed Trying To Integrate St.Augustine Restaurant (May 1964)
Peter De Lissovoy
Gambler’s Choice in Georgia (June 1964)
Claude Sitton
3 in Rights Drive Reported Missing (June 1964)
Snow James
“Seeing St. Aug.” Proves Exciting (June 1964)
Martin Mayer
The Lone Wolf of Civil Rights (July 1964)
Lez Edmond
Harlem Diary (July 1964)
William Bradford Huie
from Three Lives for Mississippi (June–August 1964)
Nan Robertson
Mississippian Relates Struggle of Negro in Voter Registration (August 1964)
Charles M. Sherrod
Mississippi at Atlantic City (August 1964)
Jeremiah S. Gutman
Oktibbeha County, Mississippi (August 1965)
Christopher S. Wren
Personal Terror in Mississippi (September 1964)
John Hersey
A Life for a Vote (April 1963–-September 1964)
Alice Lake
Last Summer in Mississippi (June–October 1964)
Michael Durham
Ollie McClung’s Big Decision (October 1964)
Louis E. Lomax
Georgia Boy Goes Home (November 1964)
Peter De Lissovoy
“This Little Light . . . “ (July–November 1964)
David Nevin
A Strange, Tight Little Town, Loath to Admit Complicity (December 1964)
James Farmer
from A Southern Tale (1963–1965)
Marlene Nadle
Malcolm X: The Complexity of a Man in the Jungle (February 1965)
Peter Kihss
Malcolm X Shot to Death at Rally Here (February 1965)
Gordon Parks
“I Was a Zombie Then—Like All Muslims, I Was Hypnotized” (February 1965)
Roy Reed
Alabama Police Use Gas and Clubs to Rout Negroes (March 1965)
George B. Leonard
Midnight Plane to Alabama (March 1965)
Andrew Kopkind
Selma: “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round” (March 1965)
Tom Wicker
Johnson Urges Congress at Joint Session To Pass Law Insuring Negro Vote (March 1965)
Paul Good
“. . . It Was Worth the Boy’s Dying” (March 1965)
Elizabeth Hardwick
Selma, Alabama: The Charms of Goodness (March 1965)
Jimmy Breslin
Changing the South (March 1965)
Renata Adler
Letter from Selma (March 1965)
John Beecher
McComb, Mississippi (May 1965)
Haynes Johnson
Selma Revisited: 4 Months After Their ‘Finest Hour’ Rights Forces Are in Disarray (July 1965)
Art Berman
Eight Men Slain; Guard Moves In (August 1965)
Robert Richardson
Burn, Baby, Burn! (August 1965)
Jerry Farber
“August, 1965” (August 1965)
Hamilton Bims
Deacons for Defense (September 1965)
Robert Coles
Bussing in Boston (1964–1965)
August Meier
On the Role of Martin Luther King (1965)
Calvin C. Hernton
And You, Too, Sidney Poitier! (1966)
Mike Thelwell
Fish Are Jumping an’ the Cotton Is High: Notes from the Mississippi Delta (1965–1966)
Jack Nelson
2 Veteran Rights Leaders Ousted by SNCC (May 1966)
Paul Good
The Meredith March (June–July 1966)
Robert Analavage
Which Way in Grenada? (August 1966)
James H. Meredith
Big Changes Are Coming (June–August 1966)
Robert E. Anderson Jr.
Welfare in Mississippi: “Tradition” vs. Title (February 1967)
Bob Fletcher
We’re Gonna Rule (May 1967)
Gordon Parks
Whip of Black Power (May 1967)
David Halberstam
The Second Coming of Martin Luther (April–May 1967)
George Barner
We Ain’t Taking No More (July 1967)
Dale Wittner
The Killing of Billy Furr, Caught in the Act of Looting Beer (July 1967)
Sandra A. West
Riot!—A Negro Resident’s Story (Detroit, July 1967)
Carol Schmidt
The White Community Asks Repeatedly, “Why?” (July 1967)
Jimmy Breslin
Breslin on Riot: Death Laughter, but No Sanity (July 1967)
Jon Lowell
Guerilla War Rips 12th (July 1967)
Bob Clark
Nightmare Journey (July 1967)
Sol Stern
The Call of the Black Panthers (August 1967)
Calvin Trillin
U.S. Letter: Cleveland (October 1967)
Earl Caldwell
Martin Luther King Is Slain in Memphis (April 1968)
Garry Wills
Martin Luther King Is Still on the Case! (April 1968)
Joan Didion
Black Panther (May 1968)
Paul Good
“No Man Can Fill Dr. King’s Shoes”—But Abernathy Tries (May 1968)
Gilbert Moore
from A Special Rage (June 1968)
Pat Watters
“Keep on A-walking, Children” (April–June 1968)
Steve Van Evera
Marks After the Campaign (August 1968)
Bob Labaree
Fairfield Never Had a Negro Official—Until Last Month, When It Elected Six (September 1968)
C. Gerald Fraser
S.N.C.C. in Decline After 8 Years in Lead (October 1968)
Richard Levine
Jesse Jackson: Heir to Dr. King? (December 1968)
Tom Wolfe
from Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (1968–1969)
Willie Morris
from Yazoo: Integration in a Deep-Southern Town (October 1969–January 1970)
Richard J. Margolis
The Two Nations at Wesleyan University (January 1970)
Karl Fleming
The South Revisited After a Momentous Decade (August 1970)
Nora Sayre
The Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention (September–November 1970)
Marshall Frady
Discovering One Another in a Georgia Town (November 1970–February 1971)
Alice Walker
Staying Home in Mississippi (August 1973)
Contributors

Renata Adler
Robert Analavage
Robert E. Anderson Jr.
Trezzvant Anderson
Joe Azbell
Ben H. Bagdikian
Russell Baker
James Baldwin
George Barner
John Beecher
Art Berman
Hamilton Bims
David B. Bittan
Tolly R. Broady
Edward Brecher
Ruth Brecher
Jimmy Breslin
Sterling A. Brown
Earl Caldwell
Hodding Carter
Bob Clark
Reese Cleghorn
Raymond R. Coffey
Robert Coles
George Collins
Marc Crawford
Tom Dent
Peter de Lissavoy
Jerry DeMuth
Joan Didion
Kenneth L. Dixon
Robert J. Donovan
Michael Dorman
Bob Duke
Michael Durham
Wilma Dykeman
Lez Edmond
Ralph Ellison
Jerry Farber
James Farmer
Elizabeth Head Fetter
Karl Fleming
Bob Flethcher
Marshall Frady
C. Gerald Fraser
Samuel L. Gandy
Harry L. Golden
Paul Good
Jeremiah S. Goodman
John Howard Griffin
David Halberstam
Fannie Lou Hamer
Elizabeth Hardwick
T. George Harris
Tom Hayden
John Herbers
Calvin C. Hernton
John Hersey
James L. Hicks
Frank Holloway
Len Holt
Bettye Rice Hughes
Langston Hughes
William Bradford Huie
Charlayne Hunter
Homer A. Jack
Snow James
Haynes Johnson
June E. Johnson
Murray Kempton
Stetson Kennedy
William Kennedy
E. W. Kenworthy
Peter Kihss
Martin Luther King Jr.
Andrew Kopkind
Bob Labaree
Alice Lake
Hannah Lees
George B. Leonard
Richard Levine
Anthony Lewis
Charles H. Loeb
Louis E. Lomax
Stuart H. Loory
Jon Lowell
Julian Mayfield
Cliff MacKay
Richard J. Margolis
Martin Mayer
Ralph McGill
George McMillan
August Meier
James H. Meredith
Lucille B. Milner
W.F. Minor
Anne Moody
Gilbert Moore
Relman Morin
Willie Morris
Pauli Murray
Marlene Nadle
David Nevin
Tom O’Connor
Roi Ottley
Gordon Parks
James Peck
Norman Podhoretz
James Poling
Jack H. Pollack
Annell Ponder
Ted Poston
Roy Reed
L. D. Reddick
James N. Rhea
Marty Richardson
Robert Richardson
Nan Robertson
Carl T. Rowan
Albert L. Rozier Jr.
Bayard Rustin
Harrison E. Salisbury
Thomas Sancton
Nora Sayre
Carol Schmidt
George B. Schuyler
Charles M. Sherrod
Claude Sitton
Hedrick Smith
Lillian Smith
Wendell Smith
John Steinbeck
Sol Stern
James Stokely
Richard B. Stolley
L. O. Swingler
Ekwueme Michael Thelwell
Hunter S. Thompson
Fred Travis
Calvin Trillin
Rick Tuttle
Steve Van Evera
Dan Wakefield
Alice Walker
Robert Penn Warren
Pa Watters
Sandra A. West
James D. Williams
Garry Willis
Dale Wittner
Tom Wicker
Christopher S. Wren
Tom Wolfe
Howard Zinn

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