Books: The Race Beat
The Race Beat: The Press, The Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation by Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff (Knopf, 2006). Steven Ivory did a Black History Month Pop Quiz for the last NPR story for the event yesterday. The key question is a trick question that should be an obvious one. It's sad that it isn't. I confess that, while I know my Booker T. Washington from my George Washington Carver and have strong feelings about Frederick Douglass, I too was stumped by "Who is Carter G. Woodson?" outside of some nebulous connection to the Lauryn Hill solo project "The Mis-education of Lauryn Hill". I should bow my head in shame.
The truth is we need more history in our lives and more Black history in particular. The Race Beat provides an excellent breakdown of the civil rights struggle and the significance of journalism, television news, and general media coverage to the time. It gave me a new hero, L. Alex Wilson, one of many casualties to the time. In the context of the last few weeks I've had, burying my grandfather, being back in Omaha with 5 generations of my family, hearing the stories they tell today, remembering the stories I've been told, it was a reminder that for many Americans, this time is still fresh in their minds even though we have a tendency to think of it as long ago.
My mother was born 7 years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The year she was born, most of the South was still segregated and still fighting tooth and nail to keep it that way. My grandparents had lived nearly a third of their lives in a world where what they could do, who they could be, and where they could go was severely limited. The prevailing notion of the American White Southerner was that Blacks were, obviously, an inferior race. The prevailing notion of the American White Northerner was that Blacks weren't inferior, necessarily, but we sure don't want them moving next door. In fact, as the newspapers of the time before the movement points out, Northern papers didn't write about the negro, mostly because they rarely saw them while Southern papers didn't write about the negro because editors didn't find them important. The Negro Press was the only place to get Black news.
What's amazing about The Race Beat is how it re-creates the world in which these well known stories live in. After reading, I understand the black and white images that shocked us in elementary school history class and how amazing and direction changing they were for the time. You truly get the power of Martin Luther King, the amazing significance of Brown v. Board, and all the big and little stories during that era. You understand the threats, the pressure, the danger, the uniqueness of the moment, the effect of television and the growth of all new ways to write and report news, to change your world, and to make a difference.
I read, often with my mouth agape, marveling at what is, truly, even more than the Civil War, the most incredible time in our country's brief history.
Read it, people. Like yesterday.
The truth is we need more history in our lives and more Black history in particular. The Race Beat provides an excellent breakdown of the civil rights struggle and the significance of journalism, television news, and general media coverage to the time. It gave me a new hero, L. Alex Wilson, one of many casualties to the time. In the context of the last few weeks I've had, burying my grandfather, being back in Omaha with 5 generations of my family, hearing the stories they tell today, remembering the stories I've been told, it was a reminder that for many Americans, this time is still fresh in their minds even though we have a tendency to think of it as long ago.
My mother was born 7 years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The year she was born, most of the South was still segregated and still fighting tooth and nail to keep it that way. My grandparents had lived nearly a third of their lives in a world where what they could do, who they could be, and where they could go was severely limited. The prevailing notion of the American White Southerner was that Blacks were, obviously, an inferior race. The prevailing notion of the American White Northerner was that Blacks weren't inferior, necessarily, but we sure don't want them moving next door. In fact, as the newspapers of the time before the movement points out, Northern papers didn't write about the negro, mostly because they rarely saw them while Southern papers didn't write about the negro because editors didn't find them important. The Negro Press was the only place to get Black news.
What's amazing about The Race Beat is how it re-creates the world in which these well known stories live in. After reading, I understand the black and white images that shocked us in elementary school history class and how amazing and direction changing they were for the time. You truly get the power of Martin Luther King, the amazing significance of Brown v. Board, and all the big and little stories during that era. You understand the threats, the pressure, the danger, the uniqueness of the moment, the effect of television and the growth of all new ways to write and report news, to change your world, and to make a difference.
I read, often with my mouth agape, marveling at what is, truly, even more than the Civil War, the most incredible time in our country's brief history.
Read it, people. Like yesterday.
Comments
Go read the book anyway.