God's Long Summer

Amazon.com

Charles Marsh thinks historians who argue the civil rights movement was about rights have made a big mistake. In God's Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights, he takes a different stance. He says the civil rights movement was about God. Marsh defends this controversial thesis with five profiles of civil rights leaders (ranging from cotton fieldworker and political activist Fannie Lou Hamer to the Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi, Sam Bowers), each of whom understood their work in fundamentally theological terms. Marsh's fluid, engaging prose aims to persuade readers that the ongoing fight for civil rights is best understood in spiritual terms and to arm believers with a clear understanding of the ultimate stakes of this country's continuing struggle with racism. --Michael Joseph Gross

Book Description

In the summer of 1964, the turmoil of the civil rights movement reached its peak in Mississippi, with activists across the political spectrum claiming that God was on their side in the struggle over racial justice. This was the summer when violence against blacks increased at an alarming rate and when the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi resulted in national media attention. Charles Marsh takes us back to this place and time, when the lives of activists on all sides of the civil rights issue converged and their images of God clashed. He weaves their voices into a gripping narrative: a Ku Klux Klansman, for example, borrows fiery language from the Bible to link attacks on blacks to his "priestly calling"; a middle-aged woman describes how the Gospel inspired her to rally other African Americans to fight peacefully for their dignity; a SNCC worker tells of harrowing encounters with angry white mobs and his pilgrimage toward a new racial spirituality called Black Power. Through these emotionally charged stories, Marsh invites us to consider the civil rights movement anew, in terms of religion as a powerful yet protean force driving social action.

The book's central figures are Fannie Lou Hamer, who "worked for Jesus" in civil rights activism; Sam Bowers, the Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi; William Douglas Hudgins, an influential white Baptist pastor and unofficial theologian of the "closed society"; Ed King, a white Methodist minister and Mississippi native who campaigned to integrate Protestant congregations; and Cleveland Sellers, a SNCC staff member turned black militant.

Marsh focuses on the events and religious convictions that led each person into the political upheaval of 1964. He presents an unforgettable American social landscape, one that is by turns shameful and inspiring. In conclusion, Marsh suggests that it may be possible to sift among these narratives and lay the groundwork for a new thinking about racial reconciliation and the beloved community. He maintains that the person who embraces faith's life-affirming energies will leave behind a most powerful legacy of social activism and compassion.

Customer Reviews:

Religion, religion, religion!.......2005-05-06

There's a lot of in-bickering within the intellectual community as to the primary motivation for any particular event. People who have majored in political science will argue that politics is always the key. People who have majored in sociology will argue that it's social change that's the key. People, like myself, who have majored in religion will always seem to find that religion is the key.

Perhaps that's why I like this book so much.

Marsh undertakes an exhaustive study of various figures in the struggle for (and against) Civil Rights. Perhaps my favorite chapter is actually the one about the Grand Imperial Wizard of the White Knights in Mississippi, Sam Bowers. It's rare to see much study devoted to the opposition and I value the effort that Marsh has put into it. Furthermore, the man is note-crazed. He has upwards of 100 footnotes for each chapter, all indexed in the back with killing accuracy. If nothing else, the bibliography he employed is fantastic enough to warrant buying the book.

I can understand, though, how people who are not students of religion would be turned off by this work. He argues the point until he's blue in the face, leaving the reader possibly a bit shocked and overwhelmed. Reading this, you're guaranteed to learn more about Bible doctrine and faith-based initiative than you perhaps ever really wanted to know. I love it, but I can certainly understand how others may not.

I strongly suggest this book for students of religion and students of Civil Rights history. I also recommend it for those who wonder "what the other side thinks" if they are curious about how religious scholars attribute everything to faith. It's a really great book and I love Marsh's clean and thorough style of writing. It's uncluttered and his organization is brilliant.

"Faith" and civil rights in Mississippi........2003-03-26

Highly recommended account of the role of "faith" in the lives of five prominent figures in Mississippi during the civil rights movement. Saints (Fannie Lou Hamer, Edwin King, Cleveland Sellers) and sinners (Sam Bowers and Douglas Hudgins) are both represented. Hudgins and other Jackson elites come off nearly as loathsome as Bowers. Marsh's prose is brilliant, providing for a lively and inspiring read.

A College Student's review.......2001-04-19

God's Long Summer covers a very exciting and troubled time in American History. The various points of view Marsh used to complete this book is the key to understanding this time period. However, the unnecessary abundance of religious references and the slow pace of the book make it almost unreadable. It is heartbreaking to read through one uninteresting point of view, to discover the next chapter is just as dull.

Where was God during the Civil Rights Movement?.......1999-04-15

Marsh's book is a truly poignant view of real Southern people during the civil rights movement. He is able to capture each of the five individual's quite different understandings of God and His actual place in their lives during this time of great struggle. Marsh takes you on a journey of different Christian imaginations as he examines the beliefs of an outstanding woman fighting for her rights as a black woman, an ex-headmaster of the Ku Klux Klan, a black militant leader, a middle-of-the-road preacher, and a white minister who managed to "cross-over" racial lines and fight for freedom. These are wonderful and heartfelt stories being presented by Marsh, and must be read by anyone who has lived through the time of the civil rights movement.

A vivid and perceptive evocation of an age.......1998-08-12

Marsh clearly has his saints and his villains, but anyone with a scintilla of compassion who lived through the age would be hard-pressed to disagree with his judgments. He brings his subjects to life and dissects their Christianity (or their perversion of it). When you finish the book you will be all the happier for the vindication of Fannie Lou Hamer and all the more repulsed by the enduring power of cowardly and hypocritical clergymen.

Book Description

John Henry swims better than anyone I know.
He crawls like a catfish,
blows bubbles like a swamp monster,
but he doesn't swim in the town pool with me.
He's not allowed.

Joe and John Henry are a lot alike. They both like shooting marbles, they both want to be firemen, and they both love to swim. But there's one important way they're different: Joe is white and John Henry is black, and in the South in 1964, that means John Henry isn't allowed to do everything his best friend is. Then a law is passed that forbids segregation and opens the town pool to everyone. Joe and John Henry are so excited they race each other there...only to discover that it takes more than a new law to change people's hearts.

Customer Reviews:

Young Heroes.......2006-03-16

An emotionally charged story for all readers, Freedom Summer is not a book to soon be forgotten. While its focus is on segregation, students of the current time can relate it to issues of bullying and prejudice. The painted pictures match the text and convey deep emotion through the use of color and texture. While the text is criticized for being overly contrived and romanticized in places, it often matches the message and mood of the pages. As a story for younger readers, it conveys a depth of emotion during a difficult time in history without overwhelming the reader with facts and information.

Freedom Summer.......2006-02-24

The story is told with a variety of colorful expressions and analogies. Illustrations are simply beautiful. The story was one that touched my heart and flooded me with memories of my own childhood, when this could have been my own town. I immediately shared the book with my own 9-year old granddaughter. Wonderful, powerful!!

Beautiful Book.......2005-11-24

This book won the Coretta Scott King award and the Ezra Jack Keats Book award. It is easy to understand why. Gorgeous illustrations belong in a museum; what appears to be oil or acrylic is rendered in a naturalistic, painterly style.

At the beginning of the book there is a historical note on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forms the basis for the action in the story. Two boys, one white and one black, are best friends in the deep South. They enjoy playing together in the summer in the river and on the fields. The black child's mother works as a domestic for the white child's family.

The summer of 1964 brings changes that some white people resent. The Act makes it illegal to bar blacks from businesses, public pools, and other places where they had been unable to go freely. Initially the boys were elated because that meant they could both swim in the public pool. But the pool is being filled in with asphalt when they arrive.

The level of hatred towards African Americans is palpable when reading Freedom Summer. It succeeds on all levels; a beautiful, educational, moving book. White attitudes are depicted honestly, but there are also open-minded whites who help the Civil Rights Act succeed. At the end of the story the two boys are entering a store together to buy ice pops. The reader is left rooting for them.

Freedom Summer.......2005-07-09

Have you ever felt bad because of how people treat you because of your color? Well if you have, you can make a connection with this book "Freedom Summer". "Freedom Summer" is about how two friends, no matter what people say, they continue being friends. That's how people treat one of them just because of his color black. If you want to know more about the book "Freedom Summer" just read it.

Freedom From Racism.......2005-06-22

Mr. Truman's Fifth Grade Class

Mostly life takes you places, yet sometimes it takes you down. John Henry and Joe cannot go swimming in the public pool because of the segregation law. John Henry couldn't go into the store either.Friendship cannot separate the two of them and when the law changes, Joe and John Henry go into the store together.

Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914?

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2/3 of the story
Well written, but with a flawed premise.
Be careful what war you wish for, you might get it
Excellent narration
An illuminating look at the causes of World War I

Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914?
David Fromkin
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

World War I | Military | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 037572575X
Release Date: 2005-03-08

Book Description

When war broke out in Europe in 1914, it surprised a European population enjoying the most beautiful summer in memory. For nearly a century since, historians have debated the causes of the war. Some have cited the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand; others have concluded it was unavoidable.

In Europe’s Last Summer, David Fromkin provides a different answer: hostilities were commenced deliberately. In a riveting re-creation of the run-up to war, Fromkin shows how German generals, seeing war as inevitable, manipulated events to precipitate a conflict waged on their own terms. Moving deftly between diplomats, generals, and rulers across Europe, he makes the complex diplomatic negotiations accessible and immediate. Examining the actions of individuals amid larger historical forces, this is a gripping historical narrative and a dramatic reassessment of a key moment in the twentieth-century.

Customer Reviews:

2/3 of the story.......2007-10-12

All major actors are discussed properly here except the Russians.

David Fromkin towards the end does state it is one interesting what-if would be what if Russia did not get involved. He provides little information why they did? But he provides no answer why.

By 1914 the Slavic idea was, a little bit worn out issue in Russia plus Russia was then recovering from a major war with Japan and the 1905 revolution. It was not prepared economically or ideologically for a major war.

The Austria Hungry conflict with Serbia was to Russia an issue of little importance. Surely any competent diplomat would have told Russia that German could not stand back if Russia did successfully fight Austria. Any such conflict was likely to become a major conflict.

So I am left after reading the book wondering why the Russians got involved in a conflict between Serbia and Austria!

Well written, but with a flawed premise. .......2007-04-29

The author has written a book that flows nicely and is very fascinating to read. Characters smoothly enter the narrative and with a little knowledge of the War, it's a book that can be absorbing.

However, the premise that a single individual was to be blamed for the First World War is a terribly flawed premise. This is not an Agatha Christie novel; there is no smoking gun. To say that a single German general was to be blamed for the First World War is fairly ridiculous. von Moltke's fears of the future Russian steamroller or the re-arming of the French and their obsessive need for revanche were understandable in his milieu, but he hardly had a red button which pushed would blow up pre-War Europe.

I also found this book a bit redundant. German war guilt has been pronounced since the first declaration of war in the Russian Foreign Office by Sasonov, the Russian foreign minister. Saying that the Germans of 1914 are to be blamed for starting the First World War is hardly original. However true it might be (and I personally would give the Austro-Hungarians no small measure of blame also), it's terribly redundant as another reviewer mentioned.

Overall it's a good read, but with a flawed premise. It's still enjoyable enough to read to get another angle on the origins of the War.

Be careful what war you wish for, you might get it.......2007-04-01

World War I (The Great War) was an explosion just waiting to happen. The head of the German Army (Moltke the Younger) knew that in a few years that the Russians would become to industrialized to ever be beat on the battle- field. Once they could produce weapons to go with their almost limitless population, Germany would become a hostage to their intrigues. France could be beat, but not with the Russians at their back; so they needed the Austrians to protect their flank when they went after the French. The Austrians only cared about the Balkans, and saw themselves in competition to prevent Serbia from uniting the peninsula against them.

European Wars had been prevented in 1905, 1912 and 1913, but at some point it was all going to blow up. Sarajevo was just the reason, not the cause that let everything fall into place. The three monarchies (Germany, Austro-Hungary and Russia) had week minded kings who couldn't decide what they wanted or who they wanted to do it against. Kaiser Wilhelm was a pretender (much like Mussolini) who loved to play the soldier but wasn't very good at it. Tsar Nicholas was a man born without a spine and with little training to be an autocrat. Emperor/King Franz Joseph, was in his eighties (and his dotage) and only feared that his multi-national empire would break apart before he died.

Even at the point of attack, the Germans might have been able to salvage their situation and beat the French and then use their army to destroy the Russians had they been able to keep out the English. By attacking through Belgium and Luxemburg they forced the hand of Asquith and brought in not just the English, but the whole British Empire. Even then, they almost made do and only lost the war because they lost their nerve and turned at the Marne River in front of Paris instead of going around.

So in the end who was to blame, well the Austrians for not sticking to their guns and just going after the Serbs as soon as possible (thereby letting the French and Russians mobilize) and the German General Staff who felt they had to go after the French and Russians before they became to powerful.

In the end, they ended up destroying four empires (including the Ottoman Empire) causing a hot war that lasted until 1945, a cold war until 1989 and set-up the mess that exist in the Middle East today.

Excellent narration.......2007-01-18

As in all other books I have read by Prof. Fromkin, I find his narration style quite exquisite. This is a very readable popular history book, excellent for beginners on the topic. As pointed out by another reviewer, I ran into some excessive repetitions too but did not find them that irritating. I felt that some more information on seemingly secondary events (such as the Balkan wars, state of the Ottomans, etc) could have been included.

The book is not the result of a special research or new findings by the author; it is a narration of events that gave way to WWI as told, reported and recorded by historians and researchers. There is no asserted thesis or a claim and that is how a book of this type should be. It is a beautiful narrative with some questions and opinions by the author inserted here and there.

An illuminating look at the causes of World War I.......2006-09-04

Europe's Last Summer offers a revealing look at the myriad causes of World War I, particularly for those of us whose high school history textbooks taught that it was brought about simply by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Not only does Fromkin lay out the case that the murder was merely a convenient pretext for a war that Austria-Hungary was already planning, but also that this otherwise local conflict was then twisted by Germany to become the catalyst for a European war that she believed to be both inevitable and necessary.

While the table of contents officially lists eight parts, I think the book is more neatly divided into two. In the first section Fromkin presents a broad overview of European history in the years leading up to the war. The background information helps explain why Austria-Hungary and Germany desired war and how the various European alliances were formed. In the second section Fromkin analyzes the so-called "July crisis", the thirty-seven day period between the assassination and the outbreak of war. While this conflict may have been inevitable, a remarkable series of events had to occur for it to begin in 1914. Fromkin does an excellent job of explaining how, seemingly against all odds, it happened.

As other reviewers have noted, the book can feel redundant at times. And for those already well-versed in World War I history, Europe's Last Summer is unlikely to offer any groundbreaking new information. However, as someone generally interested in history I found the book perfectly readable and highly informative.

Average customer rating:

Spectacular

Freedom Summer
Doug McAdam
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0195064720

Book Description

In June 1964, over one thousand volunteers--most of them white, northern college students--arrived in Mississippi to register black voters and staff "freedom schools" as part of the Freedom Summer campaign organized by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Within ten days, three of them were murdered; by the summer's end, another had died and hundreds more had endured bombings, beatings, and arrests. Less dramatically, but no less significantly, the volunteers encountered a "liberating" exposure to new lifestyles, new political ideologies, and a radically new perspective on America and on themselves. Films such as Mississippi Burning have attempted to document this episode in the civil rights era, but Doug McAdam offers the first book to gauge the impact of Freedom Summer on the project volunteers and the period we now call "the turbulent sixties." Tracking down hundreds of the original project applicants, and combining hard data with a wealth of personal recollections, he has produced a riveting portrait of the people, the events, and the era. McAdam discovered that during Freedom Summer, the volunteers' encounters with white supremacist violence and their experiences with interracial relationships, communal living, and a more open sexuality led many of them to "climb aboard a political and cultural wave just as it was forming and beginning to wash forward." Many became activists in subsequent protests--including the antiwar movement and the feminist movement--and, most significantly, many of them have remained activists to this day. Brimming with the reminiscences of the Freedom Summer veterans, the book captures the varied motives that compelled them to make the journey south, the terror that came with the explosions of violence, the camaraderie and conflicts they experienced among themselves, and their assorted feelings about the lessons they learned.

Customer Reviews:

Spectacular.......2005-08-29

This book should be required reading for any of us crusty old lefties. A nice reminder (along with Martin Luther King Jr's "Why We Can't Wait") that sometimes with enough strength and drive, we can make the impossible possible. A great recounting, not only of the civil rights movement, but also the emerging New Left philosophy. Rich and detailed to earn a place as a university textbook, but still as plainspoken and accessible as to be read by anyone.

Highly recommended.

A Case of Black and White: Northern Volunteers and the Southern Freedom Summers, 1964-1965 (Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies)

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A Case of Black and White: Northern Volunteers and the Southern Freedom Summers, 1964-1965 (Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies)
Mary Aickin Rothschild
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Civil Rights & Liberties | Current Events | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941-1965 (Blacks in the Diaspora)

ASIN: 0313234302

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Thoughts of Home

Manufacturer: Black Mountain Quilts
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000AQMRYG

The Allies of Humanity: Book Two, Human Unity, Freedom & The Hidden Reality of Contact

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Perspectives From Beyond
Wake Up!!!
Why are they really here?

The Allies of Humanity: Book Two, Human Unity, Freedom & The Hidden Reality of Contact
Marshall Vian Summers
Manufacturer: New Knowledge Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | New Age | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

UFOs | Occult | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

UFOs | Astronomy | Science | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1884238351

Customer Reviews:

Perspectives From Beyond .......2005-05-05

Anybody who has sifted through the cornucopia of books that attempt to shed light on UFOs and the ETs who pilot them knows one thing for certain. There is loads of confusion and nothing close to a consensus viewpoint on why the ETs are here and what they want. This is a breakthrough book, recieved by Marshall Summers as a series of briefings from a group of benign ETs who have observed Earth from a secure location within our solar system. The Allies have endured attempted subjugation by the same "Collectives" of resource explorers who are now abducting, studying and interbreeding with hundreds of thousands of men and women around the globe. Simply put, the human race is being discovered by a race of ETs who are very self interested and very skilled in the art of persuasion in the "mental environment." For humanity there is no hiding and no turning back. The ET presence is growing day by day, week by week. and it must be met with sobriety and no illusions. The time has come to establish human sovereigny. This book will reveal to you why this is so.

Wake Up!!!.......2005-04-22

Wake up!!!

The book Allies of Humanity tells us that while we continue to ponder whether we are alone in the universe, speculators from several cultures in the Greater Community are on earth considering how to exploit our planet and it resources--including humanity--for their own purposes. Our ignorance is their greatest advantage over us.

An empowering Teaching has been provided to us, facilitated by the work of author Marshall Vian Summers. The Teaching unfolded in his books reveals Knowledge to the reader. In the books Allies of Humanity Volumes 1 and 2, Wisdom From the Greater Community Volumes 1 and 2, Greater Community Spirituality, and Steps to Knowledge, we are given information that we need to grow into the stature that is required of us as individuals, and as a race.

This Teaching is ancient; its truths are universal. When the need arises, as it has in our time, Teachers of Wisdom in the Greater Community adapt the methodology of teaching to the world where it is needed.

Knowledge as it is known, and Wisdom as it is practiced by the mature races in the Greater Community, are our first best defenses against the persuasion, and the pacification program, of the opportunistic speculators who want our world.

You are called to receive this gift that will mature our race. You who want to make a real and lasting contribution to Life, here it is. Here is the flame; light your torch and prepare yourself; there is Work for us to do.

Why are they really here?.......2005-03-20

Most people acknowledge the existence of UFOs, and therefore of an extraterrestrial presence in our airspace. Many believe that humans have been abducted, examined and forced to take part in unexplained medical experiments. Many also speak of "space brothers" and of ET visitors who are here to save us and our planet from war, poverty and ecological disaster. Why are they really here?

If one accepts the premise that there is other intelligent life in the universe, one must ask why these entities would expend tremendous effort, energy and equipment to reach our earth. If we look at our own history as an example, and we ask why humans have expended effort, energy and equipment to visit new worlds, what do we learn? Did Columbus come to the Americas to share his peaceloving spirituality, or his knowledge of technology? Did Cortez bring peace and prosperity to the Aztecs? On a more modern note, does Wal-Mart bring economic security to communities and small businesses?

What has always been the fuel behind expansion and exploration? Unfortunately, it is usually the strong seeking to exploit the weak - for their land, their water, their oil, their workforce. Why would ET be any different? Do we think greed, empire-building and power-seeking are strictly human traits?

But there must be good ETs up there, too, you say. Yes, just as there are good humans. Are the good humans the ones who exploited Africa for gold and diamonds, America for land, wildlife and other vast resources, Iraq for oil? The wise and the spiritually advanced do not violate other people's sovereign rights by visiting their lands with no invitation, by kidnapping their citizens or by stealing their resources. But they say they are here to help, you argue. Of course they do. Do you think they will tell you they are here to help themselves?

This book is a wake up call for every human on earth. Columbus is coming back, and this time we're the Indians. Read the book. Learn what we can do to help people realize our earth is a gift, and that we must protect her from those who would take her from us.

I Am a Man!: Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement

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Black masculinity is a political force

I Am a Man!: Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement
Steve Estes
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0807855936
Release Date: 2005-02-16

Book Description

The civil rights movement was first and foremost a struggle for racial equality, but questions of gender lay deeply embedded within this struggle. Steve Estes explores key groups, leaders, and events in the movement to understand how activists used race and manhood to articulate their visions of what American society should be.

Estes demonstrates that, at crucial turning points in the movement, both segregationists and civil rights activists harnessed masculinist rhetoric, tapping into implicit assumptions about race, gender, and sexuality. Estes begins with an analysis of the role of black men in World War II and then examines the segregationists, who demonized black male sexuality and galvanized white men behind the ideal of southern honor. Later, he explores the militant new models of manhood espoused by civil rights activists and groups such as Malcolm X, the Nation of Islam, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Black Panther Party.

Reliance on masculinist organizing strategies had both positive and negative consequences, Estes concludes. Tracing these strategies from the integration of the U.S. military in the 1940s through the Million Man March in the 1990s, he shows that masculinism rallied men to action but left unchallenged many of the patriarchal assumptions that underlay American society.

Customer Reviews:

Black masculinity is a political force.......2005-09-09

Borrowing from a research model pioneered by feminist scholars,
Steve Estes examines the history of African American men in a racialized-gendered context to argue that black men's masculinity was at stake throughout these struggles.

The assistant professor of history at Sonoma State College produces an interesting and readable account of state politics. Examining the politics of representing black men's bodies, he argues that appearance can and does effectively influence civil rights.

From the days of slavery to the civil rights movement, black men being too assertive in the public sphere was a breach of the 'social order' established by racist white society.

Even people who were allegedly on their side (white abolitionists) depicted black men as 'begging' for their freedom, inferring dependence and weakness--decidedly 'unmasculine' traits.

Alternately, black men's sexuality was portrayed as a threat to the established order. A black man who had any degree of contact with a white woman in any context risked being perceived as the 'rapist' an ultra-masculine stereotype. Ironically, the white individuals and their organized hate groups claimed to only be protecting white women with the subsequent lynching being through `white masculinity's' obligation to `protect' the women of `our community'.

Because it was safer for black men during those times, they consequently adopted a position of subservience to the 'larger world'. Black women took an active lead in the earliest civil rights movements out of practicality.

Whether they had all of the theories our society now has access to, the Black Panthers also articulated a critique of black masculinity and political legitimacy. Sharply contrasting against the buffoonish 'Jim Crow' their ideal black man was an articulate, proactive, solider fighting on behalf of himself, his community, and his people.

Estes is passionate about his work and makes a generally convincing case for his thesis. I am curious that his manuscript did not include a more extensive examination of the Black Pather's articulated desire to build (then-unprecedented) alliances with homosexuals and women. There's some information about each group in this book, but nothing about this earliest coalition building attempt and nothing how that action had challenged heterosexism within the Black Panthers, or the after effects for black masculinity as a political force.

Freedom Summer (Carter G Woodson Institute Series in Black Studies)

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The Long, Hot Summer
The Civil Rights Movement from a worker's point of view

Freedom Summer (Carter G Woodson Institute Series in Black Studies)
Sally Belfrage
Manufacturer: University of Virginia Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

African-American & Black | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0813912997

Customer Reviews:

The Long, Hot Summer.......2005-09-09

This past June, the State of Mississippi successfully prosecuted and convicted Edgar Ray Killen for his involvement in the murder of three civil rights workers during the summer of 1964. Judging by the national attention paid to this forty year old case, the psychic wounds from America's civil rights battles refuse to scar over.

The murdered youths - Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Mickey Schwerner - were part of The Summer Project, which was a desperate call for help from SNCC, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. SNCC leaders understood that few Americans cared enough about the routine beating and jailing of blacks to force Mississippi to change its lawless ways. But if white college students were treated like Mississippi's blacks, outrage, and perhaps federal intervention, would follow. SNCC (working through COFO, an umbrella civil rights group) put out a call for white volunteers who would plug into education and voter registration projects throughout the state and about a thousand volunteers responded. These young men and women, most of them students from elite colleges, were in many ways the best of their generation: compassionate, accomplished, idealistic. One of the volunteers, Sally Belfrage, wrote this beautifully observed account of her two turbulent months in Mississippi.

Belfrage was assigned to Greenwood, a Delta town mired in the old-time cotton economy and the racial exploitation required to run it. Greenwood also happened to be SNCC's state headquarters and to have Stokely Carmichael as its local SNCC project director. Greenwood, SNCC,and the Summer Project made for a volatile mix. The white volunteers boarded in black homes, and both they and their hosts were continually harassed, beaten and jailed for minor or imaginary infractions of local laws. (Belfrage herself spent several days in the local jail after being arrested at a protest march.) She is especially good at analyzing and describing her own emotional states, honestly portraying the fear, exhaustion and exhilaration of fighting on the front lines during the active combat phase of America's race wars. The prose in which she paints Greenwood and the daily struggles of its African-American residents is detailed, insightful and often poetic. The last part of the book, which describes the rifts in the black community between the non-violent and direct action advocates is particularly riveting, and foreshadows the subsequent struggles in the civil rights movement.

Freedom Summer provides a vivid snapshot of one Mississippi town during that long, hot summer, and one white woman's acute observations about what occurred there. What's missing is any effort to place the summer's struggles within the historical context of the civil rights movement. In particular, black SNCC field workers displayed almost unimaginable courage during the two years prior to the Summer Project as they ventured alone and unarmed in into brutal racist enclaves. The physical and psychological toll from those years must be understood to make sense of SNCC's tactics in 1964 and the organization's subsequent rejection of the white helping hand. Belfrage could have provided this context because she had travelled in the South during 1963 to write articles about the Civil Rights movement.

She doesn't mention this fact, or much else about why she went to Mississippi, or what she did before she got there. A little research reveals that Belfrage was born in America to British parents and had been living in England and Russia before returing to American in the early sixties. She was 28 in 1964, older than the typical volunteer and had already published a book about her experiences living and working in Moscow. Freedom Summer was published in 1965, and in 1968 she moved to London which remained her lifelong base while she pursued her career as a journalist/social activist. (She died of cancer in 1994.) Her biography helps explain the curiously unmoored feeling of "Freedom Summer." Belfrage wasn't the typical volunteer. She was at the same time more sophisticated and less rooted in the particular dilemmas of being American at that time. She's able to maintain clarity and objectivity, which are valuable assets to a reporter who was effectively operating in a war zone. But even though she was an active participant, and often in harm's way during the summer, we don't get a sense of what she has invested or what she has to lose, which is why this is a very good memoir about an important historical moment, but not a great one.

What the more typical Summer Project volunteer went through can be found in Letters from Mississippi, which was reissued by Zephyr Press in 2002. This book collects the raw insights and feelings of the volunteers through the letters they wrote to family and friends. Their bravery, and idealism and dismay at the poverty and lawlessness they encountered shine through. The biggest shock to most of the volunteers was discovering that racial oppression was propped up by the Southern courts and particularly by the police, who operated as a law unto themselves. The cowardly refusal of the FBI to intervene in the mayhem being perpetrated on civil rights workers also opened many volunteer eyes to fundamental flaws in the federal government. Many who came down to Mississippi as idealistic liberals believing that government was the solution went home believing that government was the problem. The death throes of FDR's New Deal began at the business end of a policeman's billy club thunking off white liberal skulls in 1964.

The disillusionment with government that began on the dusty roads of Mississippi was reinforced by the urban riots of the sixties, the political assassinations of King and Bobby Kennedy, the moral horrors of Vietnam, and the cynical machinations of the Nixon administration. That rift has never been repaired. Today, Baby Boomers on both the left and the right have little faith in the government's ability to solve our problems. The tragedy of this view is that we're being led by default to a harsher, less egalitarian society. The TV images of poor blacks fleeing Hurricane Katrina's devastation with just the clothes on their backs while the federal government did nothing to help them makes one wonder, despite the fact the Southern courts now convict the Edgar Ray Killens for their crimes against humanity, just how far we've actually come since 1964.

The Civil Rights Movement from a worker's point of view.......2000-04-02

_Freedom Summer_ is a richly detailed account of a young white woman who participated in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's summer project in Mississippi in 1964. The text covers one incredibly intense summer from the basic training session in June to the Democratic Convention in August. I will assign this text in my Civil Rights Autobiography course next semester because, aside from being a clearly-written account of a chaotic time, it will answer some of the questions I know my students will have, such as: what was it like to be a Civil Rights worker? what was it like to be arrested and thrown in a Mississippi jail? what were the day to day activities of people working in the Movement? how were the workers received by the black and white communities? or how do you decide go enter Mississippi after you've just learned that three summer project workers have disappeared and are presumed dead?

International Affairs Review: Vol. 15, No. 1, Spring/Summer 2006

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International Affairs Review: Vol. 15, No. 1, Spring/Summer 2006

Manufacturer: BookSurge Publishing
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Binding: Paperback

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