Divided Minds: Intellectuals and the Civil Rights Movement

Description

No other movement in the twentieth century posed a starker moral challenge to the American intellectual tradition than that of civil rights. And yet the response of prominent writers and thinkers was surprisingly hesitant and ambivalent. William Faulkner spoke out for desegregation but, worried about violence, asked the North to "go slow". Richard Wright and W. E. B. Du Bois, marginalized by their radicalism, had difficulty being heard, while editors sought out the more moderate voices of C. Vann Woodward and Robert Penn Warren. Other, less patient voices did struggle to emerge, as Lillian Smith, Lawrence Dunbar Reddick, Howard Zinn, and James Silver put themselves at personal and political risk to air their views. But it was James Baldwin who threw down a gauntlet to other intellectuals in his brilliant and revolutionary The Fire Next Time.Here is a fascinating, untold history of our nation's most important moment, one rife with unaccountable bravery and inexplicable timidity -- both often the products of the same divided minds. Contents Acknowledgments Prologue Part One: Brown v. Board of Education and the White Resistance, 1954-1937 Chapter One: "Go Slow" Chapter 2: Northern Reservations Chapter 3: Missing Persons Part Two: Gathering Strength, 1957—1963 Chapter 4: “To Be Transformed” Chapter 5: "On the Stage of the World" Chapter 6: "And Then Came Baldwin" Chapter 7: This “Terrifying Crisis” Part Three: The Last Campaigns, 1963-1965 Chapter 8: Calling the Question Postscript Notes Selected Bibliography Index