Civil Rights
Mayberry – Small-Town Midwest America
I grew up in Mayberry. Not really, of course. But Yankton, South Dakota was about as close to Mayberry as you could get in the middle of last century. It may still be. None of that is to say that growing up there gave one an advantage. What life has shown me since is my…
Read MoreBlack Panthers at War – General Patton’s African-American Tankers
Mention the Black Panthers, and anyone born after World War II will probably recall the political party that was founded as part of the Black Power movement in the 1960s. Less likely is that anyone recalls a group of African-American G. I. tankers who fought under General George Patton in his armor campaign in Europe…
Read MorePowerful, Profound Novel Looks at Racism in America Today
#leonardpittsjr #grantpark #racism Malcolm Toussaint is a haunted man. He was in position to save Martin Luther King from assassination but failed to move fast enough to get the civil rights leader out of harm’s way. Only nineteen years old on that fateful balcony in Memphis in April, 1968. the tragedy lodges in his subconscious.…
Read MorePaperbacks Reshape American Culture
Ah, the lowly paperback. It has had a powerful impact on American culture. Author Paul Rabinowitz delineates the role it has played since first appearing for sale on American newsstands, drugstores, and coffee shops in the 1930’s. Her book, American Pulp: How Paperbacks Brought Modernism to Main Street, examines the often overlooked influence that the…
Read MoreDetroit Riots in 1967 About Civil Rights Changed Lives, Perhaps the City Itself.
#detroitriots #civilrights #raceriots This is the final installment of a series that I have offered on my family’s experience living in Detroit during the mid-1960’s, a period of violent social unrest and the battle over Civil Rights. Readers are urged to read the previous post(s) before wading into this one. By Thursday, July 27, 1967,…
Read MoreCivil Rights Riots in Detroit Wongly Blamed on Failure to of President Johnson’s Great Society to Deliver
#detroitriots #civilrights #riots This is the fourth installment on a series that I have offered on my family’s experience living in Detroit during the mid-1960’s, a period of violent social unrest and the battle over Civil Rights. Readers are urged to read the previous post(s) before wading into this one. I did not feel that…
Read MoreBattle for Civil Rights Erupts into Riot July 1967 in Detroit
#detroitriots #detroit #civilrights #riots This is a third installment on a series that I have offered on my family’s experience living in Detroit during the mid-1960’s, a period of violent social unrest and the battle over Civil Rights. Readers are urged to read the previous post(s) before wading into this one. My wife and I…
Read MoreCivil Rights Leaders Dubbed Detroit a Model City in the 1960’s. Riots Changed the Face of the City..
#dettoit #detroitriots #civilrights #riots This is the second article in a series that began with my previous post about moving my family to Detroit in 1966. I concluded that piece with the statement “Nothing in our Midwestern upbringing prepared us (my wife and me) for the changes, the violence, the hatred, and the heroics that…
Read MoreHolding Sweet Communion – A Debut Civil War Novel by Martha R. Brown
#civilwar #confederacy #historicalletters #armyofnorthernvirginia #gettysburg I have yet to write a review on my web site. Truth is, I don’t read very much. But Martha R. Brown and her husband Rod are friends of mine, and they knew of my interest in Civil War history. Consequently, when Martha reported finding a packet of letters that…
Read MoreDetroit, 1966, Testing Ground for the Civil Rights Act of 1964
#detroit #detroitriots #civilrightsact #riots Detroit was just another city, as far as I knew. Then my boss at the Minneapolis office of The Travelers called me one morning in the fall of 1965 to tell me that I was being transferred to the Motor City. I ran the two blocks from the bus stop on…
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