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WORK TITLE: Let Us March On!
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CITY: Elizabethtown
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COUNTRY: United States
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LAST VOLUME: CA 278
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PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Geneva College, B.A. (summa cum laude); Gettysburg Seminary, M.Div.; Emory University, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and academic. Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown, PA, former associate professor of religious studies and peace and conflict studies. Public speaker; has appeared on national television and radio programs.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, ESPN’s The Undefeated, Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Daily News, Afro, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Chicago Sun-Times, Huffington Post, and USA Today.
SIDELIGHTS
Michael G. Long is the author or editor of many books on the civil rights movements and its key figures. He is a public speaker and has contributed widely to periodicals, including the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, ESPN’s The Undefeated, and the New York Times. Long has also written books on political movements geared toward children to introduce them to important issues and individuals central to those movements, such as Thurgood Marshall, Fred Rogers, Martin Luther King, Jr., Franklin Kameny, Bayard Rustin, James Weldon Johnson, and Jackie Robinson.
First Class Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson compiles letters by and about baseball legend Jackie Robinson between 1946 and 1972. Much of the book shows Robinson’s support for the Vietnam War and initial attraction to Nixon and Nelson Rockefeller’s Republican Party before backing away from their positions and favoring the Democrat-led civil rights initiatives instead. The book also discusses Robinson’s disagreements With Martin Luther King on a number of issues. A Kirkus Reviews contributor reasoned that the book “raises more questions than it answers about a courageous man.”
In Marshalling Justice: The Early Civil Rights Letters of Thurgood Marshall, Long writes about Thurgood Marshall when he served as an attorney focused on civil rights. He served as the NAACP’s principal lawyer between 1934 and 1957 and went on to win the Brown v. the Board of Education case at the Supreme Court. A Kirkus Reviews contributor described it as “a nuanced treatment of a towering figure.”
The essay collection Christian Peace and Nonviolence: A Documentary History shows the history of nonviolence in a certain facet of Christian thought across history. It offers 116 examples from essays, poetry, and scripture to illustrate how Christians have encouraged nonviolent responses to a range of issues. Writing in Theological Studies, Ryan P. Cumming noted that despite “occasional shortcomings, the book is valuable as a unique collection and will be most helpful for undergraduates in history of Christianity and peace studies. Some readers, though, may prefer a more tightly focused anthology.”
With Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers, Long repositions Fred Rogers from his popular image as the host of the children’s television program Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood to that of a radical pacifist. Instead, he used his platform to promote cross-cultural expressions of nonviolence and respect for others, animals, and the planet. Writing in MBR Bookwatch, John Taylor said the book is “very highly recommended,” adding that it is “an inherently fascinating, informative, thought-provoking read from beginning to end.”
Gay Is Good: The Life and Letters of Gay Rights Pioneer Franklin Kameny presents a collection of letters by gay rights activist Franklin Kameny that are used to forma picture of his life and his efforts. In a review in the Journal of the History of Sexuality, David K. Johnson remarked that “Long’s balanced assessment nicely highlights both Kameny’s strengths and his weaknesses.” Johnson admitted that “the major problem with the collection is Long’s organizational decision to adhere to a strict chronological sequence, with chapters arranged not by topic but by calendar year. This means that letters on similar issues covered even within the same chapter are separated by extraneous materials.” Nevertheless, Johnson reasoned that “Long’s edited collection provides a tremendous resource.”
We the Resistance: Documenting a History of Nonviolent Protest in the United States covers a range of individuals who pushed for various resistance movements to advocate reform. The book covers movements from the Flushing Remonstrance in 1657 to an article published by San Diego immigration attorney Dulce Garcia about his disapproval of building a physical wall along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018. A Kirkus Reviews contributor claimed that the book offers “empowering words to challenge, confront, and defy.”
Troublemaker for Justice: The Story of Bayard Rustin, the Man behind the March on Washington covers the life of civil rights leader Bayard Rustin. It details his personal life as an out gay Black man and how the caused troubles for him while he actively campaigned for greater civil rights. Booklist contributor Michael Cart insisted that “this biography is an indispensable addition to the literature of both civil and gay rights.”
42 Today: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy is an edited collection of essays that cover a range of topics related to the life of Jackie Robinson. The account looks into how he came to be the first Black American to play in the MLB to his personal views on integration, Black freedom movements, and his faith. A contributor to Publishers Weekly opined that readers “who know nothing about Robinson will take something inspiring away from this excellent anthology.”
In Kids on the March: 15 Stories of Speaking Out, Protesting, and Fighting for Justice, Long reveals how young people continue to serve on the front line of advocating for justice and reform across history. He looks at the role of youth in fifteen protest movements, from the March of the Mill Children in 1903 to the George Floyd protests in 2020. Booklist contributor Angela Leeper found the book to be “both historical and timely.”
The picture book Three Lines in a Circle: The Exciting Life of the Peace Symbol considers the origin of the peace symbol. It shows how it has been used my liberation movements and at peace rallies all across the world. A Kirkus Reviews contributor stated: “Grounded in the discussion of a design, the heart of peace beats on.”
Long cowrote Call Him Jack: The Story of Jackie Robinson, Black Freedom Fighter with Yohuru Williams. The authors outline the life of baseball legend Jackie Robinson, as well as showing his efforts to remain likable to a White audience while busily advocating for greater freedoms for African Americans. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Matt de la Peña remarked that “the prose can be a touch stiff at times and there already exists a large body of literature about Robinson, but the depth of research in Call Him Jack is remarkable, and the authors effectively re-establish him as a man who tirelessly fought for justice, especially in his life after baseball.”
Unstoppable: How Bayard Rustin Organized the 1963 March on Washington looks at the role of Rustin and others in organizing the 1963 march on Washington that culminated with Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The account covers Rustin’s life in pushing for greater civil rights and also how he was demonized by all communities for his sexuality despite his efforts to advocate for human rights. Booklist contributor Kathleen McBroom mentioned that “this standard-length picture book thoughtfully addresses basic human rights and introduces young readers to an important behind-the-scenes hero.”
More Than a Dream: The Radical March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom looks at how Martin Luther King came to write and deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Long focuses on the impetus to march on Washington in 1963 at the behest of labor leader A. Philip Randolph and Rustin and the controversies that surrounded it. Booklist contributor Cart claimed that “this is, in short, an indispensable work that belongs in every library.”
In Let Us March On!: James Weldon Johnson and the Silent Protest Parade, Long looks at James Weldon Johnson’s role in the Silent Protest Parade, which took place in 1917 in New York City. The protest called for an end to racial violence following the massacre in East St. Louis that year. While Johnson gained acclaim for writing the poem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” he followed up his sentiments by organizing movements on the street while calling for greater unity and equality. Booklist contributor Carolyn Phelan noted that Xia “Gordon’s handsome digital artwork illustrates the story with dignity in this expressive picture book.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
American Heritage, March 22, 2011, review of Marshalling Justice: The Early Civil Rights Letters of Thurgood Marshall, p. 68.
Black Scholar, September 22, 2012, E. Patrick Johnson, review of I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life in Letters, p. 62.
Booklist, June 1, 2019, Michael Cart, review of Troublemaker for Justice: The Story of Bayard Rustin, the Man behind the March on Washington; March 1, 2021, Angela Leeper, review of Kids on the March: 15 Stories of Speaking Out, Protesting, and Fighting for Justice; April 15, 2023, Kathleen McBroom, review of Unstoppable: How Bayard Rustin Organized the 1963 March on Washington, p. 40; August 1, 2023, Michael Cart, review of More Than a Dream: The Radical March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, p. 47; February 15, 2024, Carolyn Phelan, review of Let Us March On!: James Weldon Johnson and the Silent Protest Parade, p. 44.
Children’s Bookwatch, October 1, 2021, review of Three Lines in a Circle: The Exciting Life of the Peace Symbol.
Choice, April 1, 2007, L.H. Hoyle, review of Billy Graham and the Beloved Community, p. 1357.
Journal of Church and State, June 22, 2007, Darren Dochuk, review of Billy Graham and the Beloved Community, p. 579.
Journal of Southern History, November 1, 2003, Frederick L. Downing, review of Against Us, but for Us, p. 988.
Journal of the History of Sexuality, May 1, 2017, David K. Johnson, review of Gay Is Good: The Life and Letters of Gay Rights Pioneer Franklin Kameny.
Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2007, review of First Class Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson; October 15, 2010, review of Marshalling Justice; February 15, 2019, review of We the Resistance: Documenting a History of Nonviolent Protest in the United States; June 15, 2019, review of Troublemaker for Justice; December 15, 2020, review of 42 Today: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy; February 1, 2021, review of Kids on the March; June 1, 2021, review of Three Lines in a Circle; May 15, 2023, review of Unstoppable; April 1, 2024, review of Let Us March On!.
Library Journal, November 1, 2007, Jim Hahn, review of First Class Citizenship, p. 81; June 15, 2011, Zachary T. Irwin, review of Christian Peace and Nonviolence: A Documentary History.
MBR Bookwatch, June 1, 2015, John Taylor, review of Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers.
New York Times Book Review, October 9, 2022, Matt de la Peña, review of review of Call Him Jack: The Story of Jackie Robinson, Black Freedom Fighter, p. 22L.
News & Notes, January 22, 2008, “Jackie Robinson Knew Power of the Pen.”
Prairie Schooner, December 22, 2002, review of Against Us, but for Us, p. 671.
Publishers Weekly, August 13, 2007, review of First Class Citizenship, p. 54; November 10, 2014, review of Gay Is Good, p. 53; November 9, 2020, review of 42 Today, p. 65; November 23, 2022, review of Call Him Jack, p. 46; August 24, 2023, “In Conversation: Yohuru Williams and Michael G. Long.”
School Library Journal, September 14, 2023, Betsy Bird, “An Interview with the Newest National Book Award Nominee.”
Story Monsters Ink, April 1, 2021, Melissa Fales, review of Kids on the March.
Theological Studies, December 1, 2012, Ryan P. Cumming, review of Christian Peace and Nonviolence, p. 976.
Michael G. Long is the author or editor of numerous books on civil rights, religion, and politics, including We the Resistance: Documenting A History of Nonviolent Protest in the United States; Race Man: Selected Works of Julian Bond; I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin's Life in Letters; Marshalling Justice: The Early Civil Rights Letters of Thurgood Marshall; and First Class Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson. Long has written for the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, ESPN's The Undefeated, and USA Today, and his work has been featured or reviewed in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Mother Jones, and many others. Long has spoken at Fenway Park, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, and the National Archives, and he has appeared on MSNBC, PBS, C-SPAN, and National Public Radio.
Michael G. Long (longmg4242@gmail.com) has a Ph.D. from Emory University and is the author or editor of numerous books on nonviolent protest, civil rights, LGBTQIA rights, politics, and religion.
He's currently working on books for young readers, with subjects ranging from Bayard Rustin to the 1917 Silent Protest Parade to the history of HIV and AIDS.
Mike's first YA nonfiction biography—a coauthored book titled Troublemaker for Justice: The Story of Bayard Rustin, the Man Behind the March on Washington (City Lights Books)—earned starred reviews in Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and the School Library Journal. The Bank Street Center, Kirkus, and SLJ selected Troublemaker as a best book of the year.
Mike has also written on civil rights and protest for the Los Angeles Times, The Undefeated (ESPN), the Progressive, the Chicago Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the New York Daily News, the Afro, USA Today, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Huffington Post, and more.
His work has been featured in or on MSNBC, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, USA Today, The Root, The Nation, The Undefeated (ESPN), Mother Jones, Huffington Post, Salon, CNN, Book Forum, Ebony/Jet, and many other places.
Mike has spoken at Fenway Park, Citi Field, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Library of Congress, the National Museum of American History, the National Archives, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, the City Club of San Diego, the Schomberg Center of the New York Public Library, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the New-York Historical Society, among other places.
You can reach Mike at longmg4242@gmail.com.
In Conversation: Yohuru Williams and Michael G. Long
Aug 24, 2023
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Yohuru Williams is a professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., and the author of several books, including Teaching Beyond the Textbook. He is the former chief historian of the Jackie Robinson Foundation. Michael G. Long is the author and editor of several books on civil rights history. Williams and Long co-wrote the children’s book Call Him Jack: The Story of Jackie Robinson, Black Freedom Fighter, and also shared their expertise on Robinson in Ken Burns’s documentary on the barrier-breaking athlete. In their new middle grade book, More Than a Dream: The Radical March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom—written 60 years after this momentous event—the duo explores the protest’s radical roots and the long-ignored role of Black women organizers. We asked Williams and Long to discuss their research and writing process, and the importance of recognizing echoes of the past in contemporary events.
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Michael G. Long: My friend! After all those early-morning phone calls, all those late-night Zoom sessions, we’re about to march into the world with our new book.
Yohuru Williams: I’m pumped. It’s a powerful story.
Long: Who knew? When I was a student, even in high school, I knew next to nothing about the march. I didn’t even know its name was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Anyway, thanks for coming up with the idea. Of the two of us, you’re the big idea guy.
Williams: I might’ve come up with the idea, but we both marched forward with it. As I remember our early chats, we were both disappointed that the march is usually reduced to Dr. King’s dream, though we understood that.
Long: We did. King’s speech was the emotional highpoint of the day. Even the militant activists from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—who thought the march lacked in militancy—had tears running down their cheeks. I still get chills when I watch replays of it. No doubt, it’s one of the greatest speeches in world history.
Williams: And that gets to our challenge, right? Our challenge was to pull the lens back from that amazing moment and show what else was happening on March Day. What happened before Dr. King’s speech? What happened after it? It turns out that the march was much more than a dream. It was a demand. A demand for jobs. A demand for desegregation. A demand for jobs and freedom now!
What was your favorite part as we pulled back the lens?
“
More than a dream suspended in history, the march was a demand for the justice that still eludes us. —Yohuru Williams
”
Long: Probably researching information about the demand for economic justice. One of the march’s demands was for a national minimum wage of two dollars per hour. That translates to about $19 in today’s market. I love that fact because it shows just how radical the march’s two main planners were. A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin were both fervent democratic socialists who made sure that the march demanded jobs with decent wages. What about you? What was your favorite part?
Williams: Learning about the hidden voices that day—especially the voices of student activists. March organizers discouraged young activists from attending, but they came by the busloads. Three friends even hitchhiked together, without adults, from Gadsden, Alabama. On March Day, the students bore witness to all the suffering they endured when facing snarling police dogs and high-pressure fire hoses in their local fights for civil rights. They didn’t have a speaking slot at the Lincoln Memorial, but they were at the vanguard of the Black freedom movement.
Black women were, too, and their voices were also hidden at the march. Anna Arnold Hedgeman, Dorothy Height, and Pauli Murray, all of them powerful leaders, had pleaded for a woman—one woman—to be one of the main speakers, but the all-male Big Ten denied the request. I like to think that wouldn’t happen again today.
Long: Me, too. I think one of the most inspirational parts of our book is the section on the women’s fight for their rightful place on March Day. Ironically, they lost the battle to a group of men fighting for equality and justice. The dissonance in that section of the book could not be louder than it is. Did anything else surprise you?
Williams: The recurring theme of police brutality. At the march, Rita Moreno—the star of West Side Story—told reporters that she was disappointed that President Kennedy’s civil rights bill did not address police brutality. Actor Marlon Brando compared local police officers in Alabama to German Nazis in World War II. Then there was the great John Lewis, who used his fiery speech to denounce the federal government for not defending young activists from racial violence.
Long: Just to add a bit more, I was surprised to learn that the march was designed to commemorate three people who had died because of their civil rights work—including Medgar Evers. I don’t believe anyone mentioned their names during the Lincoln Memorial program, but if you looked hard, as you and I did, you could see small ways that they were commemorated.
Williams: The topics of police brutality and race-related violence demonstrate the ongoing relevance of the march, right? More than a dream suspended in history, the march was a demand for the justice that still eludes us.
I hope our readers will be inspired to think about the ways that the march is as relevant today as it was in 1963. After all, we’re still struggling against police brutality. We’re still trying to secure Black voting rights. We’re still fighting for decent schools, homes, and jobs. We do not yet have the economic and racial justice that the march planners demanded.
We have a long way to go. And so, I hope our readers will also be inspired to think about ways that they can claim their power, just as the marchers did, and march our nation forward, to a time and place where we can finally join Dr. King and say, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
Long: Onward!
More Than a Dream: The Radical March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom by Yohuru Williams and Michael G. Long. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $21.99 Aug. 29 ISBN 978-0-374-39174-4
An Interview with the Newest National Book Award Nominee: Talking About More Than a Dream
September 14, 2023 by Betsy Bird 2 comments
You might have noticed yesterday that the longlist of nominees for the National Book Awards for Young People’s Literature was released to the public. I’ll be honest with you. Normally when that list is released it’s just a slew of YA titles with two middle grade fiction books for spice. I can’t remember the last time I was actually impressed with the choices. This year’s list, however, is amazing. I’d read title after title, which is almost never the case, and I disagreed with none of the choices.
I was also particularly pleased to see that the book we’re honoring here today, More Than a Dream: The Radical March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom by Yohuru Williams and Michael C. Long, was included as well. You’d think I timed today’s interview with the creators of the book on purpose, but I swear to you that this is just an amazing coincidence.
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Here’s a quick rundown of the book itself:
“Just in time for the 60th anniversary on August 28, the scholars behind Call Him Jack deliver another eye-opening nonfiction read this time focusing on the groundbreaking 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, shifting the focus to the protest’s radical roots and the underappreciated role of Black women.
Called “an essential reeducation” by Ibram X. Kendi, More Than a Dream looks at the march through a wider lens, using Black newspaper reports as a primary resource, recognizing the overlooked work of socialist organizers and Black women protesters, and repositioning this momentous day as radical in its roots, methods, demands, and results.”
And I can think of no better way to celebrate a 60th anniversary than with a National Book Award nomination.
Betsy Bird: Michael and Yohuru, thank you so much for joining us here today! At the risk of sounding like I’m speaking in superlatives, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that informational books for young people today contain a level of nuance and understanding of historical complexities never before seen (and, to be frank, seen too little in some works for adults). Your book MORE THAN A DREAM takes The March on Washington and Dr. King’s work and pulls back to show kids that this work wasn’t just because of one guy at one time. What are the roots of this book? Where did it come from?
Michael C. Long,
credit: Elizabethtown College
Michael G. Long: It sprouted organically from our earlier work on Jackie Robinson (Call Him Jack), where we sought to show young readers that Robinson was more than the baseball player who broke the color barrier. After we finished that book, Yohuru and I continued chatting about civil rights projects, and he noted, brilliantly, I might add, that the March, like Robinson, is typically depicted in very narrow terms, and that it would be exciting for us to help young readers understand that the March was far more than Dr. King’s dream, that it was a demand for economic justice and desegregation. As soon as he mentioned that, I was marching right beside him.
Yohuru Williams: I would add that we were also deeply inspired by our contemporary moment. It is difficult to escape the parallels between 1963 and 2023, and we hope the book will help young readers make those connections. The March was conceived, in part, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and how much work remained to be done in achieving absolute equality for Black people. Sixty years on, unfortunately, that work continues.
BB: Well, let’s talk logistics then. When co-writing a book with one another, how do you parcel out the work? Do you have individual specialities that you fall back on? Does each person take on a specific chapter? What’s your process?
Mike: Yohuru and I aren’t just collaborators. We’re also friends who know each other’s interests and specialties really well.
Yohuru: Mike and I both love to research. One of our biggest challenges as collaborators, however, is my penchant for going down rabbit holes. I really enjoy the process of discovery, while Mike is very focused and organized. And that certainly helps keep us on track. The great thing about working with a co-author is that you can share ideas and research as the project is developing and that makes the whole process that much more rewarding.
Mike: So the division of labor was rather obvious for certain sections of the book. For example, because Yohuru has an expertise in Black militancy, it was clear that he would draft the chapter on John Lewis’s militant speech. And because I have a special interest in Bayard Rustin, we agreed that I would draft the chapter on choosing the main organizer of the March. After drafting our assigned chapters, we tossed them back and forth until we both agreed on style and content. It was a Big Bang of a process, and I’m so glad to report that we’re still friends.
BB: Good thing too! Now I am perpetually interested in nonfiction works for older kids and teens that do their own original research. With your specific focus on the role of Black women and socialist organizers, I want to know more about how you researched this. MORE THAN A DREAM, from what I can tell, isn’t one of those books that just produce a young reader’s version from an adult text. So how did you both decide to format the book and then, once you did, what was your research process like?
Mike: We wanted the book to be new, fresh, and groundbreaking. With this in mind, we decided to organize it in a way that would give sustained attention to the long-ignored theme of socialism and to the hidden voices of Black women and student activists.
College of Arts and Sciences Dean Yohuru Williams outside The Arches, August 28, 2017.
Yohuru: Yes, it was very important for us to center Black voices, and those of marginalized persons like Pauli Murray and Bayard Rustin.
Mike: Then we researched these topics as if we were a Boston terrier digging up an old bone in the backyard. Our first stop was always a database with historical Black newspapers. They covered the roots, methods, and goals of the March in detail that we couldn’t find elsewhere. Plus, the Black newspapers really helped me, as a white researcher, grasp the uniquely Black perspectives of the March. Also, our goal was to use primary rather than secondary sources, not merely because young readers deserve original research, but because we wanted to give our readers a model for using accessible primary sources.
Yohuru: That is why we included so many primary resources in the book. We really wanted to expose young readers to the process of historical research.
BB: Beautiful. Did anything unexpected surprise either of you in the course of this research?
Mike: We were surprised at the concerted effort to tamp down the presence of young people at the march. The guidelines stated that people under 14 years old should not attend and that those over 14 should be accompanied by an adult or guardian. The organizers were reportedly concerned for the safety of young folks. But they also feared that young militants might provoke disorder at the March. This was surprising to us because we knew that Dr. King and other civil rights leaders strongly encouraged young people in Birmingham to protest on the streets and parks, even though they well understood that Birmingham’s leaders would not hesitate to use violence against the young activists. The students of Birmingham, as well as elsewhere in the civil rights movement, inspired thousands of people to attend the March, and it’s disappointing the organizers denied them the starring role they deserved.
Yohuru: It was great to be able to document this and present it as part of the story so that young readers in particular could appreciate the role that young people have played in history.
BB: And are there specific assumptions that kids and teens might have that you’re hoping this book might upend?
Mike: Young readers familiar with videos of the March may have the idea that it was like a big picnic, with lots of fun, laughter, and back-slapping. No doubt, the March was a joyful event on many levels. But our book seeks to upend the belief that the March was only that.
Yohuru: We show young readers that the March was also somber and serious, angry and militant, impatient and demanding, about life-and-death issues like police brutality, violence against Black people, unemployment, and poverty.
BB: I have to ask. Was there anything specific that you wish you could have included in the book but that had to be cut for one reason or another?
Mike: Oh, my gosh, yes. The back of our book includes about forty fascinating facts that we don’t mention in the overall story of the March.
Yohuru: Yes, that was frustrating because there were so many interesting tidbits and stories that we uncovered that I wish we could have included.
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Mike: To be more specific, I wish we could have included more information about FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s vicious, conniving, and wrongheaded efforts to undermine Bayard Rustin and the March. Maybe someday we’ll discover more FBI files that will fully reveal Hoover’s anti-American treatment of the March. They would probably be worth an entirely new book.
Yohuru: For me, it was the stories of local activists and their respective journeys to DC for the March. I became enamored with a group of demonstrators from my home city of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and really wanted to talk more about them, not only because they were from my hometown, but because it shows how far reaching the appeal of the March was and how it brought so many people together to fight for racial justice.
BB: Just to wrap this up, are you two working on another book and, if so, can you tell us anything about it?
Mike: Yes! We love working together, and we relish finding important parts of US history that deserve far better treatment than they’ve received. I don’t know if we’re allowed to talk about our next project, but suffice it to say that our young readers can expect that we will dig through primary resources, uncover old facts, and present new ways to celebrate and criticize our shared, wonderful, and troubling history.
I simply cannot thank Yohuru and Mike enough for the sheer amount of time they put into answering my questions here today. Thanks too to Morgan Rath at Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group for having the insight to suggest this. More Than a Dream: The Radical March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is available in bookstores and on library shelves now. Be sure to check it out whenever you get a chance!
Williams, Yohuru LET US MARCH ON! Atheneum (Children's None) $18.99 5, 28 ISBN: 9781665902786
An NAACP leader found a unique way to confront racism in the early 20th century.
Writer and Civil Rights activist James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) was a man of multiple talents, not the least of which was his facility with language; his poem "Lift Every Voice and Sing" is often referred to as the Black national anthem. But he knew there were also times when silence could be more effective than raised voices. With racist violence on the rise, he conceived of an unusual protest: "No chanting, / no cheering, / no chuckling. / Just serious, / somber / silence." In 1917 in New York City, 10,000 people, among them children, marched down Fifth Avenue, carrying signs with messages about justice and the contributions of Black heroes. As one of the march's leaders, Johnson remained as quiet as the rest of the participants, who were kept in step by drumbeats. Twenty thousand spectators watched this display of bravery and determination. Written in terse, at times staccato verse, Williams and Long's portrayal of an important protest will be understood by even the youngest readers. The idea that a man of words could harness silence to convey a powerful message comes through loudly. Expressive digital illustrations in a palette of browns, tans, yellows, and fiery oranges support the storytelling. An authors' note provides valuable context for the events.
A moving depiction of a potent response to a dark period in U.S. history. (text of "Lift Every Voice and Sing") (Informational picture book. 4-8)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Williams, Yohuru: LET US MARCH ON!" Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A788096776/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=bd8cb38b. Accessed 15 June 2024.
Let Us March On! James Weldon Johnson and the Silent Protest Parade. By Yohuru Williams and Michael G. Long. Illus. by Xia Gordon. May 2024. 48p. Atheneum, $18.99 (9781665902786). K-Gr. 3. 323.1196.
Most people familiar with the name James Weldon Johnson associate him with "Lift Every Voice and Sing," a poem he wrote in 1900, which became a hymn and is often called "the Black national anthem." Johnson was a highly respected lawyer, teacher, and writer. When he spoke, "people listened." Addressing a crowd in the aftermath of troubling violence, he proposed that the Black community respond with a silent protest march down the biggest street in the largest city in America. Ten thousand adults and children marched in silence, carrying signs expressing their views, such as "Make America Safe for Democracy." Sponsored by the NAACP, the march brought attention to their cause. An author's note explains the motivations for this "Silent Protest Parade," which took place in New York City in 1917 and called for an end to widespread racial violence such as the East St. Louis massacre the previous month and, more broadly, individual acts of terrorism that had gone unchecked for years. Gordon's handsome digital artwork illustrates the story with dignity in this expressive picture book. --Carolyn Phelan
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
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Phelan, Carolyn. "Let Us March On! James Weldon Johnson and the Silent Protest Parade." Booklist, vol. 120, no. 12, 15 Feb. 2024, p. 44. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A783436436/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ab257ddf. Accessed 15 June 2024.
* More Than a Dream: The Radical March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. By Yohuru Williams and Michael G. Long. Aug. 2023.272P. illus. Farrar, $19.99 (9780374391744). Gr. 5-8.323.7.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's iconic "I Have a Dream" speech was not delivered in a vacuum. It was the final speech of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on Wednesday, August 28, 1963. The march--with 250,000 attendees--became the largest and most important nonviolent protest for civil rights in U.S. history. This splendid work of narrative nonfiction tells its compelling story, presented chronologically from inception to conclusion. The brainchild of Black labor leader A. Philip Randolph and his mentee Bayard Rustin, the event was not without controversy. Then-President Kennedy opposed it, concerned that it might compromise his pending Civil Rights Act. Also opposed were Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and the antediluvian J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, who attempted, unsuccessfully, to discredit the gay Rustin, a former Communist who had once been arrested on a morals charge. While Rustin and Randolph spearheaded the project, they were soon joined by 10 other civil rights leaders who offered advice and counsel. The authors have relied heavily on contemporary newspaper stories, a number of which are reproduced here along with a generous collection of black-and-white photos. Important appended material includes a collection of discussion questions and evidences the authors' deep research (18 pages of notes). This is, in short, an indispensable work that belongs in every library. --Michael Cart
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 American Library Association
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Cart, Michael. "More Than a Dream: The Radical March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom." Booklist, vol. 119, no. 22, 1 Aug. 2023, p. 47. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A761981718/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=9481a9ea. Accessed 15 June 2024.
Long, Michael G. UNSTOPPABLE Little Bee Books (Children's None) $18.99 5, 2 ISBN: 9781499812060
A civil rights luminary finally gets his due.
The March on Washington is most widely remembered for Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous speech, but the event and its impact were a dream built by many whose names are criminally undercelebrated. This vital book broadens the narrative by introducing readers to Bayard Rustin, whose contributions to its success are sometimes downplayed or obscured. From the opening line of the book, Long's narrative lovingly presents Rustin's history of good troublemaking, starting with his first arrest for sitting in the White section of a movie theater in his hometown of West Chester, Pennsylvania, to the influence of his mentor, A. Philip Randolph, who, with Rustin, came up with the idea for the 1963 March on Washington. The prose works in perfect harmony with Jackson's warmly colored, stunning illustrations, which present Rustin as a gifted, passionate visionary whose talents helped turn the march from a dream into an unprecedented success. This work's greatest contribution is its unflinching honesty in demonstrating the backlash Rustin faced for being gay, both from White America and his own Black colleagues within the movement, who felt that his sexuality would detract from its success. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A joyful tribute to the work of an important American hero. (author's note, information on Long's research) (Picture-book biography. 6-9)
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"Long, Michael G.: UNSTOPPABLE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 May 2023, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A748974295/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8e865526. Accessed 15 June 2024.
Unstoppable: How Bayard Rustin Organized the 1963 March on Washington. By Michael G. Long, Illus, by Bea Jackson. May 2023.40p. little bee, $18.99 (9781499812060). Gr. 1-4. 323.092.
The 1963 March on Washington and Martin Luther King's iconic "I Have a Dream" speech would never have happened if not for Bayard Rustin, the individual behind the conception, organization, and management of the event. Using straightforward prose, this engaging biography effectively describes how "troublemaker" Rustin, inspired by another troublemaker named Mohandas Gandhi, successfully organized peaceful protests against war, nuclear weapons, segregated schools, and housing and employment discrimination. He feared that his largest undertaking--his envisioned March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom--might get derailed due not just to political resistance but also to personal attacks because he was gay. Other Black leaders, including King and John Lewis, supported Rustin, and the text details Rustin's extensive preparations: volunteers, advertising, travel arrangements, first-aid stations, free lunches, portable toilets, and education about nonviolent protest. The colorful, expressive illustrations align perfectly with the text and help convey the enormity of the 250,000-plus crowd that assembled that day. Back matter includes recommended reading and an author's note (Rustin and about 500 others meticulously cleaned up the entire parade route afterward to deter any accusations of disorder). This standard-length picture book thoughtfully addresses basic human rights and introduces young readers to an important behind-the-scenes hero.--Kathleen McBroom
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 American Library Association
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McBroom, Kathleen. "Unstoppable: How Bayard Rustin Organized the 1963 March on Washington." Booklist, vol. 119, no. 16, 15 Apr. 2023, p. 40. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A747135471/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=f2a3fac3. Accessed 15 June 2024.
Call Him Jack: The Story of Jackie Robinson, Black Freedom Fighter
Yohuru Williams and Michael G. Long. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $19.99 (240p) ISBN 978-0-374-38995-6
In this eye-opening biography, Williams (The Black Panthers, for adults) and Long (Three Lines in a Circle) detail the varied personal history of Jack Roosevelt Robinson (1919-1972), best known for being the first Black MLB player. In a beginning note, the authors contextualize quotations containing tacist sluts: "We think it's important for readers to know--and feel--the words that white people used when trying to hurt Jack and othet Black Americans." The book discusses how, throughout his life, Robinson felt as if he needed to be an "acceptable guest" to succeed in the athletic world. But beyond his sports persona, Robinson considered himself a "relentless and uncompromising Black freedom fighter," outspoken in his beliefs. Without minimizing Robinson's historic athletic prowess, the creatots provide a potent look into his civil rights achievements by highlighting key moments from his life, including marching for integrated schools and raising money for burned churches in Birmingham. This well-researched volume--which includes b&w photographs throughout, accompanied by brief sidebars explaining key historical events--skillfully highlights one prominent Black figure's impact on America's history both on and off the ball field. Additional information concludes. Ages 10-14.
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"Call Him Jack: The Story of Jackie Robinson, Black Freedom Fighter." Publishers Weekly, vol. 269, no. 49, 23 Nov. 2022, p. 46. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A728493811/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=4d4c30b1. Accessed 15 June 2024.
It's who Jackie Robinson and Tommie Smith were off the field that elevates two new books about them.
Books featuring sports are often marginalized. They're set aside for ''reluctant readers'' or used as a last-ditch effort to nudge sports-minded young people toward the written word. But the best of these books achieve greater heights, and are recognized as works of literature.
What does this marginalization assume about readers hungry for sports stories? One of the most illuminating conversations I've ever had was with a high school basketball star in Texas. He claimed to have read my first novel, a story steeped in street basketball, five times. A librarian had recommended it, he explained, because she knew basketball was his life. When he proceeded to describe several of his favorite scenes, though, I was surprised that none of them had anything to do with basketball. The sport may have drawn him in, but it was bits about the human condition that stuck with him.
In two wonderful new works of nonfiction -- CALL HIM JACK: The Story of Jackie Robinson, Black Freedom Fighter, by Yohuru Williams and Michael G. Long, and VICTORY. STAND! Raising My Fist for Justice, written by Tommie Smith and Derrick Barnes, and illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile -- a sports legend's athletic prowess is the hook, but it's the books' explorations of who these famous athletes were off the field that elevate them, demonstrating that the strongest sports stories transcend sport.
In the impressively researched biography ''Call Him Jack,'' Williams and Long devote little space to the historic game in which Jackie Robinson broke the modern color barrier (many scholars, the authors point out, recognize Moses Fleetwood Walker, who played catcher for the Toledo Blue Stockings in 1884, as the first African American to play professional baseball). They acknowledge this monumental moment, to be sure, but they're more interested in Robinson the human being and civil rights advocate.
The title of the book highlights the chasm between the real-life Jack Robinson and the Jackie Robinson narrative often celebrated in schools. In the buildup to Robinson's first appearance in a major-league game, he felt pressured to present himself in a way that would put people at ease: ''He would have to be 'Jackie,' a nonthreatening Black man who would be acceptable to the Dodgers, Major League Baseball and the country.''
''Jackie,'' the authors assert, was a persona Robinson wore, one that white America was more likely to embrace. Underneath this persona, Robinson was a ''relentless and uncompromising Black freedom fighter.''
Williams and Long contextualize the challenges Robinson faced throughout his life by including historical news clippings and boxed commentary about the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Migration and Jim Crow laws. The book also contains extensive back matter (''Extra-Inning Facts,'' ''Things to Think About'' and a timeline).
The prose can be a touch stiff at times and there already exists a large body of literature about Robinson, but the depth of research in ''Call Him Jack'' is remarkable, and the authors effectively re-establish him as a man who tirelessly fought for justice, especially in his life after baseball.
When Jack Robinson changed modern baseball forever on April 15, 1947, by taking the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers, the future Olympic gold medalist Tommie Smith was two months shy of his third birthday. Yet so many of Smith's early experiences as an African American growing up in the South, then traveling west in search of opportunity as part of the Great Migration, echo those of Robinson. In his phenomenal graphic memoir, ''Victory. Stand! Raising My Fist for Justice,'' Smith teams up with the award-winning author Derrick Barnes to tell his own riveting story of balancing athletic prowess and social activism.
The book opens in Mexico City, during the 1968 Summer Olympics, with Smith at the starting blocks for the final of the 200-meter sprint. Despite the weight of the occasion and the leg injury threatening to slow him down, Smith is able to calm his mind and remain in the moment. Just as the gun goes off, however, and Smith explodes out of the blocks, we are whisked back to his earliest memories of life in rural Texas, as one of 12 children in a family of sharecroppers.
He has great reverence for God, and for his hardworking mother and father; Smith himself begins working at age 6. From the beginning he is highly observant of the world around him and intellectually curious, traits that forecast the bold civil rights activist he will later become.
When the Smith family relocates to California's Central Valley, Tommie is required to attend school regularly (rather than the three to four months a year to which he was accustomed in Texas, where sharecroppers' children helped out in the fields during planting and picking seasons). It is at Stratford Elementary, in the fourth grade, that a track coach discovers his athletic talent -- a talent that takes him to San Jose State at the height of the civil rights movement.
Smith soars athletically, but he vows to make his name off the track as well. Intent on challenging the demeaning image of Black student athletes (''that we were just there to compete on the school's sports teams, like hired contractors''), he studies social science.
In one particularly stirring scene, Smith must decide between competing at an important track meet and participating in a sympathy march from San Jose to San Francisco for the 600 peaceful protesters, including a 25-year-old John Lewis, who were attacked on their way across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala. Smith decides to run, and sets his first world record, but that evening he meets up with the marchers in Sunnyvale, Calif.
When one of the group's leaders recognizes him, she announces that a world-record holder has joined them: ''San Jose State's Tommie Smith. He could have stayed on campus, afraid to make a stand with us, but he's here, and we thank you.''
This isn't the last time Smith marries his athletic achievement with his desire to make social change.
The book soon takes us back to the Olympics in Mexico City. On the podium, while the national anthem plays, Smith and his bronze-medal-winning teammate, John Carlos, famously raise their black-gloved fists to protest injustice in America.
Anyabwile's stirring black-and-white illustrations propel this magnificently paced story, and underscore the infuriating professional repercussions of Smith's activism. After being suspended by the Olympic Committee and sent home, he was banned from future competition -- internationally and nationally -- plagued by hate mail and death threats, and forced to take menial jobs to feed his wife and son. ''I had 11 track and field world records, but no one would hire me.'' Eventually, he was able to build a life as a coach on the college level and ''things began to shift,'' but his own running career was over.
Timely and timeless, Smith's ''Victory. Stand!'' is a must read not just for sports fans but for everyone.
Matt de la Peña won the 2016 Newbery Medal for the picture book ''Last Stop on Market Street,'' illustrated by Christian Robinson. His latest book, ''Patchwork,'' illustrated by Corinna Luyken, was published in August.
CALL HIM JACK: The Story of Jackie Robinson, Black Freedom Fighter | By Yohuru Williams and Michael G. Long | 240 pp. | Farrar, Straus & Giroux | $19.99 | Ages 10 and upVICTORY. STAND! Raising My Fist for Justice | By Tommie Smith and Derrick Barnes | Illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile | 208 pp. | Norton | Cloth, $22.95. Paperback, $17.95. | Ages 10 and up
Matt de la Peña, a Newbery medalist and the author of the novels ''Ball Don't Lie'' and ''Mexican White Boy,'' attended college on a basketball scholarship. His latest picture book, ''Patchwork,'' was published in August.
CAPTION(S):
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De la Peña, Matt. "Sports Stories That Transcend Sport." The New York Times Book Review, 9 Oct. 2022, p. 22(L). Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A721567668/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c31970c6. Accessed 15 June 2024.
Three Lines in a Circle
Michael G. Long, author
Carlos Velez, illustrator
Flyaway Books
www.flyawaybooks.com
9781947888326, $18.00, HC, 40pp
https://www.amazon.com/Three-Lines-Circle-Exciting-Symbol/dp/1947888323
One line straight down. One line to the right. One line to the left, then a circle. That was all--just three lines in a circle. The collaborative project of author Michael G. Long and illustrator Carlos Velez, "Three Lines in a Circle" is a bold picture book for young readers that tells the story of the peace symbol (designed in 1958 by a London activist protesting nuclear weapons) and how it inspired people all over the world.
Depicting the symbol's travels from peace marches and liberation movements to the end of apartheid and the fall of the Berlin Wall, "Three Lines in a Circle" offers a message of inspiration to today's children and adults who are working to create social change. Of special interest is an author's note that provides historical background and a time line of late twentieth-century peace movements.
Entertaining, informative, and thoroughly 'kid friendly' in organization and presentation, and also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $14.00), "Three Lines in a Circle" is very strongly recommended for family, daycare center, preschool, elementary school, and community library picture book collections for children ages 3-7.
Please Note: Illustration(s) are not available due to copyright restrictions.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 Midwest Book Review
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"Three Lines in a Circle." Children's Bookwatch, Oct. 2021, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A684540893/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c12d4667. Accessed 15 June 2024.
Long, Michael G. THREE LINES IN A CIRCLE Flyaway Books (Children's None) $18.00 8, 31 ISBN: 978-1-947888-32-6
A simple sketch that holds so much.
Gerald Holtom first designed the peace symbol in 1958. But this celebration begins with Gerry, a tall, thin man with pale skin and a mop of shaggy brown hair, at his drafting table, hoping to “draw his dream.” Without any historical context, Long explains in his free-verse text that this man’s dream is “a world without bombs.” Gerry draws three lines and encloses them in a circle. He shares the design with others, and one person says, “It doesn’t mean a thing, / and it will never catch on.” However, it definitely does. It begins in England but swiftly travels, showing up in rallies and marches across the world. It stands for “peace / for all / and especially for / Black people / and / Brown people / women / and / poor people / LGBTQ+ people / and / people with disabilities.” Long strengthens readers’ connection to the symbol by ending with those three lines in a circle “catching on, / fighting on, / moving on… / TO / YOU.” Vibrant throngs of all kinds of people fill the pages. The inspiration behind the design is buried in the backmatter (though hinted at in the illustrations), and much more of its history is revealed there, but the spare text echoes the spare symbol. It stands powerfully on its own.
Grounded in the discussion of a design, the heart of peace beats on. (timeline) (Informational picture book. 4-8)
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"Long, Michael G.: THREE LINES IN A CIRCLE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2021, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A667031576/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e3ec4a0b. Accessed 15 June 2024.
Long, Michael G. KIDS ON THE MARCH Algonquin (Children's None) $16.95 3, 23 ISBN: 978-1-64375-100-9
Rights are the evidence of hard-fought battles, and even the youngest among us have served on the battlefield.
This inspiring collection documents youths’ roles in social change movements, beginning with the 1903 March of the Mill Children, in which child laborers marched to change hazardous working conditions in factories, and ending in 2020 with youth protestors leading and organizing marches to protest the deaths of George Floyd and other victims of police brutality. Topically diverse, the collection highlights the struggle for school integration in the 1950s; protests against the Vietnam War; the racist school conditions faced by Chicanx students in East Los Angeles and the 1968 student walkout; and activism for stricter gun laws led by students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after a deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. Nuclear disarmament and climate change are also among the subjects covered. Young people are the focus of this inspiring overview that expresses themes of determination, change, and hope. Though some movements resulted in immediate change and others are part of yearslong efforts, readers will be inspired by the advocacy, leadership, and determination of the young change agents. The stories are accompanied by photos and primary source documents, breathing life into the subjects and showing a clear connecting thread between young people of different generations. A final section offers readers practical tips for engaging in effective social change.
Readers will lose themselves in this work and emerge energized. (endnotes, bibliography, photo credits) (Nonfiction. 11-16)
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"Long, Michael G.: KIDS ON THE MARCH." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2021, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A650107558/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=4fd61898. Accessed 15 June 2024.
Kids on the March: 15 Stories of Speaking Out, Protesting, and Fighting for Justice. By Michael G. Long. Mar. 2021. 304p. Illus. Algonquin, $16.95 (9781643751009). Gr. 5-8. 320.083.
Activism is on the rise, and this informational offering shows the role that young people have served and continue to serve in protesting for justice and reform. Divided into two sections--"The Twentieth Century" and "The Twenty-First Century"--the book highlights 15 prominent protest movements that cover a range of issues. Beginning with the 1903 March of the Mill Children (in which children were demanding a 55-hour work week instead of 60!), it continues with the 1968 Latinx student walkouts of East Los Angeles, the 1981 Children's Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and the 2018 March for Our Lives, and concludes with the 2020 George Floyd protests. As Long gives background information on each protest, he makes the accounts engaging with a story-like narrative filled with quotes from some of the young protestors. Plenty of period photos help readers imagine the events. Some chapters end with updates, such as the 2020 Supreme Court decision on DACA following the 2018 marches for Dreamers. Tips for organizing and participating in marches conclude the book. Both historical and timely. --Angela Leeper
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 American Library Association
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Leeper, Angela. "Kids on the March: 15 Stories of Speaking Out, Protesting, and Fighting for Justice." Booklist, vol. 117, no. 13, 1 Mar. 2021, pp. 37+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A655229087/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=2461bc54. Accessed 15 June 2024.
Long, Michael G. 42 TODAY New York Univ. (NonFiction None) $27.95 2, 9 ISBN: 978-1-4798-0562-4
A collection of essays on the baseball great’s impact on American society.
Editor Long and his contributors attempt to separate the man from the myth and show how his influence continues to extend. Who was Jackie Robinson (1919-1972)? He ended racial segregation in Major League Baseball when he signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. He succeeded in part because he refused to respond to taunts or even acknowledge hateful slurs, but he showed an aggression on the field that may have been fueled by anger. After his retirement, he became a civil rights spokesman, defender of the Vietnam War, and a man at odds with more militant figures such as Malcolm X and Muhammed Ali. All of these facts fail to capture the complexity of the man and the heroism of his achievement. These pieces embody all of what made Robinson special, assessing him through many different lenses: the Methodist faith that he shared with Branch Rickey, who signed him to the Dodgers and exploited him for financial gain while denying that he (and baseball) had felt any political pressure to integrate; the Black and communist press that pushed for integration while the mainstream press either ignored the issue or resisted integration (in their own ranks as well as in baseball); the strong female presence—mother, wife, daughter—that helped shape Robinson’s values and influenced his support for Black female athletes; and the political climate of the era, which bears a resemblance to that of today. Robinson was a seminal warrior in a movement before there was a movement. As Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed, “He was a sit-inner before sit-ins, a freedom rider before freedom rides.” Contributors include Howard Bryant, Mark Kurlansky, Jonathan Eig, Sridhar Pappu, Amira Rose Davis, and Kevin Merida, who provides the afterword, noting how Robinson “would invariably be disappointed in how white the entire decision-making infrastructure of sports remains.”
A successful attempt to give a towering cultural figure his due beyond the baselines.
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"Long, Michael G.: 42 TODAY." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Dec. 2020. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A644766979/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=7c3cfd92. Accessed 15 June 2024.
42 Today: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy
Edited by Michael G. Long. New York Univ., $27.95 (256p) ISBN 978-1-47980-652-4
Biographer Long (Jackie Robinson: A Spiritual Biography), along with 13 contributors, explore lesser-known aspects of the life of Jackie Robinson, who became the first Black American to play Major League Baseball when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Robinson's Methodist faith is explored in Randal Maurice Jelk's "A Methodist Life," which examines how Robinson's wife Rachel's connection with the AME Church--and its message of "self-determination, self-sufficiency, and black independence"--influenced Robinson. The "First Famous Jock for Justice" catalogs the athletes who followed Robinson's efforts on behalf of racial equaliry with their own social justice activism. Other notable essays include "Before the World Failed Him," which discusses Robinson in context with other civil rights leaders, and "On Retirement," about his life after hanging up his glove. Even those who know nothing about Robinson will take something inspiring away from this excellent anthology. (Feb.)
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"42 Today: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy." Publishers Weekly, vol. 267, no. 45, 9 Nov. 2020, p. 65. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A644651869/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=35d5a08f. Accessed 15 June 2024.
Long, Michael G. TROUBLEMAKER FOR JUSTICE City Lights (Children's None) $12.95 8, 13 ISBN: 978-0-87286-765-9
Readers are introduced to Bayard Rustin, a brilliant, black, gay civil rights leader.
Principle organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, Rustin was a landmark contributor to many of the turnkey moments of the civil rights movement, though his name and the fullness of his life have been relegated to the shadows due to his personal commitment to living as an out gay black man and his youthful relationship with communist organizing which he later renounced. Over time many people would attempt to weaponize these facts against him, yet Rustin remained true to his convictions, and his wisdom and clarity would ultimately be valued by many of those same people and institutions. This brief but comprehensive biography, written with the help of Rustin's longtime partner, Naegle, and featuring stunning archival photographs, covers the legacy of a man who utilized the roots of his Quaker faith to uplift movements throughout the world. In clear prose with informative sidebars that provide important context, it follows Rustin from his pacifist beginnings to his work mentoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his later years traveling the world to support the rights of refugees. In today's political landscape, this volume is a lesson in the courage to live according to one's truth and the dedication it takes to create a better world.
An essential guide to the life of Bayard Rustin, architect of critical movements for freedom and justice. (endnotes, timeline, discussion questions, bibliography) (Biography. 10-18)
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"Long, Michael G.: TROUBLEMAKER FOR JUSTICE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 June 2019. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A588726797/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8dddd90f. Accessed 15 June 2024.
Troublemaker for Justice: The Story of Bayard Rustin, the Man behind the March on Washington.
By Jacqueline Houtman and others.
Aug. 2019.166p. illus. City Lights, paper, $12.95 (9780872867659). Gr. 6-9.323.092.
Though little remembered today, Bayard (rhymes with fired) Rustin was a major leader of the American civil rights movement, a chief organizer of the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and a mentor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. A committed pacifist and believer in the power of nonviolence, Rustin was actively involved in civil rights protests, landing himself in prison 20 times by 1969. His commitment to human rights found expression not only in the U.S. but internationally as well. So why is he largely unsung? The authors (Jacqueline Houtman, Michael G. Long, and Walter Naegle) argue it is because of his sexuality. While presenting a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rustin, President Barack Obama confirmed this, saying, "This great leader . . . was denied his rightful place in history because he was openly gay." The three authors of this thoughtful and informative biography--the narrative text of which is greatly amplified by a generous collection of black-and-white pictures and sidebar features--have gone a long way to rectifying this injustice. Though the book lacks original interviews, further valuable information and insight are offered thanks to the fact that one of the authors, Naegle, was Rustin's life partner for the last 10 years of his life. This biography is an indispensable addition to the literature of both civil and gay rights.--Michael Cart
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 American Library Association
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Cart, Michael. "Troublemaker for Justice: The Story of Bayard Rustin, the Man behind the March on Washington." Booklist, vol. 115, no. 19-20, 1 June 2019, pp. 72+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A593431597/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=cd581152. Accessed 15 June 2024.
Long, Michael G. WE THE RESISTANCE City Lights (Adult Nonfiction) $23.95 4, 1 ISBN: 978-0-87286-756-7
A highly relevant, inclusive collection of voices from the roots of resistance.
What are some of the precursors for the resistance movements that continue to gain momentum today? Editor Long (Religious Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies, Elizabethtown Coll.; Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers, 2015, etc.) collects an inspiring group of voices who have actively resisted the status quo, from the earliest dissent among Quakers in the historic petition against intolerance known as "The Flushing Remonstrance" to a March 2018 editorial entitled "We Do Not Want a Wall," by San Diego immigration attorney Dulce Garcia. Long emphasizes that the collection "aims to document nonviolent protests that have been leftist--socially, politically, and economically--within the context of U.S. history." Eschewing coverage of rallies by the Ku Klux Klan and those targeting Roe v. Wade, for example, the editor includes protests that promoted the abolition of slavery, the right to "free love and unregulated sex," the rights of women and those disenfranchised, the conservation of animals, the elimination of police brutality, and so on. While there are documents by a few iconic names, such as Henry David Thoreau, Angela Y. Davis, and Naomi Klein, Long has left out some big names like Martin Luther King Jr. for "practical reasons"--i.e., securing rights to his work is difficult and expensive. Yet the result of showcasing less-well-known voices is added richness, underscoring what legendary activist Dolores Huerta notes is largely the impetus of people from "humble backgrounds" who "shoulder[ed] their way up from the bottom." Many of the included pieces shine: Abenaki leader Loron Sauguaarum's 1727 plainspoken document "I Have No King" explaining his honest understanding of a treaty made with the crafty English negotiators; ex-slave narratives such as Underground Railroad stationmaster Jermain Wesley Loguen's "I Won't Obey It!"; Margorie Swann's autobiographical 1959 "Statement on Omaha Action" delineating her pacifist stance; and the 2015 "Eleven Reasons to Close Guantanamo" by Naureen Shah of Amnesty International USA, among many others.
Empowering words to challenge, confront, and defy.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Long, Michael G.: WE THE RESISTANCE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2019. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A573768858/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=58e48ca2. Accessed 15 June 2024.
Peaceful Neighbor
Michael G. Long
Westminister John Knox Press
100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville, KY 40202-1396
www.wjkbooks.com
9780664260477, $17.00, 176pp, www.amazon.com
Synopsis: Fred Rogers (star of the long running children's television program 'Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood') was one of the most radical pacifists of contemporary history. We do not usually think of him as radical, partly because he wore colorful, soft sweaters made by his mother. Nor do we usually imagine him as a pacifist; that adjective seems way too political to describe the host of a children's program known for its focus on feelings. We have restricted Fred Rogers to the realm of entertainment, children, and feelings, and we've ripped him out of his political and religious context. Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister, and although he rarely shared his religious convictions on his program, he fervently believed in a God who accepts us as we are and who desires a world marked by peace and wholeness. With this progressive spirituality as his inspiration, Rogers used his children's program as a platform for sharing countercultural beliefs about caring nonviolently for one another, animals, and the earth. To critics who dared call him "namby-pamby," Rogers said, "Only people who take the time to see our work can begin to understand the depth of it". This is the invitation of "Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers", to see and understand Rogers's convictions and their expression through his program. 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood', it turns out, is far from sappy, sentimental, and shallow; it's a sharp political response to a civil and political society poised to kill.
Critique: An inherently fascinating, informative, thought-provoking read from beginning to end, "Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers" is very highly recommended for community library collections and should be considered a "must read" for the legions of Mister Rogers fans. For personal reading lists it should be noted that "Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers" is also available in a Kindle edition ($9.99).
John Taylor
Reviewer
Taylor, John
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
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Taylor, John. "Peaceful Neighbor." MBR Bookwatch, June 2015. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A419149925/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b2abffbe. Accessed 15 June 2024.
Gay is Good: The Life and Letters of Gay Rights Pioneer Franklin Kameny
Edited by Michael G. Long. Syracuse Univ., $36.95 (364p) ISBN 978-0-8156-1043-4
A lively look at the life of a civil rights hero, as revealed by his letters. By the late 1950s, Frank Kameny (b. 1925) had a promising career as an astronomer with the Army Map Service, and dreams of becoming an astronaut. When word of an earlier incident resulting in his arrest for "lewd and indecent acts" at a gay cruising spot reached his employer, Kameny was fired and barred from working for the federal government, his career aspirations quickly put to rest. This humiliating incident helped him to find his life's work: fighting discrimination against homosexuals in the federal government. He started an intense letter-writing campaign targeting various government officials, including J.F.K. He was also the founding member of the Mattachine Society of Washington, which organized marches and raised public awareness for the cause. His letters, both personal and public, provide insights into various aspects of Kameny's life: he was a careful activist who insisted that all participants in marches dress conservatively, but also a son who was upset that his mother did not understand or support his work. Kameny was often demanding to work with, but he achieved remarkable progress. This collection is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of the gay rights movement. (Dec.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 PWxyz, LLC
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"Gay is Good: The Life and Letters of Gay Rights Pioneer Franklin Kameny." Publishers Weekly, vol. 261, no. 45, 10 Nov. 2014, p. 53. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A390187179/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=33b94add. Accessed 15 June 2024.
Gay Is Good: The Life and Letters of Gay Rights Pioneer Franklin Kameny. Edited by Michael G. Long, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2014. Pp. 379. $36.95 (cloth).
What a joy to read--and in some cases reread--the letters of pioneer gay rights activist Frank Kameny. Thanks to Michael G. Long's terrific new edited collection, Gay Is Good, one can again hear the bombastic voice of this prolific letter writer speaking truth to power. Fired from the federal government for his homosexuality in 1957 during the lavender scare, Kameny began a lifelong campaign not only to change federal government policy but ultimately to challenge homophobia in American culture. The single most effective gay rights activist in American history, he was, according to Long, "a visionary and tactical genius" who remained active in the movement for over four decades and lived to be celebrated for his many accomplishments (333).
Over the seventeen-year period covered in these letters (1958-75), we witness Kameny transform from "a victim of the law" to "a vocal opponent of law" to finally "a voice of law" as he is appointed to the District of Columbia Commission on Human Rights (3). Put another way, we see him transform from a nerdy scientist confused by the government's interest in his sex life to a nuanced political tactician increasingly adept at delivering a persuasive message of gay and lesbian equality and empowerment. Through Kameny's letters we also see the LGBT movement transform. Before the movement became professionalized with a host of specialized organizations, Frank Kameny was the go-to guy for virtually any instance of antigay discrimination, whether by the federal government, local law enforcement, or the media. As one of a handful of openly gay national figures, Kameny fielded requests for speaking engagements and legal counsel from around the country.
As Long points out, letters were one of Kameny's "favorite weapons"-the way he "sneaked into the guarded offices through the open mailbox" to hold public officials accountable to the citizenry he insisted they should serve (2). He treated all public officials as public servants. His determination and wit are on full display in this volume, especially in his letters to local law enforcement officers, whom he literarily solicited to engage in sodomy in order to have a test case to take to the courts to overturn the local antisodomy statute. They declined his offer, but Kameny succeeded in eliminating the law.
Long's book highlights Kameny's methodical strategy of effecting change through lobbying government officials and professional organizations. Each effort might not lead to immediate success, but each removed a few bricks in the edifice of official homophobia. He considered his campaign to become the DC delegate to Congress in 1971 a great success, because although he failed to win office, this movement into mainstream politics earned respect from elected officials.
Kameny was a true incrementalist who engaged in picketing and other forms of direct action only after every other "avenue of recourse" had been thoroughly exhausted (153). He had little patience for younger, less seasoned activists from what he called "the Mindless Sixties" (153). At the 1972 Democratic Convention, debating the wording of the first gay rights plank in a major party platform, Kameny argued for the acceptance of the tepid language offered by the McGovern campaign. "The kind of insistence on everything precisely to our prescriptions, all at once, upon penalty of condemnation, attack, and the throwing of tantrums," Kameny insisted, "is unrealistic and more than a little childish" (252).
Long's balanced assessment nicely highlights both Kameny's strengths and his weaknesses. We see his incredible tenacity as he endured long periods of unemployment during which he depended on contributions from the LGBT community not only to attend major events like the American Psychiatric Association meetings but also sometimes to pay the rent. We see the opposition he experienced from within the early homophile movement and how his single-mindedness and insistence on respectability and efficiency ruffled feathers. We see the many ways in which Kameny's views seem dated, if not plain wrong, such as his rejection of feminism and "mixing causes." "Lesbians are homosexuals, first, and women only incidentally," he smugly wrote to a lesbian activist in 1969 (185).
The major problem with the collection is Long's organizational decision to adhere to a strict chronological sequence, with chapters arranged not by topic but by calendar year. This means that letters on similar issues covered even within the same chapter are separated by extraneous materials. Official government replies are often in a different chapter from the original Kameny tirade. The collection leapfrogs from formal letters making demands on US government officials to gossipy letters to fellow gay activists about tactics and strategies to correspondence with his mother--some of the most revealing pieces. We get only the most fleeting glimpses of Kameny's sexual and romantic life, another odd editorial decision. Partly because of his slavish devotion to chronology, Long seems to occasionally get things wrong. He oddly suggests that Kameny's position on full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the US military changed. And there is confusion about just when picketing by LGBT people began. A lone picketer demonstrated in front of the White House in 1963, but his letter does not appear until 1966; organized picketing began in 1965. A chapter organized around the issue of picketing would have solved this problem.
Overall, Long's edited collection provides a tremendous resource as we await the biography of Kameny currently being written by David Carter, author of Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution. As a sort of coda, Long includes the apology Kameny received in 2009 from the head of the Office of Personnel Management for his 1957 dismissal. Kameny's last letter movingly describes the day he formally donated the picket signs activists had carried in front of the White House in 1965 for "15 million homosexual American citizens" to the Smithsonian Institution, where they now share space with "the relics of Jefferson and Lincoln and King." As Kameny enthused to a fellow comrade in arms, "We have arrived irreversibly."
DAVID K. JOHNSON
University of South Florida
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 University of Texas at Austin (University of Texas Press)
http://www.utexas.edu/utpress
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Johnson, David K. "Gay Is Good: The Life and Letters of Gay Rights Pioneer Franklin Kameny." Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 26, no. 2, May 2017, pp. 331+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A495476332/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=08eda4a6. Accessed 15 June 2024.
Christian Peace and Nonviolence: A Documentary History. Orbis. Jun. 2011. c.368p, ed. by Michael G. Long. bibliog, index. ISBN 9781570759222. pap. $40. REL
Long (religious studies & peace & conflict studies, Elizabethtown Coll.) has created a crisply edited and inclusive collection that demonstrates the coherence and richness of nonviolence in the history of Christian thought. Taken together, the 116 examples of essays, scripture, and poetry convey a sense of aesthetic expression, moral clarity, and intellectual vitality that parallels the history of Christianity. Nonviolence is a concept explored here from the apology of the second-century theologian Tertullian through the Reformation leader Jakob Hutter and 20th-century pacifist A.J. Muste. The latter's "Open Letter to Reinhold Niebuhr" recalls that the debate about nonviolence has been within both the Church and larger society. Less-known selections emerge, such as the 1813 essay of David Dodge, founder of the New York Peace Society. Well-known pacifist thinkers, for example, Lev Tolstoy, are well represented. Long's notes about each author provide valuable context for his selections. VERDICT This volume will appeal not only to readers with an interest in nonviolence, but alsoto those studying theology and political thought.--Zachary T. Irwin, Pennsylvania State Univ.--Erie
Irwin, Zachary T.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Irwin, Zachary T. "Christian Peace and Nonviolence: A Documentary History." Library Journal, vol. 136, no. 11, 15 June 2011, pp. 93+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A258815281/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5a0c3307. Accessed 15 June 2024.
CHRISTIAN PEACE AND NONVIOLENCE: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY. Edited by Michael G. Long. Foreword by Stanley Hauerwas. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2011. Pp. xx + 348. $40.
The diverse collection in Long's book admirably fills a void in the literature and demonstrates the continuity of Christian nonviolence through history, from its origins in Scripture to the 21st century. The selections include the expected (Origen, Menno Simons, John Howard Yoder), the unexpected (Pelagius, Dwight Moody, and Lucretia Mott), and the downright confounding (Priscilla Cadwallader's prophecy of a divine war against the unrighteous). Positively, the majority of the selections displays a depth of critical analysis that undermines the caricature of pacifism as simplistic and nffive. Readings from Gerrard Winstanley and Ronald J. Sider, for example, explore the interconnections between economic justice and peace, while Vincent Harding and Martin Luther King Jr. examine the injustice of a false peace infected with racism. Similarly, activist Shelley Douglass argues for a peace marked by gender justice, while the Evangelical Environmental Network turns attention toward ecological issues. On the one hand, such readings reflect L.'s own broad understanding of peace and challenge the portrayal of nonviolence as simply "anti-war."
On the other hand, some readings seem to belie any consistency to L.'s selection criteria, especially in Part III, where he includes the decidedly nonpacifist Bartolome de Las Casas and a brief paragraph from Basil of Caesarea augmented by a secondary source on early Christianity, which is odd in a primary-source anthology. L. also includes a lengthy section on monastic humility from the "Rule of St. Benedict," rather than that portion of the Rule discussed in Smaragdus's commentary included a few pages later. This confusion creeps in again in "Part IX: Twenty-first Century," where one wonders whether the intersection of sexual diversity and peace might better be served by something more direct than Soulforce founder Mel White's dinner invitation to Jerry Falwell (304-5). The reader is thus left to grapple with the relevance of some readings with little help from L., who is circumspect about his selection criteria (xix).
Despite these occasional shortcomings, the book is valuable as a unique collection and will be most helpful for undergraduates in history of Christianity and peace studies. Some readers, though, may prefer a more tightly focused anthology.
RYAN P. CUMMING
Loyola University Chicago
Cumming, Ryan P.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 Sage Publications Ltd. (UK)
http://www.ts.mu.edu/
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Cumming, Ryan P. "Christian Peace and Nonviolence: A Documentary History." Theological Studies, vol. 73, no. 4, Dec. 2012, p. 976. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A310517172/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=fb9b2a54. Accessed 15 June 2024.
I MUST RESIST: BAYARD RUSTIN'S LIFE IN LETTERS, Michael G. Long, ed. (San Francisco: City Light Books, 2012) 516 pages, paper, $19.95, ISBN: 9780872865785.
IN THE LAST DECADE or SO there has been a groundswell of works on the late civil rights activist, Bayard Rustin. No less than six biographies--James Haskin's Bayard Rustin: Behind the Scenes of the Civil Rights Movement (1997);Jervis Anderson's Bayard Rustin: Troubles I've Seen (1998); Daniel Levine's Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement (1999); John D'Emilio's Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin (2003); Larry Brimmer's We Are One: The Story of Bayard Rustin (2007); and Jerald Podair's Bayard Rustin: American Dreamer (2008)--a collection of Rustin's writings--Devon Carbado and Tim Weiss, Time on Two Crosses: The Writings of Bayard Rustin (2003); a play--Brian Freeman's Civil Sex (2004); and a documentary film--Nancy Kate and Bennett Singer's, Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin (2010). Despite this bounty of scholarship and creative work on this civil rights icon, there is still a lane swath of the population who has never heard of him. At some point, however, I imagine he will be "rediscovered" and become a canonical figure in the history of the fight for equality of African Americans.
In I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin's Letters historian Michael G. Long has collected and edited an enormous body of Rustin's letters across forty-five years that gives the reader insight into Rustin's life that even his biographers have not been able to capture. This is namely the case because the epistolary form as opposed to the biographical gives the reader more of a sense of Rustin's "voice" as well as the contradictions and complexities of who he was as a political figure. These letters provide insight into Rustin as a brilliant strategist and organizer--not just of the 1963 March on Washington, for which most people know him, but also his involvement in other major civil and human rights protests, marches, boycotts, and civil disobedience events in the United States and around the world. These include Iris involvement in the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, his leadership at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration--two events that framed the beginning of the Civil Rights movement and solidified him as the "right-hand man" of Martin Luther King, Jr. Indeed, these letters bear out that it was Rustin who was the ghostwriter on many of King's letters, memos, and speeches. The letters also reflect over and over how committed Rustin was to spirituality and pacifism (based on his Quaker upbringing) and his desire to infuse the movement with that same sensibility.
THE BOOK'S TWENTY CHAPTERS and close to 300 letters are ordered thematically and chronologically; there is also an introduction. Long also includes letters and FBI correspondences written to and about Rustin, which provide further context and historical evidence of the kind of person he was and the kind of person people perceived him to be. Long provides a brief introduction to each letter that explains its content, or, in some cases, he provides lengthier introductions that are more like short history lessons that bolster the historical context. The chapter topics range from Rustin's early anti-war stance and letters from prison in the early 1940s, to letters to King and others in the 1950s and letters (of which there are few) about gay rights in the 1980s.
A few chapters contain letters that are worth noting. Chapter One, "War Is Wrong," includes a letter that Rustin wrote to the New York Monthly Meeting, a Quaker organization in Manhattan. In that letter he admonishes the group not to "assist the government in making men into efficient soldiers" (2). It is also where Rustin repeats, in redacted and revised form, a slogan that he credits to Patrick Malin, a professor at Swarthmore at the time: "Speak the truth to power." Chapter Two, "One Ought to Resist the Entire System," contains remarkable letters Rustin wrote while incarcerated at the Ashland Federal Correctional Institution in Kentucky in 1944. One letter in particular to the warden, R. P. Hagerman, demonstrates Rustin's embodiment of "speaking truth to power," for he lays out eleven points for the warden to consider regarding racial segregation in the federal correctional institution--a very risky thing to do in 1940s Kentucky, or anywhere for that matter. Chapter Eight, "Let Us Resist With Our Whole Beings," contains a letter to a Carl Geider about his thoughts on interracial marriage, fifteen years before the 1967 Loving vs. Virginia Supreme Court case. What is striking about Rustin's thoughts is how they could easily be used as an argument to support the current fight to recognize gay marriage. Rustin writes: "Marriage is an individual matter. I have no right to advocate that one marry anyone else, and I have no right to forbid by my action anyone's marrying a person of his choice. And thus I am unalterably opposed to laws in many states ... forbidding interracial marriage" (147).
ONE ASTONISHING THING about Rustin's collection of letters is the fact that he wrote to every American president in his adult life--from Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, Kennedy and Johnson ha his younger life to Ford, Carter, and Reagan while an older man. The themes of these letters range from anti-war and civil rights to pleading the case for the poor. In on particular letter to John E Kennedy in 1962, Rustin asks the president to intervene on behalf of an elderly "conscientious objector" who had stopped paying taxes after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and whose social security payments were stopped as a result. In the closing paragraph of the letter, Rustin writes:
I am extremely sorry, to have had to burden you with
this problem, but I am certain that you would want to
know of the hardship that the government's decision
has made for a very elderly man who is not in good
health and who has few years yet to five. (252)
Also remarkable is that there are no letters that mention Kennedy's assassination in November 1963.
Those who do know the story of Bayard Rustin are usually aware of the scandals that dogged his life around two issues: being homosexual and being affiliated with the Communist Party, the latter of which Rustin often denied. The letters Rustin penned and those penned about him all restage this controversy in startling detail and demonstrate the ways in which he tried to negotiate his sexual identity and political affiliations with his commitment to the struggle for civil and equal rights and his relationships with his political peers, particularly Martin Luther King, Jr. What is interesting about both of these issues is that, while the drama around Bayard's sexuality, including his multiple arrests for "perversion," and the tension with King around these issues is front and center, there are no letters to lovers included in the volume. This strikes me as odd given Brian Freeman's play, Civil Sex, which is based in part, on interviews with Rustin's former lovers. More interesting still, is the absence of letters between Rustin and James Baldwin, who was a known friend and who about whom there were rumors that Rustin saved him from more than one "rough trade" sexual encounter. Indeed, both men had "complicated" relationships with their sexuality and racial identity. This latter point is revealed in a letter to black gay writer, Joseph Beam, who had invited Rustin to be a part of the now canonical anthology, In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology. In declining the invitation, Rustin tells Beam, "I fundamentally consider sexual orientation to be a private matter. As such, it has not been a factor which has greatly influenced my role as an activist" (461). But as Long points out, just eight days later, Rustin sent a letter to the mayor of New York, Ed Koch, imploring him not to allow amendments to a recently passed Gay Rights Bill.
DESPITE THE ABSENCE of letters that would have provided a glimpse into the more intimate aspects of his fife (perhaps such letters do not exist, given Rustin's thoughts about keeping his sexuality a private matter) I Must Resist is an important contribution to Rustin scholarship. Long does an exemplary job of culling a dizzying array of correspondences between Rustin and various correspondents that provide a three-dimensional portrait of a figure who, despite being an integral part of the history of African Americans' struggle for equality, still gets left in the shadows.
Works Cited
Anderson, Jervis, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I've Seen (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
Brimmer, Larry, We Are One: The Story of Bayard Rustin (Honesville, PA: Boyds Mill Press, 2007).
Carbado, Devon and Tim Weiss, T/me on Two Crosses: The Writings of Bayard Rustin (San Francisco: Cleis, 2003).
D'Emilio, John, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin (New York: Free Press, 2003).
Freeman, Brian, Civil Sex. In The Fire This Time: African American Plays for the 21st Century, eds. Harry J. Elam and Robert Alexander (New York: Theater Communications Group, 2004).
Haskin, James, Bayard Rustin: Behind the Scenes of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Hyperion, 1997).
Kate, Nancy D., and Bennett Singer, directors, Brother Outsider: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin. Passion River, 2010. DVD.
Levine, Daniel, Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement (Newark: Rutgers University Press, 1999).
Podair, Jerald, Bayard Rustin: American Dreamer (Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 2008).
Johnson, E. Patrick
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 Taylor & Francis Group LLC
http://www.theblackscholar.org/
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Johnson, E. Patrick. "I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin's Life in Letters." The Black Scholar, vol. 42, no. 3-4, fall-winter 2012, pp. 62+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A338415943/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3d8e39cf. Accessed 15 June 2024.
Marshalling Justice: The Early Civil Rights Letters of Thurgood Marshall
Edited by Michael G. Long
This fascinating volume, edited by religion and politics scholar Michael G. Long, brings to life a forgotten chapter of the civil rights movement through the letters of a man known for having served as the lead attorney on the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, as well as his 24 years as a liberal lion on the Supreme Court. This compilation of approximately 200 letters ends in 1957, when Marshall left the NAACP, and focuses on his work as a young attorney and as the NAACP's chief counsel during the World War II era. The correspondence reveals the wide-ranging activities of a relentless reformer who took on Jim Crow and all the ugly manifestations of a system that relegated African Americans to secondclass citizenship.
Marshall was no Don Quixote tilting at windmills; a foreword by Derrick Bell and an introduction by Long convincingly show just how successful he was in the courtroom and in laying the groundwork for the modern civil rights movement that emerged under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1950s. Beginning in the mid-1930s, Marshall won case after case. He was especially interested in attacking segregated education, a crusade that culminated in 1954 with his famous Supreme Court victory. These letters tell that story, and more. (Amistad, 448 pages, $27.99)
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Please note: Illustration(s) are not available due to copyright restrictions.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 American Heritage Publishing
http://www.americanheritage.com/
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"Marshalling Justice: The Early Civil Rights Letters of Thurgood Marshall." American Heritage, vol. 61, no. 1, spring 2011, p. 68. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A259679757/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=4eaa6ca3. Accessed 15 June 2024.
Long, Michael G. MARSHALLING JUSTICE Amistad/HarperCollins (Adult Nonfiction) $27.99 1, 18 ISBN: 978-0-06-198518-8
Long (Religious Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies/Elizabethtown Coll.; Billy Graham and the Beloved Community: America's Evangelist and the Dream of Martin Luther King, Jr., 2006, etc.) presents an inspiring account of Thurgood Marshall's work as a civil-rights activist.
As the NAACP's leading lawyer between 1934 and 1957, the author writes, Marshall was "known to everyday blacks as 'Mr. Civil Rights,' struggl[ing] day and night against racial discrimination and segregation in schools, transportation, the military, businesses, voting booths, courtrooms, and neighborhoods." According to Long, Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as "the two greatest civil rights leaders in the history of the United States." The approximately 200 letters and memoranda reproduced here give a comprehensive overview of Marshall's role in "galvanizing the civil rights movement" and paving the way for the freedom riders. While Marshall's 1954 victory against segregated schools in Brown v. the Board of Education, which he argued before the Supreme Court, and his defense of Rosa Parks in the Montgomery bus boycott were historic legal victories, he worked tirelessly on behalf of ordinary black people who faced lynch mobs, police brutality, biased juries and sentencing to chain gangs for misdemeanors and minor offenses. Although he was primarily a litigator before becoming a judge, he also recognized the importance of grass-roots action when legal action failed-e.g., in 1937, after the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal on behalf of the Scottsboro Boys (nine African-American youths wrongly convicted of rape and sentenced to be executed), Marshall suggested that a mothers' march be organized to support an appeal for clemency. However, writes Long, he remained wary of the role of "African American militants and individuals with leftist leanings."
A nuanced treatment of a towering figure.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Long, Michael G.: MARSHALLING JUSTICE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Oct. 2010. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A256562229/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=4b83c8f1. Accessed 15 June 2024.
Long, Michael G. FIRST CLASS CITIZENSHIP Times/Henry Holt (Adult NONFICTION) $26 Oct. 2, 2007 ISBN: 978-0-8050-8710-9
Correspondence on social issues to and from the former Brooklyn Dodger who broke the race barrier in major league baseball.
Editor Long (Religious Studies/Elizabethtown College; God and Country?: Diverse Perspectives on Christianity and Patriotism, 2007, etc.) discovered the core of this collection while researching Richard Nixon, a frequent Robinson correspondent. Believing he'd found something significant, Long rounded up other letters from elsewhere and assembled this affectionate assortment, which reveals as much about Robinson and his correspondents as it does about the United States in the period it spans (1946-1972). Robinson knew racial bigotry intimately and had suffered for it grievously, but as he left baseball and moved into a political world percolating with racial turmoil, he found himself initially attracted to the GOP, particularly as exemplified by Nixon and Nelson Rockefeller. Their exchanges tend to be made with one eye on the history books. In March 1957, for example, Nixon wrote, "It is a privilege to be working along with someone like yourself to achieve the important objective of guaranteed equal opportunity for all Americans." At first, Robinson mistrusted both John and Robert Kennedy (oddly, nothing appears here about their assassinations); he later warmed to both, however, as he cooled toward Nixon and Rockefeller. He generally supported the war in Vietnam, where his son was wounded in action, and wrote a long letter chiding Martin Luther King Jr. for his anti-war position. Robinson had a fragile, uneasy relationship with King, but it was cordial compared to his interactions with NAACP head Roy Wilkins and fire-breathing radical Malcolm X. It's disturbing to read unctuous letters from white politicos panting for black votes and trying to co-opt Robinson--troubling, too, to realize that many of the baseball hero's letters and virtually all of his syndicated newspaper columns (some reproduced here) were ghostwritten.
Raises more questions than it answers about a courageous man.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2007 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Long, Michael G.: FIRST CLASS CITIZENSHIP." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Aug. 2007. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A169083176/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=f3dc3fa6. Accessed 15 June 2024.
Dr. Michael G. Long has spent his career studying the history of protests in America and how those who dared to take a stand have effected major, lasting changes in our nation. Long's new middle grade book, Kids on the March, focuses on the role children have played in these political events, shining the spotlight on fifteen young people who made a difference by standing up for what they thought was right. "Kids have been a part of every major social protest," says Long. "It's fascinating that these brave young people and their contributions to U.S. history have been ignored, underreported, and understudied for so long."
Long, a former associate professor of Religious Studies and Peace & Conflict Studies at Elizabethtown College, has written for publications such as The Los Angeles Times and USA Today and has published numerous books for adults about protest movements, politics, civil rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and religion. He's especially interested in sharing the stories of those who have been overlooked and underappreciated. His book titles include Troublemaker for Justice: The Story of Bayard Rustin, the Man Behind the March on Washington and We the Resistance: Documenting a History of Nonviolent Protest in the United States.
While researching, Long was surprised by the number of children he saw in photographs of marches and couldn't help wondering about them. "Who were they?" says Long. "What were their lives like? How did they get there? Did their parents bring them? Did they go alone? What was so important to them that they felt compelled to protest?" This curiosity led to Long writing Kids on the March. "This book is the first of its kind," says Long. "It's a pioneering book in the sense that it gives kids what they deserve and pays attention to the roles they've played in U.S. protest history. To the best of my knowledge, no one else has done this."
Kids on the March introduces readers to young agents of change spanning from the turn of the twentieth century to the Civil Rights era to today. Long writes about Barbara Johns, who was just 15 in 1953 when she organized a strike at her all-black high school to protest the subpar conditions there. Her efforts are considered one of the first milestones in the movement to desegregate schools. Long also touches on the recent Black Lives Matter movement, highlighting the activism of 16-year-old Shayna Avery and her friends who responded to George Floyd's death in 2020 with a "Stand with Black Youth" march.
With Kids on the March, Long furthers his passion to tell the stories of those whose efforts are largely forgotten. "By focusing on kids, I can help amplify voices that have been marginalized, and that's very important to me," he says. "There was a time in my own life when my friends and I spoke out about an injustice that was directed towards us. We told adults about it and while they listened to us, they didn't do anything about it. In fact, they believed the person who was carrying on the injustice, and that really hurt. And when I look back on it, it still does. And that has given me fuel for my life. That's what makes me pay attention to people whose voices have been silenced and ignored."
Kids on the March is illustrated with historical and contemporary photographs. "I love the thought of kids opening the book and seeing pictures of kids protesting and imagining themselves there," says Long. "Photos not only evoke the past and take us there, but they push us into the future where we can imagine ourselves doing the same thing." The book also includes tips for kids who want to protest, including how to plan an event and what to do after the protest is over. "I hope the book is inspiring and instructive," says Long. "I hope it educates kids on how to take those emotions they have of feeling wronged and turn them into constructive actions."
According to Long, today's technologically savvy young people bring a unique skill set to any protests they're involved in. "One thing I appreciate is how social media engineered by kids has played such a major role to drawing attention to injustices in neighborhoods and communities," says Long. "Kids have played a leading role in using various social media platforms to educate others about injustice. It's amazing to me that kids have been able to organize a large protest in a matter of hours, using social media. It's beautiful, really. Kids are using tools to call together groups of people for action in a way that we never could have imagined when I was a kid."
It was a challenge for Long to narrow down which young activists to highlight in Kids on the March. "Kids are often viewed as props at protests," says Long. "They're seen as passive props that have been dragged to the protests by their parents. But when I've studied kids at protests, I've found very forceful personalities. These kids are real agents for change. They're there because they fiercely believe in something and want to do something about it, whatever that cause may be. They want to change the world."
In determining which young people to write about, Long says he tried to select kids involved with a variety of lesser and more well-known causes. "It wasn't easy," he says. "I put in some of the major events from history, but I wanted to include some that not a lot of people know about." If Long has one regret about Kids on the March, it's that he couldn't include all the stories he wanted to share. In particular, he wishes he could have included more about young people involved in various LGBTQ+ and in disability protests. "I guess I just need to keep writing," he says. "And kids need to keep protesting."
For Long, Kids on the March is an opportunity to promulgate the stories of these young activists and the fortitude they've shown in the face of adversity in the hopes that other young people will be moved enough to pick up their mantle and carry it forward. "I'm in awe of these young people," Long says. "I'm moved by the stories of kids who have gone through absolutely horrific situations and have done their best to change the world around them when adults failed them."
In his efforts to celebrate these young activists and encourage others to follow in their footsteps, Long has discovered a valuable takeaway. "We often think of kids as vessels to pour lessons into," he says. "We often think of them as things to teach. But over the course of writing this book, I came to realize that they're truly forces of love and wisdom."
For more information about Kids on the March, visit workman.com/products/kids-on-the-march.
by Melissa Fales
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 Story Monsters LLC
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Fales, Melissa. "MICHAEL G. LONG: PENS THE POWERFUL STORIES OF KID-LED PROTESTS IN AMERICA." Story Monsters Ink, Apr. 2021, pp. 8+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A657991830/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=c22c1912. Accessed 15 June 2024.
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TONY COX, host:
I'm Tony Cox and this is NEWS & NOTES.
We know Jackie Robinson as Major League Baseball's first black player, a Hall of Famer, who stood as a symbol of integration and civil rights. But after retirement, Robinson set out to make his pen as mighty as his bat ever was. Robinson wrote letters and corresponded with many of the greatest players in the civil rights arena.
Here is a bit of a letter to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., May 13th, 1967.
Unidentified Man #1: (Reading) Dear Martin, in my book, you have always been the greatest civil rights mastermind and leader which the movement has ever had. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel you are utterly on the wrong track in your stand on Vietnam. I'm confused because I respect you deeply. But I also love this imperfect country. I respectfully ask you to answer this open letter and give me your own point of view - with the deepest regard and the deepest confusion.
COX: The civil rights letters of Jackie Robinson are compiled in a new book called, "First Class Citizenship." It's edited by Michael Long.
Mr. MICHAEL LONG (Editor, "First Class Citizenship: The Civil Rights Letters of Jackie Robinson"): I discovered that Jackie Robinson had written lots of letters to lots of leaders: everybody from Ike Eisenhower to Malcolm X, from John Kennedy to Martin Luther King.
COX: We know that he was a ferocious competitor, keeping his head in the game and ignoring the racial indignities that were spewed his way while he was integrating Major League Baseball. In 1960, though, we find a retired Jackie Robinson working as a columnist for the New York Post, and it was during an election year. Talk, if you will, about two things: one, this informal civil rights leader and how that insinuated his politics.
Mr. LONG: Because he was so committed to establishing first class citizenship for what he would call, my people. And that was his number one commitment. That was his major passion after baseball. And he would frequently say, you know, the baseball years were good. My real passion is in civil rights, and it's for advancing my people, to helping them get in the economic mainstream, helping voting rights to come along. So this was his real major passion after baseball. Now...
COX: Now, that's one of the thing -- let me stop you there to say that's...
Mr. LONG: Sure.
COX: ...one of the things that makes the letters between Jackie Robinson and Richard Nixon, at the time, so compelling reading. I'd like to direct your attention to one letter, in particular, in the book.
Unidentified Man: (Reading) My dear Mr. Nixon, Kennedy has sent to others as he did to me your record pride in 1950. I, too, need answers to negative questions people constantly put at me. Believe me, it is most difficult to answer people who seem to have documentary evidence of what you said or did.
When you withhold positive things, an image isn't easy to erase. But it can be done if you display a warmth, or as much sincerity as you can, regarding the Negro status. Many of my friends have expressed an interest, but the great majority say I don't feel I can go along at the present time. Thanks again. Sincerely yours, Jackie Robinson.
COX: Now, he supported Richard Nixon and got a great deal of flak for that, didn't he?
Mr. LONG: Yes, he did. By the way, Rachel Robinson was non big fan of Richard Nixon either. Nevertheless, Jackie Robinson was very attracted to Richard Nixon. He believed that Nixon made many pro civil rights statements. And indeed, Nixon did. In the early 1950s, he would say things like, every act of discrimination in the United States is like handing the communist a gun. And Robinson ate that up. He loved that because very few politicians were talking like that. And so, he's a big fan of Nixon in 1960. And yes, indeed, he took a lot of flak for it.
COX: Jackie Robinson, through the letters, indicates that his positions changed, also, to some degree, with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Now, here is a letter that was written from Robinson to Lyndon Johnson. And it seems to suggest that Robinson is trying to assuage the fears of Johnson that all blacks are not like Martin Luther King. Here is what it says:
Unidentified Man #1: (Reading) April 18th, 1967. Dear Mr. President, while I am certain your faith has been shaken by the demonstrations against the Vietnam War, I hope the actions of any one individual doesn't make you feel as Vice President Humphrey does -- that Dr. King King's stand will hurt the Civil Rights Movement. There are hundreds of thousands of us at home who are not certain why we are in the war. We feel, however, that you and your staff know what is best, and we are willing to support your effort for an honorable solution to the war. Again, Sir, let me thank you for your domestic stand on civil rights. We need an even firmer stand as the issue becomes more personal and the gap between black and white Americans gets wider. Sincerely yours, Jackie Robinson.
COX: That seems to be a clear split, doesn't it, with King over the issue of the war as he relates it to the President LBJ?
Mr. LONG: That is a clear split. You're right about that, Tony. And if I may back up just a little bit, I don't want to emphasize the split too much because Robinson and King were really heroes to each other. From 1957 on, they're going back and forth, inviting each other to various activities that each was involved in.
King invited Robinson to come to Albany and to come to Birmingham and to chair a campaign to rebuild burned churches, churches that were scorched because of their voting rights efforts.
Robinson and King were really heroes to each other. The split between King and Robinson is real, though. We have to remember that Jackie and Rachel Robinson had a son, Jackie Jr., who was serving in Vietnam. They had an obligation to support their son. And at the same time, Jackie did have questions about the Vietnam War engagement, but he was willing to give a pass to LBJ. He just assumed that the president had information that we didn't have. He also believed that Martin Luther King Jr. was putting too much of the blame on the United States and not enough blame on the Communist.
COX: In contrast, to even the perception of a split between Robinson and King, there is no doubt that there was a very visible and wide split between Malcolm X and Robinson. Jackie Robinson had written very critically about Malcolm X in a newspaper article. And this is Malcolm.
Unidentified Man #2: (Reading) According to the attack you leveled against me and Congressman Powell in your recent column, I must confess that even today you still display the same old speed, the same cunning, and shiftiness - and you are still trying to win the big game for your white boss.
COX: Now in response to that, Jackie Robinson wrote back to Malcolm X a blistering letter. And this is one passage from it.
Unidentified Man #3: (Reading) You mouthed a big and bitter battle, Malcolm, but it's noticeable that your militancy is mainly expressed in Harlem where it is safe.
Mr. LONG: Jackie Robinson was an integrationist; Malcolm X was not. Malcolm X favored the use of any means necessary to rectify the injustices against African-Americans; Jackie Robinson did not. In this sense, he was just like King. He favored nonviolence in the Civil Rights Movement here in the United States. And he felt as if Malcolm X was misleading the masses into thinking that -- of that black separate state is a possibility. But you're right, there is no love lost at all between these two.
COX: Now, my producer and I really did enjoy reading these various letters back and forth, but I do have a question because not all the letters were actually written by Jackie Robinson himself, were they?
Mr. LONG: Right. A lot of them were. And Rachel has images in her head of Jackie Robinson sitting down at the table and at the desk and writing these letters. I talked with her about that briefly. Nevertheless, Robinson did, on occasion, use ghostwriters. They include Alfred Duckett and Evelyn Cunningham, formerly of the Pittsburgh Courier and a few others, and they would help him craft the letters. And these were professional writers who really helped give form and shape to Robinson's thoughts. And while they did help him craft his letters, those thoughts are uniquely Jackie Robinson's. So let's keep that in mind as well.
COX: A very nice job. Thank you very much for coming, Michael. We appreciate it.
Mr. LONG: Tony, it's my pleasure. Thank you very much.
COX: Michael G. Long has edited the civil rights letters of Jackie Robinson. The book is called "First Class Citizenship."
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"Jackie Robinson Knew Power of the Pen." News & Notes, 22 Jan. 2008, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A173695629/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=07f70031. Accessed 15 June 2024.