Many American Dreams Deferred

"Young men and women roamed the desolate blocks--slowly going nowhere. Others hung out on corners with the trash swirling about their feet--hungry, jobless, and sullen with defeat. Harlem, a prison of crumbling squares, seemed to be sinking into itself. Its inhabitants were a long way from the promise of the American dream."--Gordon Parks, photographer/film director/author, from his book, To Smile in Autumn: A Memoir (W.W. Norton, 1979), Page 180.

The young people Gordon Parks witnessed in Harlem were among the many whose American dreams, if they had any, were deferred.

Books To Read In A Troubled Time

It's time to dust off our copies of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (William Shirer), 1984 (George Orwell), Farenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury), Lord of the Flies (William Golding), The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood), and other dystopian books. They will help us cope with the dark, far right- leaning days ahead. And, I hope, they will motivate us to find ways to overcome them.

If you don't own a copy of these books, visit your local independent bookstore or the public library.

Books On Race And Racism

In light of all the discussions on television, radio, in the print media, and online regarding racism, white privilege, social inequality, police brutality toward people of color, etc., I picked out the following six books from my bookshelves that I plan to read. It is my hope that they will be food for thought on race and race relations.

1. The Rage of a Privileged Class: Why Are Middle Class Blacks Angry? Why Should America Care? by Ellis Cose (HarperCollins, 1993).

2. Einstein on Race and Racism by Fred Jerome and Rodger Taylor (Rutgers University Press, 2005).

3. The Coming Race War in America: A Wake-Up Call by Carl T. Rowan (Little, Brown and Company, 1996).

4. Shocking the Conscience: A Reporter's Account of the Civil Rights Movement by Simeon Booker with Carol McCabe Booker (University Press of Mississippi, 2013).

5. The Eyes of Willie McGee: A Tragedy of Race, Sex, and Secrets in the Jim Crow South by Alex Heard (HarperCollins, 2010).

6. Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime by Ron Stallworth (Flatiron Books, 2018). Originally published in 2014 by Police and Fire Publishing. The book was the basis for Spike Lee's film.

The Social Justice Hall Of Fame

The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame by Peter Dreier (Nation Books, 2012) is so engaging, it is hard to put down. (I had the book on reserve at the public library for six months before a copy became available. It was worth the wait. I will probably end up buying my own copy.) Each profile is a brief summary of the life and contributions of individuals dedicated to bringing about progressive social change. These profiles are a great introduction and stepping stone to further study of each progressive person in the book. Among the luminaries profiled are Louis Brandeis, Harvey Milk, Eleanor Roosevelt, W. E. B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, Fiorello LaGuardia, Clarence Darrow, Pete Seeger, and Bayard Rustin.

While going through some of the profiles, I found a factual error in the profile of sociologist C. Wright Mills, author of  The Power Elite. Dreier writes that "In 1952, two left-wing writers, William Gaines and Harvey Kurtzman, launched MAD, a comics magazine of political and social satire that became an instant sensation with the baby-boom generation." The baby-boom generation, which began in 1946, would have been too young to have appreciated MAD. The people more likely to have been its first readers were those born twenty years earlier.

"Each of these 100 profiles can be read separately," writes Dreier, in the introduction, "but it will be quickly apparent that every individual was part of a mosaic of movements for social justice.  ...So it should not be surprising," he continues, "that many of these 100 individuals knew each other, were members of many of the same organizations, and participated in many of the same events."

Dreier admits that "[n]o single list of 100 people can come close to capturing all the figures who deserve a place in the century's Social Justice Hall of Fame."

It will be interesting to see if Dreier puts out a book called The Social Justice Hall of Shame as a companion volume.