ANOTHER SOJOURNER LOOKING FOR TRUTH

A firsthand account of the struggle for social justice.

Historian Brown (b. 1948) makes her book debut with a candid memoir of a lifetime involved in civil rights activism. The author grew up in a Black, middle-class, politically engaged family in Charleston, South Carolina, where her father was a prominent member of the local branch of the NAACP. Brown rode at the back of buses, tried on shoes apart from white customers, and sat in a different waiting room in doctors’ offices. Twice when she was a child, the safety of her home was shaken when “Klan-type antagonists threw flaming crosses onto our front steps.” Not surprisingly, the state balked at desegregating public schools, which came to affect Brown directly when she became the first student to integrate her high school. There were bomb threats during her first days, and students refused to walk near her in the halls. Although some of the Jewish students were welcoming, most classmates—and some teachers—ignored or insulted her. “The responsibility of ‘representing the race’ was the most important that I had ever taken on,” she writes. But the psychological pressure was debilitating. Brown’s journey to find her identity outside of a familiar setting took her to Emerson College, where she discovered that racism transcended geography. She returned south to attend Spelman College, always seeking opportunities for direct action. After earning a doctorate in history, she embarked on a long teaching career. After leaving the confines of academia, she worked for the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, and she continues to support systemic change for marginalized people. “I have lost faith in appealing to conscience and morality as the galvanizing forces for overcoming bigotry,” Brown writes, “although I retain a fervid moral code by which I live.”

Vivid testimony from an energetic activist.