An unflinching look at America’s disengagement with civil rights.
The U.S. Civil Rights Commission’s former chairperson cheers what it once was and laments what it has become.
Berry (American Social Thought/Univ. of Pennsylvania; My Face is Black is True, 2005, etc.) set out to document the commission rather than write a memoir of her time as a member. Still, the book works best when it combines her personal story with the institution’s history. Amid worsening racial conflict, the Civil Rights Act of 1957 established the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights as an independent, bipartisan fact-finding agency with the power to subpoena. Intended only as temporary window-dressing for the Eisenhower administration, the commission resolutely stuck around and established itself as the nation’s conscience on civil rights. Initially focused on the plight of African-Americans in the South, it produced reports and recommendations that drove the key civil-rights legislation of the mid-’60s. It took on discrimination more broadly in the ’70s, battling the Nixon administration along the way. Although the 1976 election of Jimmy Carter promised a new era of cooperation, the commission remained underappreciated. Appointed by Carter in 1980, Berry soon faced President Reagan’s attempts to pack the committee with his own supporters. She was fired in 1983, then reinstated under pressure, although Reagan continued to assault the commission’s independence. Civil-rights advocates were resilient enough to secure passage of the Disabilities Act of 1990 and the Civil Rights Act of 1991. President Clinton appointed Berry chairperson of the commission in 1993. Even with minimal funding, her commission produced numerous reports and recommendations, and investigated the voting-rights violations that occurred in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. In 2004, however, the White House and Congress united to undermine the commission once again, and President Bush effectively fired Berry that year. At that point, she decided to write this book. Both a history and a call for a new offensive against discrimination, it ends by recommending a revitalized commission on civil and human rights.
An unflinching look at America’s disengagement with civil rights.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-307-26320-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
