A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.

16–17 May 2015

Recommended reading on civil rights and race riots

The fires are out in Baltimore, and the rioters are back in their homes, but the anger and tensions that exploded after Freddie Gray’s death at the hands of that city’s brutal and racist police department remain. And not just in Baltimore.

More histories on civil rights and race relations exist than can be read in a person’s lifetime. There are numerous official reports, academic studies, biographies, autobiographies, memoirs. In recent years, as official documents have been declassified, new and interesting histories have emerged. Two recent histories and one half-century-old official report may interest you:

A Nation on Fire: American in the Wake of the King Assassination. By Clay Risen, 2009. Washington, D.C., resembled a banana republic’s capital during a coup d’état. The national guard was federalized, and U.S. Army units trained to suppress domestic insurrections were flown to Washington from as far away as Colorado. At the entrance to the White House there were machine gun emplacements. Snipers were stationed at the Capitol. Thousands of rioters, when they weren’t looting, set hundreds of buildings ablaze. The flames’ yellow glow and tall columns of black smoke were visible from the White House. And Washington, D.C., was not the only city on fire. New copies of Risen’s book are available for just a few dollars from many of Amazon’s affiliates.

The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation. By Gene Roberts and Hank Kilbanoff, 2007. Reporting on the civil rights movement during the 1950s and 1960s was not just exciting, it was downright dangerous. This reads more like a thriller, so well is it written, but it all happened. In fact, if you’re of my generation, you read about it in your newspapers and watched it in grainy black-and-white on your television sets. Available in paperback and on Kindle, but I recommend obtaining the printed book.

Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (PDF, 11.4 MB), generally known as the Kerner Commission Report. Released 29 February 1968. President Lyndon Johnson established the commission to determine the causes of the deadly race riots in 1967. The commission concluded that “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.” Forty-seven years later that conclusion still holds true in Baltimore and probably in many other places.