SOUNDS OF THE STRUGGLE: Persons and Perspectives in Civil Rights

Lincoln, author of The Black Muslim in America and faculty member at Union Theological Seminary, has brought together eighteen essays dealing with American Negroes' struggle for equality. Lincoln's interests in ethics, organized religion, and history are combined in a sometimes uneven, always earnest manner. Four of the chapters deal directly with the Muslims, scoring their escapism while underlining their significant, if frustrated, protest. As a moralist, Lincoln enjoins Americans to confront the past and present more energetically; as a sociologist, he maintains that the barbarous and irrational features of our system can be eliminated only by the complete integration of the disparate cultures now rending the social fabric. There are more critics now than there were when these were first written (Jonathan Kozol as well as Ivanhoe Donaldson) who question whether white middle-class culture is worth integrating into; Lincoln does not meet them head-on, and as usual he will convince, for the most part, the already-convinced; but his work represents some of the best among ""moderate"" opinions.