A potent, emboldening expansion of what it looks like to fight for justice.
A corrective to the over-rendered, male-oriented portrayal of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
In the public imagination, the August 28, 1963, march and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech have become singularly defining within civil rights history. In fact, that day was something more like a comma, a visible, eloquent pause amid decades of actions, often led by women. With a strong narrative voice, an academic’s conscientiousness, and an activist’s sensibility, Chatelain (Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, 2020) reintroduces the women meant to be honored by the day’s “Tribute to Negro Women Fighters for Freedom.” This cohort included not only icons like Rosa Parks and Josephine Baker, to which the author adds new complexity, but also lesser-known figures like Gloria Richardson and Eva Jessye. The “Tribute” offered that day amounted to little more than awkward lip service, “embarrassing, insulting…haphazard,” with several of its intended honorees missing from the march. Chatelain grants these heroines their due, as individuals drawn to the movement for their own reasons, with their own realizations of the impact of the color of their skin, their own ambitions and agendas. In providing fullness for multiple characters, timelines and sequencing can become confusing, and the insidious, systemic nature of sexism within the Civil Rights Movement fades behind personal slights. Nevertheless, the author’s text issues a challenge to a clean and easy arc toward justice, while highlighting the strategic efforts of women at the helm of everything from the Freedom Rides to Black cultural milestones. These efforts, the work of the women she writes about—and thus subject to infighting, judgment, embellishment, and diverging priorities—sit just as firmly at the root of “sustained political action” as those remembered in mainstream history books. Reviving the stories of these women, Chatelain infuses tired ideas of resistance and revolution with the spirit necessary for new iterations of moral appeals to power.
A potent, emboldening expansion of what it looks like to fight for justice.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9780553387254
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
A welcome new version of a publication that is no less important now than it was in 1967.
A timely distilled version of the powerful report on racism in the U.S.
Created by Lyndon Johnson’s executive order in 1967, the Kerner Commission was convened in response to inner-city riots in cities like Newark and Detroit, and its findings have renewed relevance in the wake of the George Floyd verdict and other recent police brutality cases. The report, named for Otto Kerner, the chairman of the commission and then governor of Illinois, explored the systemic reasons why an “apocalyptic fury” broke out that summer even in the wake of the passage of significant civil rights and voting acts—a response with striking echoes in recent events across the country. In this edited and contextualized version, New Yorker staff writer Cobb, with the assistance of Guariglia, capably demonstrates the continued relevance and prescience of the commission’s findings on institutionalized discriminatory policies in housing, education, employment, and the media. The commission was not the first to address racial violence in the century, and it would not be the last, but the bipartisan group of 11 members—including two Blacks and one woman—was impressively thorough in its investigation of the complex overarching social and economic issues at play. “The members were not seeking to understand a singular incident of disorder,” writes Cobb, “but the phenomenon of rioting itself.” Johnson wanted to know what happened, why it happened, and what could be done so it doesn’t happen “again and again.” Of course, it has happened again and again, and many of the report’s recommendations remain unimplemented. This version of the landmark report features a superb introduction by Cobb and a closing section of frequently asked questions—e.g., “How come nothing has been done about these problems?” The book contains plenty of fodder for crucial national conversations and many excellent ideas for much-needed reforms that could be put into place now.
A welcome new version of a publication that is no less important now than it was in 1967.Pub Date: July 27, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63149-892-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fiery, eloquent call to action for White men who want to be on the right side of history.
A Black man speaks hard truths to White men about their failure to dismantle systemic racism.
A “child of the Black bourgeoisie,” journalist Ross first learned “the shadow history of Black revolutionary struggle” in college. He accepted that he “directly benefited from the struggle that generations of Black folks had died in the name of, yet I wasn’t doing anything to help those who hadn’t benefited.” The author calls the White men of his generation, Gen X, to also recognize their complicity and miseducation. “We were fed cherry-picked narratives that confirmed the worthlessness of Black life,” he writes, “The euphemistic ‘culture of poverty,’ not systemic oppression, was to blame for the conditions in which so many Black people lived.” The story that White people have been told about Black people is “missing a major chapter,” and Ross thoroughly elucidates that chapter with a sweeping deep dive into decades of American social history and politics that is at once personal, compelling, and damning. Through a series of well-crafted personal letters, the author advises White men to check their motivations and “interrogate the allegedly self-evident, ‘commonsense’ values and beliefs” that perpetuate inequality and allow them to remain blissfully unaware of the insidiousness of racism and the ways they benefit from it. Ross condemns the “pathological unwillingness to connect the past with the present” and boldly avoids the comfortable “both sides” rhetoric that makes anti-racism work more palatable to White people. “It is on you,” he writes, “to challenge the color-blind narratives your parents peddle.” The letters are consistently compelling, covering wide ground that includes the broken criminal justice system, gentrification, and the problem with framing equity work as “charity.” Finally, Ross offers practical guidance and solutions for White men to employ at work, in their communities, and within themselves. Pair this one with Emmanuel Acho’s Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man.
A fiery, eloquent call to action for White men who want to be on the right side of history.Pub Date: June 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-27683-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
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