WE SHALL OVERCOME

It is not difficult to guess from this title what the subject will be; the words are from the well-known integration song: ""Black and white together, we shall overcome, someday."" Dorman, of the Long Island, New York, newspaper Newsday, is a member of an informal reporters' group known as Southern Correspondents on Racial Equality Wars, familiarly reduced to its bureaucratic anagram, SCREW. He has been covering racial demonstrations, South and North, since the first Freedom Ride days. By a fluke, he was the first reporter on the Ole Miss campus the day of the shooting of the correspondent for Agence France-Presse, and he often pulled the right straw when lots were drawn to compose a pool of news forces. He was also privy to much information on behind-the-scenes maneuverings of the Justice Department. Therefore, he is able to give eyewitness accounts of the principal integration stories that have made headlines in the 'Sixties. There are three chapters on James Meredith and Cleve McDowell at Ole Miss, a chapter each on desegregation at Clemson and the University of Alabama, the Birmingham tragedy, and the deaths of Medgar Evers and William Moore, and general commentary on various federal-government actions to implement legislative and legal decisions on racial matters. Dorman is an accomplished reporter, and his material hangs together when he lets the facts speak for themselves; his reflections on the issues involved are perhaps less effectively presented.