STEP BY STEP

The fight for civil rights, for human decency, must soon register decisive victories, or all will suffer."" From this sense of urgency comes a quiet, concise book, ready and able to stimulate and instruct others who would like to take a more active part in civil rights work. In 1963, the students and faculty of Cornell University joined with townspeople in Ithaca, New York to form a committee ""for Free and Fair Elections in Fayette County, Tennessee,"" a pre-industrial community burdened with the economics of cheap agricultural labor, where the Negro-white ratio was 2-1 and the sociological climate was more Mississippi than Tennessee. Working with two potential candidates, they set out to raise funds at home, then to set in motion a project in the field in the summer of 1964. They relate the steps taken toward registering Negroes to defeat the previously all-white primary; the situation before, on and after the day at the polls. They were appalled by the ""apparent indifference to enforcement of the law by, of all agencies, the Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division,"" upon their report of the election. An assessment of past performance and response and plans for the coming summer leads to the final questions, made pertinent by all that has come before: ""If not now, when? If not you, who?"" The appendix, listing organizations and projects seeking money and people, paves the way to participation. Especially directed at students, a campus must.