THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

In an era saturated by media, our collective memory is formed by visual images. The historical images collected here by photographer and writer Kasher in The Civil Rights Movement ($35.00; Oct. 1996; ISBN 0-7892-0123-2) are necessary reminders, in a time of white backlash, of just how bitter and bloody and heroic the battle for civil rights was. From Gordon Parks, Dan Weiner, and other photographic chroniclers of the era, we see the Little Rock Nine integrating Central High, surrounded by National Guardsmen; a policeman holding a protestor in a chokehold; buses running empty during the Montgomery bus boycott while blacks crowd the street corners waiting for rides. These aren't pretty pictures, but collectively, and with Kasher's text, they tell a central—perhaps the central—story of midcentury America.