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There is both more and less to Alexander Charns's betrayed his principl•s. informed on colleagues, and brief but provocati"e monograph than meetS the eye, lied to his coumry. Charns's attacks arc so umparing more in the sense that his tenacious, patient, lawyerly that readers may wonder about the absence of bal· pursuit of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) ance, nuance, and complexity. \\'hether or not tbc represents a triumph in litigation, discovery, and author has uncovered v.·hat one pre·publication re­ historical sleuthing. The chapter endnotes alone are viewer, Geraldo Rivera (an interesting choice), terms worth the price of the book. There is less, howc\'cr, in "a scandal of historic proportions," this book will keep the sense that revelations of the .J. Edgar Hoovel'-led FOIA administrators occupied for years to come. Federal Bureau of Investigation's half-century of This is a work whose subject demands attention, indiscre1ions. improprieties, and collusion with the dispassionate scrutiny, and vigilance. executive branch may strike some readers as numb­ EUGENE M. TOBIN ingly familiar, disturbingly commonplace, and even H a.mi/Jqn College tantalizingly circumst.antkl. The fact that the prose a1ternates between a pr«i.se, ·well.crafted, brief-like tone and an unfonunate similarity to melodramatic RtcttARD H. K1NG. Civil Righu and till Id.a qf FreeMm. potboilers promising to reveal all creates an uneven New York: Oxford University Press. 1992. Pp. xii, quality that detracts from the book's substantive 269. $35.00. warning• about the fragility of dvil rights and liber­ ties. At his best, Chams's lean prose gracefully eluci­ This book achieves much while promising more. dates son1e complex legaJ issut'S; on other occasions, Attempting to provide "a political-theoretical analysis sarcasm and docudrama are unwelcon1e distractions. of [the ci"il rights mo••cmcnt's) rhetoric and thinking" For readers who may be unfamiliar with FBI Di­ (p. 10), Richard H. King offers some thoughtful rector Hoover's fondness for "black-bag" jobs, "EL­ observations on the ideas of selected black activists of SUR" (electronic surveillance), "June Mail" (fruits of the 1950s and 1960s. He acknowledges the continu­ illegal activities), and confidential "do not file" files, ities be:lween .. the Southern civil rights movement" tlus book should rip away the last remaining vestiges and the "black pride and black consciousness move­ of naivet~ and idealism surrounding the putative ments which appeared in the late 1960s and early separation of powers that Americans presunie exists 1970s" (p. 5), but his understanding and insighL• are between the executive and judicial branches of their more evident regarding the former. Although King government. Other readers more familiar with occasionally usc.s oral history sourcies and includes a abus~ of the Fourth Amendment such as warrantlcss brief discussion of the distinctive experiences of black ea .. esdropping and illegal wiretapping, as well as v.'ornen activist.s. his .study foe.uses mainly on the demonstrated collusion between the FBI and con­ writings and public statement.S of articulate male gressional investigative committees, may conclude political leaders and ideologues. that this compendium of tantalizing and occasionally Richard King devotes two chapters to a sympathetic circumstantial evidence. some of it based on third­ assessment of tl1e ideas of Martin Luther King, Jr., party conversations, undocumentable telephone logs, who "was able to capture the attention, even dc"·otion, and the FSJ's own notoriously inaccurate files, prom­ of black Southerners a.nd then move them to a new ises more than it delivers. place psychologically and politically because what he As in all historical works, there arc winners and said and the way he said it resonated so powerfully losers, onlookers and straw figures, and the names ~'ith their O~' n experience and aspirations" Ip. 88). arc freRamsey Clark, and any restrictions-the liberal definition of ch-ii rights-­ other public servant who refused to exchange in the black leaders have historically struggled to liberate coin of the realm-in.Aucnce peddling and trading on themselvet> from the vnlucs. nttitudes, nnd social rela­ favors-and instead insisted on maintaining the rule tionships associated with racial oppressioo and de· of law. Although jimmy Hoffa and Robert Kennedy pendency. African-American conceptions of free­ mak• cameo appearances, and Lyndon Johnson and dom, the author suggests, extend beyond Isaiah Richard Nixon play supporting roles, true venality is Berlin's concept of negati"e freedom or natural lib­ limited to Hoover and the director'$ closest as50Ciales. erty and are similar to Hannah ..\rendt's notion of and most especially, to Associate justice Abe Fortas, freedom as political action. the quintessential Washington insider. Although this book provides a percepti"e assess­ The man whom Hoover once called a "sniveling ment of a major theme of African-American history. liberal" emerges through the pages of this book as the the book's discussion of King and the early leaders of FBl's and White House's mole extraordinaire, an the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee is unprincipled, unethical, and shallow operative who rnore convincing than its unsympathetic handling of

AMERICAN HISTORICAL REvtr.'v 0cTOBER 1993 1342 Reviews of Books the rise of black powFreedom Summer carries lessons about of violence as a form of political action and psycho­ turning points that a present-minded revisionism logical therapy. In contrast to his extended treatment may illuminate. The introduction concludes with a of Fanon, Richard King has little to say abou1 1he preview of his revisionist thesis: "the real tragedy of ideas of Malcolm X, Amiri Baraka, S1okely Car­ 1he Missis.black power by grass-root$ activists to recruit and train nonhem slogan symbolized a re1urn 10 traditional African­ college volunteers; 1he murders of James Chaney, American thought. Andrew Goodman, and Michael S<:hwerner; and th• King concludes with the observation that "'we have climactic fight O\'Cr seating the Mississippi Freedorn yet to find an appropriate vocabulary 10 describe the Democra1ic Party (MFDP) delegation at the Demo­ civil rights movement" (p. 201). but he, like many cratic national convention in Atlantic City. Mills tells other scholars. fails 10 recognize 1he implications of the story well, concentrating on the internal debate his own insights about the centrality of freedom as a over civil rights goals and strategy and generally concept in modem black freedom struggles. Scholars avoiding distractions (including interraciaJ sex). have rarely broadened their studies of mod•m Afri­ The clarity of Mills's argument becomes confused, can-American political thought to t-ncompass the howe,.er, in his crucial chapier on the MFDP chal­ broad range of black freedom struggles of the 1950s lenge in Adantic City. At first Mills seBayard Rustin, Roy Wilkins, Joseph Rauh, and insufficient attention to the constant interaction be­ Allard Lowenstein that the compromise offered by tween northern and southern black militancy or to President Johnson's forcrs would maintain national the creati"e tension that has always existed between party unity against Barry Goldwater and brea.k the racial separatism and civil rights advocacy as themes segregationiSI hold on the party in Mississippi (which of African-American politics. This study is an impor­ it did). The liberal defenders of the compromise tant critique ofconventional liberalism informed by a argued tha1 1he MFDP was so isolated and trauma­ body of modern African-American political though• tized by racial terror in Mississippi 1hat ii could not that has yet to be comprehended In a single scholarly compr~hend the nature of the Ameri<:an political work. system and was unable to recogniu its own victory. As CUVBORNE CARSON Lowenstein observed, SNCC was polarizing toward a Stanford Univmity re,·olutionary reductionism that alienated its allies: "You're •ither a true believer or a sellout" (p. 160). Mills then appears 10 shift, however, to agree with NICOLAUS M tLl..S. Lifte a Holy CrusadL: Mis.U.ippi Sob ~foses, Fannie Lou Hamer, James Forman, 1964-The Turnmg ef th< Civil Rig/us Mouement in Cleveland Sellers, and Julian Bond that the Atlantic Amnica. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee. 1992. Pp. 222. $22.50. City compromise pro,.ed the irredeemable corrup· lion of the nation's poli1ical system. The author seems Nicolaus Mills explains in his introduction why he has to agree with Moses that the Dc:mocratic convt-ntion added to our crowded shelf yet ano1her book about "fatally undermined the arguments that had been 1he summer of 1964 in Mississippi. From the gloomy advanced within the Summer Project for alliances perspective of the 1990s, with American race rela­ with white liberals" (p. 191). and made it impossible 10 tions in turmoil, he promises to reexamine the e'•ents refute Stokely Carmichael's charge that "This proves of 1964 to explain the crucial "tuniing" of the civil that the liberal Democrats are just as racist as Gold­ rights movement from triumph in 1964-65 toward waier" (p. 163). racial separatism, violence, and eroded national con­ Mills argues both ways. He attacks as racial scape­ sensus. goa1ing the "current orthodoxy" of "once-liberal his­ 1\oliHs interviewed more than forty participants in torians" who blame the SNCC militants of 1964 for "Freedom Summer," but otherwise he relics on the leading the movemen1 down the road to black nation­ same body of memoirs. oral histories, Student Non­ alism. re,.olutionary posturing. and racial polariza­ violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Martin tion. Yet he deplores the degeneration of the in1egra- Luther King papers, and FBI and Lyndon B. John­ 1ionist, democratic SNCC into a cull of personali1y son Library files that informed the archivally based under Carmichael and H. Rap Brown under which scholarship of the 1980.-Clayborne Carson's Jn "racial hatred became fashionabl•.'' In his epilogue, Struggle (1981). David J. Garrow's Bearing the CTOSS Mills leaps from 1964 to 1he 1990s and affirms the (1981), Doug McAdam's Freedom Summer (1988), and social democratic critiqu• of William Julius Wilson Seth Cagin and Philip Dray's We A,., Not Afr.aid (1988). that racial preference is the enem)' of dass-based

AMERICAN HtSTORJCAL Rt:vn:w OCTOBER 1993