posetoday. The long list of those who ap- peared onstage at the march included Bob Dylan, Walter Reuther, Roy Wil~ kills, Josephine Baker, Odetta, Marlon Brando, A Philip Randolph, and Charl~ ton Heston. By the time King spoke, much of the crowd had drifted away.The big behind-the-scenes drama centered ~~ on JOM Lewis, who was then the head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinat- A CRITIC AT LARGE ing Committee, and is now a veteran congressman from Georgia. Lewis had drafted a speechthat said,'We will march, through the South, through the heart or Dixie, the way Sherman did. ...We shall What the civil-rights movement looked like 'ZL!henit was still happening. pursue our own scorched-earth policy." Washington's Catholic archbishop re- BY NICHOLAS LEMANN fused to give the invOCationunless Lewis toned it down, and finally, under heavy T he recent fall of.a Senate ~a~ority Lott column in , pressurefrom the organizers, he did. So leader for the crIme of praisIng a wrote that neoconservatives like him even the era's most celebrated moment centenari~ colleaguewho had once been "oppose affirnlative action on grounds of was not nearly as consensual as every- a leader of the segregationist movement colorblindness and in defense of the orig- body now remembers. made for ~ excelle~t demonstration of inal vision of the civil rights mOVement: The Library of America's new, two- the marvellous, ~d misleading, clarity judging people by the content of their volume anthology "Reporting Civil of historical retr.<>spection.Everybody characterand not the color of their skin." Rights: American Journalism 1941- now knows,it seems,that the civil-rights As Krauthammer surely knows from 1973" ($80) is a useful corrective to the movement was a good thing, and thatits firsthand experience, movements and way memory has domesticatedthe move- opponents were so patendy wrong that, their visions always look a .lot simpler ment. As one reads through a hundred unless they are elaborately penitent, they from the outside and after the fact. If the and eighty-eight chronologically ordered c~ have no place in our public life. (At civil-rights movement were suddenly to articles, the movement's true messiness, the sametirne,it would have been fine reappear as it really was, political office- radicalism, internal disorganization, high for Trent Lott to send off Strom Thur- holders would no more be unanimously failure rate, and lack of internal agree- mond~hom ev~rybody in Washing- for it than theyw~re at the time.. ment become manifest; These are ab- ton had long been treating asa lovable The event that Krauthammer was sorbing volumes even if read straight huggy-bear-,..with an encomium to his obliquely referring to by bringing up the through, and they make for a valuable wonderfulness, as long as it didn't spe- content of characterand the color of skin reference work that will reward occa- cifically mention the main cause with was the March on Washington in Au- sional dipping in. There are, inevitably, which he was associated.) , gust, 1963,where Martin Luther King,Jr., moments of hokey overwri~ "Once The rules of acceptable political be- made his magnificent "I have a dream" more down the old familiar highways havior were not at all so clear atthe time. speech, from which that line comes. The into that passionately alive and violent In the South, when civil rights was still an march was originally planned by the country," Karl Fleming begins a piece open question only a brave few Demo- movement's radical wing, which was in Newsweek,and he's soon on to days cratssupported it, and one is hard pressed going to end the day by having the of smothering heat and nights of hon- to think of any Republicans who did. In marchers move, en masseand unlawfully, eysuckle-butfewer than you'd expect. 1964, the Republican Presidential nomi- into the hallways of the Capitol. A series It helps that the Library of America's nee,Barry Goldwater, ran asan opponent of compromises brought the movement's anonymous compilers have not taken of mandatory school desegregation and moderate wing (the N.A.A.C.P., the the terms "reporting" and "journalism" of the landmark Civil Rights Act, which Urban League, and theUruted Automo- literally: they have supplemented the Congress had just passed.George H. W. bile Workers, as well as King himself) newspaperstuff with lotS of essays,mem- Bush, campaigning for the Senate that on board. Still, the chief organizer was oirs, manifestos, and book excerpts, and year, came out against the Civil Rights the former Commurust and still social- without them the anthology wouldn't Act. , then a popular con- ist Bayard Rustin, who tided the event be nearly as good. King's "Letter from a servative speaker preparing to run for the "March for Jobs and Freedom"--and BirminghamJail," JamesBaldwin's "The governor of California, ~trongly opposed what he meant by "jobs and freedom" Fire Next Time," the reminiscences of it. During the Lott affair, the commenta- was a degree of state interVention in the Lillian Smith and Anne Moody, John tor Charles Krauthammer, in a dump- economy that nobody would dare pro- Howard Griffin's "Black Like Me"-

Martin Luther King,Jr:, a weekbefore hi assassination,at a demo~stration in Memphis. Photograph by Ernest C. Withers.

86 THE NEW YOI\KEI\, FEBI\UAI\Y 10, 2003 who wotild havewanted a definition of at least in these pages, is just as and there is a lot of material that "reporting civil rights" so strict that it good or better. Journalists} didn't startreadingdemonstrates what a loss it was when the excludedthem? until they were in the settled big-format mass magazines Life, Look, Many (amous bylines-Joan Did- columnist-essayistphase of ilieir careers-- Colliers, and The SaturdayEvening Post ion, David Halberstam, Tom Wicker, like Carl T. Rowan and Dan Wakefield- went out of business.Among the specific Hunter S. Thompson, John Steinbeck, appearhere as reporters on the scene.The attractions of the volumes are contribu- tions by Louis E. Lomax, writing as a oj Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, John~. Negro press, which was then vital arid Hersey,Garry Wills, and Alice Walker, important, is well represented, wiili first- secretsharer about life inside the black es- 8 to name a few-appear in "Reporting§ rate articles from the Pittsburgh Courier, tablishment; Michael Thelwell, who per- Civil Rights," but it's a particularpleasure the Baltimore Afro-American, and the forms a similar function for the radical ~to read less well-known writers whose New YorkAmsterdam News, among oth- student movement, and also writes beau-

THE NEW YOI\KEI\, FEBI\UAI\Y 10, 2003 87 ers,work, tifully; August Meier, who contributed a unseating the N.AA.C.P. from its tradi- tively risk~free for the perpetrators. The very smart essay on King, which, as a tional position of dominance), a remak- corrosive terror of living with the con- work of analysis,stands out in a collection ing of black consciousness, left-wing eco- stant possibility of unpunishable vi~~ that is naturally much stronger on dra- nomic policies, better jobs and better tism comes across vividly in "Reporting matic firsthand descriprion; and William housing for blacks, and black political Civil Rights." In 1942, Hugh Gloster, Bradford Huie, the hot-blooded inves- power. Although the movement was a professor of English at Morehous~ tigative reporter who bribed confessions bira,cial, and wouldn't have succeeded if College, was taken off a bus in Missis~ out of the murderers of Emmett Till. it hadn't been, its white and black mem- sippi and beaten so badly that he had The outstanding piece of investigarive bers generally had different views of what to be "takento the hospitll-not acriine, reporringis an hour-by-hour inside ac- its main purpose was-the whites being In 1961, Herbert Lee, a Ne~o Cotton count of the integration of the University much more likely to think of colorblind- fanner in Mississippi who had tried to of Mississippi, in .1962. The authors, nessand integration as the goals, the register to vote, was shot in the head at George B. Leonard, T George Harris, blacks being more likely to think in terms pomt-bl~ range, in a public plilce in and Christopher S. Wren, con~ both of racial adVancement. King made a point broad daylight, by a white state legis~~ thete~violen~eand danger of that of befriending Malcolm X, who re~ly tor-not a crime. This sort of low-grade, event (for a while, it looked as if the seg- said that he wasn't interested in civil rights and sometimes not so low~grade, terror- regationist mob wollidactually defeatthe or integration; and Kings well-publicized ism continued through the sixties. In federal for~es)~d the duplicity of Gov.' association with Stokely Cartnichae~6f Oxford in 1962, se~eg:Jctionlstsnipers emor Ross Barnett, who kept ~aking SNCC, didn't end when, in 1966, Cat- fired freely on m~mbersoftheNationaI and breaking deals with the Kennedy .mchaelunveilecithe electrifying, polariz- Guard. In Jackson in 1963, Medgar Administration while thesituatiot) it) ing,and implicitly non-nonviolent phrase Evers, the field secie:t~ofclieMissis~ Oxford spun out of cQntrol. ' ~~1. "blat:kpower," during a match that fea- sippi N.A.AC.P.,was~neddown in Wh ats most v~ua ble ab Out "rii;\.eport - tured them both. When the movement front. of his house. Th<,1963 church ingCivilRight$"is that it provides a his; succeeded , ik wasn't com pletel y clear bombingin Binninghatri iliatkilledtbur tory of the civil",rightsmovementwntteIi .c ","'." whichele.nent was winning, and that girls came ~t the end of fifty~~- Ne~o b 1 h , all d " y peope ~o:~er~nt owe to pe.e k ;tmbigUitysurvives toda~t's why both bombings, it11unsolved by the localau+ ahead to the et)ding.A1Ithecompl~ty sides m thea£f1rnlative-actionfight,fot thoricies~lnPhi1~delphi~Mississippi, in and cQnringen~of themQvementcomes exatriple,can claim to be pursuing ~e 1964,thre:youpg civil-rights workers through; it becomes bard to ar~e that true .-g-oals Qfthe civil~.ri g hts movement. were mUtd~r~dby the Klai1, and th~ir ~e m?vement.was ce~trally.a~out ~e bodies buried iQ ~dw,with the active kind of color.blind,meqtQcratl~ Ideology T ...he racial problem that makes th~ support of~etoWn's topIaw~eriorcement ~";n-. liedb~.' :' p y Kin g's "contentof ottrcharac,.. strongest [mpres$ioninme pages of officl~.,Arid thes~ were casesinvolviQ,g tern rhetorl~:Eventh~name isrilislea~, "Repo~CiVi.lRights".is not le~ seg-rega ...". .:'- r~sp~tabl~middle~claSs peop~e,not the because itymplies that Qve~ngthe ti Oh{ whi cl1 many African-Amen Cil11s Vuln~r.ableblack poor, who had it f~r South's]imCrQwfuw$was the on~g-reat, didtit mind thenwd£eel nost~c abO~t worse.. In "L~tter from~Bitniingham agre~d~upon cause. As "RepotriJ1g Civil now)b~tSQmethihg roQre ba$ic: fear and Jail,"writt!::n justa few rnonthsb!::torf: the Rights" m~$clear,there weres~vera1 alackofdignio/Jtse~ms almost tooob- V10~s.." tomennon thatd\lPng]trnCrQw "J.haveadre~' speech, King convo/s disrinctele~ents within the mQv~m~nt: thissens!::ofindigtlityand~sure , with Old Lefties,iIicluding sQme Commu. b.lackpeople.inmeSo~m did not have remarkable power: nist8; NeW Leftie8; labor unionists; black reliabl~ recourse to cl1e)egal system; even natiQna1ists;~4i"chpeopl~;andlibera1do- if mQst whites were ~enign, those whowerentcoQIdPerhqps it is easy for thos~whohave gooders. Henceth~ movemet)t'smany dQ anything they wanted to n~ver fe!tt?~,stingihg darts of $~gr~gqtiO? ~ontendit)g and sometimes conffi~tiIig a NegrQ and g~tawayWim it. ViolenceWi~ t?say "Walt." But ~h~nyouhav~ s,eenv!- ClOUSmobs lyn~h yourmoth~rs Mdfqth~rs at gQalS,among them changes in th~strtic- theb.laCkcommunityus~allywent ~ill ql)d drown ypursistersqnd brothers at tur~ of Negro leadership (in p~<;ti1ar, officially unpunished, so.it, too, was re.la- Whim; when youha.v~ seenhate-fill~d P94~e- men cUrs~, kickqud eV~ri kill your black brothers andsist~~$~ifu~punity;whe~ you see the vast majority of your 20 million Negro brothers smothering in an qir-tight cag~ of poverty in the midst of an afflu~nt society.. .w~en rpu are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, never quite knowing what to exp!:ct neXt, and you are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are for~ver fighting a degenerating s~nse of "nobodi- ness" -then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

The problem that King is discussing1 IS, m some ways, a very old one: "This is not about Schmidt- its aboutyou. blackpeople had neverbeen treated the

flere sameas everybodyelse in America. But era! governmentnot just to endorsethe with white-resistance villains like Bull the period of waiting really dated back movement'sgoals but to use its power Connor, Jim Clark, and George Wal- to Reconstruction.President Lincoln is- to enforcethem. lace-profoundly affected events in sued the Emancipation Proclamation Washington. The real fruit of the Birm- in 1863, and Congressand the states T he anthology's first document is ingham campaign was the 1964 Civil passed the Thirteenth Amendment, A. Philip Randolph'scall, in 1941, Rights Act, the real fruit of the Selma which abolished slavery,in 1865. The for a march on Washington "for jobs campaign the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Fourteenth Amendment (1868) gave and equal participation in national de- The movement's success depended the freed slaveslegal rights, and the Fif- fense"(Franklin Roosevelt,through per- upon a ricochet effect among the vari- teenth (1870) gave them the right to suasionand c,?ncession,forestalled the ous power centers of American society, vote.The former Confederacyaccepted march), and following it are and the press was only one the Thirteenth Am~ndment,but though a number of piecesdemon- ~ of them. Thurgood Marshall it voted for the others, it nullified them stratingthat attemptsto erase and the N.A.A.C.P. Legal in practice. During Reconstruction, it informal "color lines" in the Defense Fund began filing became obvious that, especiallyin the housing and job markets, .I lawsuits against- segregated deep South, the Fourteenth and Fif- Negro voter-registration ef- q} educational institutions back teenth Amendments would be without forts in the South,and the re- ~ in the thirties. The Second effect unlessfederal troops came to the fusal of blacks to sit in the ~ World War subjected North- South and enforced them at gunpoint. back of the bus all predated ern black soldiers to Southern Support for this died out quickly in the what we now think of as the segregation (both in the mili- North and never existed in the South, beginning of the civil-rights _d.- ~ --tary, which maintai:t1edsegre- and the last time it happened in post- movement.The strugglewas necessarily gated units throughout the war, and in bellum America wasinJanuary, 1875, in waged on m~y fronts, and one of the the civilian world, when they were on and Vicksburg, Missis- most important was the press;in fact, leave) and gave Southern black soldiers sippi. Reconstructionended formally; in as "Reporting Civil Rights"rerninds us, a taste of life outside the Jim Crow sys- 1877, on the explicit understandingthat much of the presswas effectivelypart tem, and this, thanks in part to publicity the federal governmentwould no longer of the movement,and an indispensable in the Negro press,inflamed black public intervene militarily to enforcethe Four- part. One reasonthat the Montgomery opinion. These wartime sentiments pro- teenth and Fifteenth Amendments. bus boycottwas a breakthroughwas that duced federal anti-discrimination execu- This bargain that the South made it madeMartin Luther King the move- tive orders signed by Roosevdt and Harry with the nation asa whole-:- Thirteenth ment's first true media star. King was Truman.They helped spur the very early Amendment yes, Fourteenth and Fif- shockinglyyoung and oratoricallyspec- interstate bus rides by the Fellowship teenth no--was durable to the point of tacular,and the national press-in par- of Reconciliation. The Brown decision seemingunchangeable. For much of the ticular, Time and L.if~onferred a ce- helped inspire the Montgomery move-, twentieth century, civil rights for Ne- lebrity status on him that it had never ment. The Montgomery movement's groesweren't even on the liberal agenda. given A Philip Randolph,RoyWilkins, successand the attendant publicity con- President.Woodrow Wilson honored Bayard Rustin, Thurgood Marshall, or tributed to President Eisenhower's deci- D. W. Griffith's pro-Klan "Birth of a any of the movement's earlier leaders. sion to send federal troops to Lillie Rock. Nation" with a White House screening. King and his 'advisershad a 'geniusfor And so on. This kind of multilayered, PresidentFranklin Roosevelt,who was generating publicity that engagedthe cross-jurisdictional activitywas necessary probably the most powerful liberal poli- sympathiesof liberalwhites in the North. becausethe opposition to the movement tician in American history, and whose It wasn'tjust the strategyof nonviolence wasa lot more powerful and sophisticated wife was a crusaderon the subject,did and the rhetoric of hope and redemp- than the gap-toothed Klansmen and cor- not attempt to dismande segregation. tion that made King successful;it was pulent small-town sheriffs who were its The South was an essentialelement in the stagingof eventsin order to playto public foils. The Brown cases,for exam- the Democratic Party's coalition, after the national audience. King's local at- ple, p~tted Marshall against, among oth- all; and the country as a whole was, at temptsto achievebroad-gauge progress ers, a former Secretary of State,James F. best,unused to thinking of segregationas for blacks failed repeatedly in North- Byrnes, and a former Democratic Presi- a problem. So the civil-rights movement ern cities like Chicago and Cleveland; dential nominee, JohnW. Davis; our cur- had to pursue a series of related proj- in Southerntowns like Albany, Georgia, rent Chief Justice, then a Supreme Court ects: awakening the long-slumbering and St. Augustine, Florida; and even, law clerk, wrote a memorandum to his racialconscience of non-Southernwhite arguably,in the movement'ssacred sites, bosslaying out a justification for a dissent Americans; organizing the black South like Birmingham, Montgomery, and from the unanimous decision. politically by nontraditionalmeans (since Selma.But King was great at losingthe " most black Southerners were prohib- battle '?Ihile winning the war-in Au- R eporting Civil Rights" has a few ited from voting); changing the con- gustMeier's phrase, at producing"local lacunae(where's Gunnar Myrdal?), sciousnessof all of black America to failure :andnational victory." The ongo- but the most important absence is of be less accepting of the situation; and, ing real-life morality playhe mounted- material hostile to the civil-rights move-:- critically important, persuadingthe fed- in which civil-rights heroescontended ment. Having made the decision not to

THE NEW YORKE!\, FEBRUARY 10, 2003 limit themsdvesto journalismper se,the grophilesunable or willing to face reality. In progressionof black Southernersfrom othertimes and other places,sturdy, creative, an oppressedcaste to an interestgroup; editors had the opportunity to give us and self-reliantminorities have carved out some flavor of the conversationamong their own destiny; they have compelled ac- on August 11th, in Los Angeles, the the movement'sadversaries, as they do so ceptanceontheir own merit; they have dem- Watts riot'-Vividly and terrifyingly de- onstratedthose qualities of leadershipand re- scribed in severalpieces in "Reporting well for the conversationamong its allies. sourcefulnessand disciplinedambition that in But the ideologicalrange of the pieces the end cannotever be denied.But the Negro Civil Rights"-broke out.The riot lasted runs from journalistic-neutral to left; race,as a race,has donenone of this. most of a weekand left thirty-four peo- by my count,there are only two contribu- ple dead,in additionto destroyingmuch tions from conservatives,Norman Pod- The white South's argument against of a largeblack neighborhoodand much horetz's "My Negro Problem~And the civil~rights movement always had at of white America'sstore of racial good Ours," and Tom Wolfe's "Mau-Mauing least three dements: in addition to the will. After Watts, the bulk of the ma- the Flak-Catchers,"and neitherof those racial one that KilpatriCk was making, terial in "Reporting Civil Rights" is a writers wasso identified at the time that there wasthe idea that the movement was dispiriting successionof riots, murders he published his article. Only one piece a Trojan horse filled with Communists . (including King's), unsuccessfulcam- in "Reporting Civil Rights,"a long,over- and other radicals who wanted to change paigns, renunciations of nonviolence, wrought excerpt from a 1956 book by society wholesale, and there was opposi~ factionalism,and black-white fights. (In RobertPenn Warren called "Segregation: tion to the use of federal power to over- 1966,John Lewis, the firebrand of the The Inner Conflict in the South," gets 'turn local cust<;>ms.You almost never see March onWashington, was ousted from acrossthe feding of the respectablewhite sentimentslike Kirkpatrick's in print any- SNCCfor being too moderate.)But the sentimentthat I~ uparourid in Lou- more, and the radical left no longer pre- summer of 1965 wasn't so obvious a isiana--opposedto civil rights,but \¥itha sents a plausible danger, but hostility to- turning point within the movement at paternalismthat wasdeeply convinced of ward the federal government is a far more the time asit now appearsto havebeen, its own benevolenceand painful honesty important dement in American conser- and the anthology makes it clear why aboutthe raceproblem, and deeplyem- vatism today than it was during the civil- not. Nearly everything aboutthe move- barrassedby the lynchings and snarling rights movement. At a time when the ment was improvised and almost ac~ mobs that were what the North knew of movement begins to seem safe, neutral, cidental.The two shiIilmeringpeaks of segregationism.(If only the movement and inarguable, it's worth recalling that King's careerwere the 1963 March on had been more patient, the patrician coercive federal power really was crucial Washington and the 1965 Sehna-to~ white South thought, it wouldn't have to its success.The civil-rights revolution Montgomery march, which ended in brought such creaturescrawling out of reestablishedthe principle that the federal a speecharguably even more dramatic the swamp.)It's true that, asseveral con- governmentwould, after nearly a century's and better than "I have a dream"~the tribuhons sayin passing,a goPddeal of retreat, again assume responsibility for one deliveredfrom the stepsof the Al- the written casea,~nst civil rights took enforcing the Fourteenth and Fifteenth abama state capitol, with a refrain of the form of crude mimeogra,phsa,nd Amendments in the South. In Congress, "How long? Not long." But King had newsletters,but th~re werealso publica,- the bitterest fights about civil-rights leg- originallyplanned to skipthe Se1ri1a-to~ tions, like the Dan SmootReport and the islation were always over the question of Montgomery march; only when the John Birch Society'sAmeriCan Opinion, federal enforcement power, which, for the situation escalateddid he realize that thatwere hardlyless mainstream than, on South, was the most objectionable aspect. he had made a mistakeand rush to the the left, the SouthernPatriot or Ramparts, The .1957 Civil Rights Act is relatively scene.Given that none of the important which did make the cut for "Reporting litde re{!1embered because the enforce- organizationsin the civil~rightsmove- Civil Rights"-.-and therewas the entirely ment provisions were stripped out before ment thought that its purposewas lim- presentablework of JamesJ. Kilpatrick, Congress passed it; the 1964 act and the ited to achieving"civil rights,"the move- then the editorial-pageeditor of the Rich- 1965 Vocing Rights Act were landmarks, ment couldn't declarevictory after the mond News Leader,and soon to be a and finally made the Fourteenth and Fif- Voting RightsAct andgo home;instead, familiar Washington columnistand tde- teenth Amendments real in the South, for all its successes,it had to endurethe vision personality.Here's a passagefrom preciselybecause they provided for federal pain of failure, a senseof what had not his 1962 book "The SouthernCase for enforcement. Federal troops were present yet beenachieved. SchoolSegregation": at one milestone event after another dur- Even now, it would be a mistake to ing the movement's heyday-indeed, think that civil rights belongs to the Manifestly, the resistanceto a coerced their arrival was the milestone. You have realm of settledopinion, requiring of us racial "equaliry" is wide anddeep. Why is this to wonder how, in a country that has be- onlythe kind of easy,post-facto approval so?The answer,in blunt speech,is that the come far more suspicious of the federal that Trent Lott managedto bungle.The Negro race,as a race,has not earnedequaliry. And as I have attemptedto argue earlier,it is government, they'd be received today. SupremeCo~ is about to hear argu- a feeble and evasiveresponse to accusethe ments in a monumentalcase onaffirma- white critic, in making that flat statement,of tive actionin universityadmissions. The emulatingthe child who shothis parentsand T he glory days of the civil-rights then pleaded for mercy as an orphan. The movement came to an end in the institutional defendantis the University failure of the Negro race,as a race,to achieve summer of 1965. On August 6,1965, of Michigan, but the caseis the culmi~ equaliry cannot be blamed wholly on white nation of a string of conservativeanti- oppression.This'is the excuse,the crutch,the President Lyndon Johnson signed the piteous and finally pathetic defenseof Ne- Voting Rights Act, which signalledthe affirmative-actionactivities that beganin

90 THE NEW 'rOI\KEI\, FEBI\UAI\Y 10, 2003 1995 with somethingcalled the Califor- nia Civil Rights Initiative, which used King asits patron saint until it became clear that King had actually beena sup~ porter of affirmative action. Although I ument but alsoas a multipurpose scien- didn't notice a single referenceto affir- Inquisitors' Manual, by Ant6nioLobo tific instrument,including "a zenith tele- mative action, pro or con, in the nearly. Antunes, translated from the Portugueseby scope,with lensesat ground and upper- nineteenhundred pages of "Reporting Richard Zenith (Grove; 125). "We for- Civil Rights," the Michigan caseis really get everything, we forget everything for- platformlevels." ano~c continuationof the eventsde- ever and ever,': an old soldier declares scribedin thesebooks. Beginning in the about die nearly four decades when Por- in Rainbows, by Valerie Boyd (Scribner;130). The novelist, folklorist, forties, at least part of the civil-rights tugallanguished under the regime of An- and playwright Zora Neale Hurston lived movementdevoted itself primarilyto de- tonio de Oliveira Salazar. But no one can, an d "Th e I nqUlsltors..' M anu al".is a SWlr. I a life easilyequal to the drama of her best manding more and better jobs for Ne- novels. Although her ambitions took her groesoutside the segregatedSouth. When of narratives and perspectives revolving theseefforts were successful, the usualre- around the family of a powerful, eccentric far from the all-black town of Eatonville, Florida, where she grew up, her intellec~ sultwas proto-affinnative-actionpolicies oligarch in Salazar's government. These tual and emotional roots remained in its by state fair-employment commissions, orbits are wide: not only ministers but watery environs, where tellirig taU tales underwhich the ordinary job qualifica- veterinarians, housekeepers, and social was a way of life. She told a few taUtales tions would be setaside so that Negroes workers all have their say: Lobo Antunes, could be hired. The spectreof suchpro- one of the most skillful psychological herself: especially in her autobiography, "Dust Tracks on a Road." But what can gramshaunted the debateover the 1964 portraitists writing anywhere, renders the lying about one's ~e or about how many Civil Rights Act, and the act contained turpitude of an entire society through an husbands one had matter in the face of anamendrnent prohibiting them. But, impasto of intensely individual voices. having escaped Eatonville to study at onceit becamelaw, the act quicklyled to Unable to filter present from past, dia- Barnard? Hurston's significance as an an-, the establishmentof federalaffinnative- logue from echo, his multiple narrators actionpro~s, and no civil...rightsor- bring us with thenias they eddy-through thropologist should not be .underesti- mated. She made her readers see the ganization, across a wide ideological the dark backwaters of a losthalf,..century. uniqueness of black Ainerican speechby range,seems to haveobjected. printing it the way it was said. Boyd is too The movementbegan with as~ggle Ona Grander Scale:The Outstanding laudatory in her approach, but this is a for political changewithout the benefit Life of Sir Christopher Wren, by Lisa of either votes or public opinion, and it Jardine(HarperCo/lins; $34.95), Thisen~ convincing attempt to make senseof a life becameexpert at using the courts and grossingbiography charts Wren'strajec- that continues to defy categorization. re~atory agenciesto get results that tory from mathematicalprodigy who in- lacked popular support. It's doubtful ventedtransparent beehives and a copying Starving to Death on $200 Million, by JamesLedbetter (PubliCAffairs; $26). In the whether :a plebiscite would have ap- machineto England'sgreatest architect, proved affirmative action in the first who rebUiltmuch of London-most fa- year 2000, the Industry StandarJ-.-the place.But history rollsonward: today one mously St. Paul's Cathedral-:-afterthe would-be bible of the New Econom~ ap~aredto be one of the most successful can't run for national office as a Demo- Great Fire of 1666.Wren later claimed magazines in history, with more than craiwithout declaring support fOTaffir- to regardall ente~rises involving stone mative action, as SenatoTJoseph Lie- and mortar as"rubbish," and wasprouder seventhousand ad pages and projected revenues0f two hundred inillion dollars. berman demonstrated when, on being of his work as an astronomerand anat- nominated for Vice-President, he re- omist. His extraordinaryversatility" and The next year, it went out of business. This self-lacerating postmortem by the nouncedhis previousdoubt; evenPresi- industry giveJardine the opporturiity to magazine'sformer European editor shows dent Bush has made a point of avoiding examinethe political and~cientificcon~ a frontal assaulton affirmative action- stellationsof RestorationEngland. Such that the Standard was doomed by early success.Unbridled optimism led to wild for example, declining to ask the Su~ is,her feel for the subjectthat, when she s~nding, dubious side projects,-and an preme Court to usethe Michigan cases seesa long-forgotten basementroom as the occasion simply to ban the use direcdy underneathWren's Monument unwillingness to make hard decisions. The Standard,then, was just like the dot- of race in college admissions.,Bigsocial to the Great Fire, she immediatelyre'" corns it ~ote about, and so the story of issues of this sort are always in con- alizes that it is a laboratory~that the the magazine'sfailure becomes a parable tention."Reporting Civil Rights" is really bUildingwas qesigned not only asa mon- about the era of the bubble. Ledbetter's a chronicle of one long seasonin Amer- ica's ongoing political battles over race. account of the backroom negotiations that attended the Standardsdemise drags A major legacyof the civil-rights move- in places,but he is adept at capturing both ment is that those battles arefar lessin- -~-:..;..:~/ -, , -~',"-. the late-nineties atmosphere of irrational tenseand destructivenow than theywete ~r.r- ~ ~U ~ exuberanceand the bitter, hung-over feel- during the period coveredin the anthol- 'I7l1//\, L ogy. But they are by no means over.. 111/1111111 ingthat followed. , FEBI\UARY10, 2003 91

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