My Soul Looks Back in Wonder; Voices of the Civil Rights Experience

Sterling, VA: AARP/Sterling Publishing Co., Inc, 2004. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/very good. xxiii, [1], 216 pages. Signed and dated (8-10-06 D.C.) on the title page by the author, Juan Williams. Illustrations. Foreword by David Halberstam. Afterword by Marian Wright Edelman. Juan Antonio Williams (born April 10, 1954) is a Panamanian-born American journalist and political analyst for Fox News Channel. He writes for several newspapers including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal and has been published in magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly and Time. He was a senior news analyst for National Public Radio from 1999 until October 2010. At The Washington Post, Williams has worked as an editorial writer, op-ed columnist, White House correspondent and national correspondent. Williams is the author of Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965, a companion to the documentary series about the Civil Rights Movement; Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary, the first black American to serve on the Supreme Court; and Enough, which critiques the "culture of failure." Deeply personal in tone, and powerful in the extreme, My Soul Looks Back in Wonder presents stirring eyewitness accounts from people who played active roles in the civil rights movement over the past 50 years. All the narratives are drawn from AARP's Voices of Civil Rights project, and they present a wide-ranging picture of the struggle. Juan Williams doesn't merely retell familiar tales about this tumultuous time: he showcases stories of personal transformation that bring a pivotal moment in American history profoundly alive. And it isn't just about the past: the vivid language and intimate experiences that unfold on every page reveal just how much the civil rights revolution remains a vital force today. Every speaker makes clear that the fight for equality must continue now, and into the future. "David Halberstam provides an excellent overview...the combination of analysis and intimacy with powerful documentary photos makes for gripping narrative. Best of all are the connections with contemporary struggles for equality...Marion Wright Edelman's final impassioned essay speaks for the millions of all races who continue to be 'left behind in our land of plenty.'"--Booklist Derived from a Publishers Weekly review: Part of the Voices of Civil Rights project, a collaboration between AARP and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights to build an oral archive, this book aims to link the African-American struggle for freedom to others in its wake. Among blacks, we hear from Jesse Epps, who helped with the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike; journalist Vernon Jarrett, who covered a 1946 Chicago race riot where a mob tried to kill some black veterans; and Carol Swann, one of two black students to integrate the eighth grade in Richmond, Va. Among whites, we meet Diane McWhorter, who grew up white and upper-class in Birmingham, only to write a searing history of her hometown during the Civil Rights era, and Rachelle Horowitz, who worked closely with Bayard Rustin, organizer of the famed 1963 March on Washington. There are other stories of Sammy Lee, the first Asian-American to win an Olympic gold medal, who had to endure racism from his own coach, and of Jim Dickinson, a white record producer in Memphis who witnessed the black influence on rock music. While activists for Mexican-American rights and the environment are certainly admirable, here they don't as clearly link their work to the Civil Rights movement in the way, for example, a disability rights activist and gay Congressman Barney Frank do. A large number of black and white photos evoke the Civil Rights era as well as some interview subjects. While Williams, an author and NPR senior correspondent, gets the authorial credit, he acknowledges that a team of reporters did the interviews.