Timothy B. Tyson

I don't even know where to begin. The USA has come so far since 1955. But over the course of the past year, all the deaths, pain, hurt, protests, legislation have seemed to be for naught. We have a leader who yearns for the time so deftly described in this book. I am embarrassed for our country, for how our government and its citizens treated African-Americans in our past. And to a lesser extent, today.

This country owes a tremendous debt to Miss Mamie. For if she had not decided to let the world ”see what they did", I truly believe the Civil Rights Movement in this country would never have progressed as quickly as it did, although, not quickly enough IMHO.

I implore everyone to read this book.… (més)

A must read. Any review of mine could never do this book justice, so here is a quote from the book itself:

We are still killing black youth because we have not yet killed white supremacy. As a political program white supremacy avers that white people have a right to rule. That is obviously morally unacceptable, and few of its devotees will speak its name. But that enfeebled faith is not nearly so insidious and lethal as its robust, covert and often unconscious cousin: the assumption that God has created humanity in a hierarchy of moral, cultural and intellectual worth, with lighter-skinned people at the top and darker-skinned people at the bottom...

To see beyond the ghosts, all of us must develop the moral vision and political will to crush white supremacy — both the political program and the concealed assumptions. We have to come to grips with our own history — not only genocide, slavery, exploitation and systems of oppression, but also the legacies of those who resisted and fought back and still fight back. We must find what Dr. King called the “strength to love.” New social movements must confront head-on the racial chasm in American life. “Not everything that is faced can be changed,” Baldwin instructs, “but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

You can read a longer excerpt in the Atlanta Journal Constitution: http://specials.myajc.com/emmett-till/… (més)