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The Book Corner for July 2023 – American History [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-07-28  

The news out of Florida about their new standards for teaching about African American history has been disheartening. It is one thing to hear pundit Bill O’Reilly say (in 2016) ‘well fed slaves built the White House’ or Senator Tom Cotton (2020) say ‘slavery was a necessary evil’. It is another to have an entire state’s school system now teaching that kind of misguided garbage.

I want to recommend a couple books to read that helped me broaden my understanding of the history of race in America. These stories take place in the 20th century, during and after the Jim Crow period. They are interesting and readable. And they illustrate how factually wrong DeSantis and crew are about how black people where able to ‘parlay’ their life in slavery to full integration in American society.

The first book is The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. The author focused on three people and the course of their lives during the great migration of black people moving to northern states. One of the people focused on was born in Florida and later migrated to New York. The author writes with candor and humor. The book touched my heart.

The other book is Simple Justice by Richard Kluger. It is the story of school desegregation and the history of the NAACP. It was interesting to learn that Graduate schools were the first to be integrated. The overall landscape of the condition of public education for black and white students is explained in detail. It was very readable to me.

Thank you for reading. Do you have any book suggestions?

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/28/2183887/-The-Book-Corner-for-July-2023-American-History

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