Jan 6, 2012 ARCHIVES | Entertainment | COLUMNS Larry Dane Brimner
Calkins Creek
ISBN 978-1590787663
NA pages
$16.95
Reviewed by Abby McGanney Nolan
The nonviolence credo adopted by the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and ’60s did not, of course, mean a lack of action or agitation. Leaders used the courts, demonstrations, public opinion and economic power to chip away at the South’s segregationist policies. A handsome introduction to an ugly time, “Black & White” tells how the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth cannily utilized an unabashed racist, Eugene “Bull” Connor, to advance equality in Birmingham, Ala., and beyond. Larry Dane Brimner presents these two men as stubborn personalities on a collision course. One felt guided and protected by God to push for civil rights, to the point that he was considered by many to be dictatorial. The other was just as determined to maintain the racial status quo. Aided by a wealth of pertinent photographs, Brimner chronicles their interactions through the years, culminating in the events of May 1963. While the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. weighed whether young people should participate in protests, Shuttlesworth and hundreds of Birmingham’s youth went on ahead. With Connor voted out of office but still in charge of the police, Shuttlesworth, who died in October, knew the timing was crucial. The resulting footage of children and teenagers being blasted by water cannons helped persuade the nation to pass crucial civil rights legislation.
- Abby McGanney Nolan
Copyright 2012 Washington Post Writers Group
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