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Table of Contents
About The Book
Starting as a reporter with the Atlanta Constitution in 1972, Allen got to know and befriend legendary black political figures including Julian Bond, John Lewis, Andy Young, Hosea Williams, Maynard Jackson, Jesse Jackson, and Daddy King, the father of Martin Luther King, Jr. He also encountered ardent white segregationists, some of whom saw the light and others who took their racism to the grave. Drawing on his experience covering politics, he examines presidents from LBJ and Jimmy Carter to Obama and Trump. He explores the symbolism of Confederate flags, the controversy over Uncle Remus, the election of Atlanta’s first black mayor, Maynard Jackson, and the tragic case of the Atlanta Child Murders. He has had first-hand encounters with white supremacy and violent black protest alike.
Throughout his essays, Allen is candid about his own shortcomings as a white native Northerner learning gradually about the complexities of race in his adoptive South. The essays highlight his continuing journey toward understanding the forces that both hinder and promote equality and harmony between the races.
Product Details
- Publisher: Forefront Books (August 1, 2023)
- Length: 240 pages
- ISBN13: 9781637631539
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Raves and Reviews
“Rick Allen’s book is a must-read for anyone intrigued—or anguished—by our nation’s struggle to come to terms with race over the past half-century. Drawing on his experience as a journalist, including a stint as CNN’s lead political commentator, and as a historian, Allen writes with unflinching candor of the changes he has witnessed, in himself as well as society at large, and shows we’ve come a long way . . . with a long way yet to go.”
– Tom Johnson, former president of CNN
“Rick Allen is more than a keen journalistic observer of Black–White politics in Atlanta and the New South. A conscientious student of race and the region, here he shares his own intimate journey, freely acknowledging personal limitations, when he’s been wrong, and when and why his views have changed. So Rick Allen’s reckoning with race is insightful, at times unsparing, and throughout a candid, often courageous self-reflection that all of us who care about this subject will benefit from reading.”
– Michael Lomax, president of the United Negro College Fund
“With insight and clarity, Rick Allen has written a memoir that details his fifty years probing the historical and emotional impact of racism on Black Americans (and its toll on White Americans as well). What a task he undertakes! That he succeeds without moralizing—or denying his own complicity rooted in White privilege—is a tribute to his intellectual honesty and dogged reporting skills. Allen’s book, with truths that will prick our consciences, should be revelatory to any citizen seeking amity and détente between the races. It is a book I wish I had written.”
– Wyche Fowler, member of Congress, 1977–1993
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