Judgement Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Laws That Changed America, Kotz - A*

                     "With the passage of the 1964 and 1965 civil rights acts, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. told the president of the United States, 'You have created a Second Emancipation.'" They were indispensable leaders during a tumultuous time. Because of them, all people enjoy the privilege to vote, are able to eat in a public restaurant, use a public restroom, hold a job, and choose where to live. Their partnership was never easy, but it was essential. At the time of JFK's assassination,  progress on civil rights was at a dead end. LBJ and MLK became allies in the making of civil rights a moral issue. Although they later fell out over Vietnam, and each man died unhappy, "they shared a shining moment, a story that Americans would do well to remember."

                      Johnson called King on the 25th, the day of Jack Kennedy's funeral, asked for his support and stated that he'd get the civil rights bill passed. Both men realized that grief over the assassination might provide momentum to advance the legislation. They met in the Oval Office on Dec. 3rd. LBJ dominated the meeting with the details of how he would move the bill forward. King had many enemies throughout the US, but none more focused on destroying him than the Director of the FBI. Hoover despised King, believing he was a communist, and was equally obsessed with MLK's personal moral failures. On Feb. 10, the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed the House by a vote of 290-130. Attention turned to the Senate and the need to marshal votes for cloture. LBJ tasked Hubert Humphrey to manage the bill and swing Everett Dirksen over to support the vote to stop the debate. The challenge was the conservative Republicans from farm states, where there were few people of color. The religious institutions in those states took up the challenge and began to pressure their senators. LBJ hosted 150 leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention and spoke to them about the bill. By April, the filibuster stood and the votes were still not there to stop it. Johnson continued his relentless pursuit of his goal by speaking to and making deals with as many Senators as he could. On June 10th, the cloture vote passed. The following week, the bill passed the Senate in a 73-27 vote. It was a pure Lyndon Johnson triumph.

                   The summer of 1964 saw continued violence and no abeyance of racial stressors in America. In Harlem, there were riots after the police killing of a teenager. Mississippi was the center of vicious KKK attacks on Blacks and civil rights workers from the north. The murders of Cheney, Schwerner and Goodman galvanized the nation and displayed the cold blooded brutality of the state's white racists, who indiscriminately killed people and burned homes and churches. The problems in Mississippi carried over to the convention in Atlantic City, where a Black delegation sought to be seated. Fearing a white backlash, LBJ succumbed to Hoover's constant drumbeat that the movement was filled with communists. He had the FBI wiretap anyone who had anything to do with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party with the goal of making certain they were not seated. He orchestrated a compromise whereby the MFDP received two votes. In November, LBJ won overwhelmingly and looked forward to working with the largest congressional majority in a generation. 

                That fall, MLK was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The bestowing of this honor on a man Hoover considered a degenerate and communist drove the FBI director over the edge. He shared extensive information about King's extracurricular sexual activities throughout the government and tried to peddle it to major news organizations. When LBJ called King in January of 1965 he told him about the importance of passing a Voting Rights Act. At that point in time, MLK began his crusade for voting rights in Selma, Alabama. King masterfully played his hand in Selma with hundreds, including high school students, arrested, massive amounts of press coverage, attention from celebrities and congressmen, and even an acknowledgement of support from the president. King and his supporters were showing the country why a voting bill was necessary. They advanced their cause with their march in Selma, which ended with police brutality and another shock to the nation. A week later, LBJ made his famous 'We Shall Overcome' speech to Congress fully endorsing dramatic voting rights legislation, and moving  ahead on immigration, poverty, education and health care reform. He signed the landmark voting rights legislation in August. King and Johnson provided "legal equality for all voting age adults, at last fulfilling the promise made to America by the Fifteenth Amendment nearly a century before."

                The high point of their achievements quickly passed. A week later, massive race riots tore apart Watts in Los Angeles. King came under increasing pressure to disavow LBJ's actions in Vietnam, and to move beyond his nonviolent, passive resistance tactics. King spent time in Chicago trying to desegregate the north's most segregated city and gave up after a few months. LBJ tried to pass another civil rights act in 1966 and was unable to stop the filibuster. In April of the following year, King made a major speech in opposition to the war in Vietnam. Johnson was livid and would never speak to King again. As 1968 began, both men were fading from their leadership roles in our society. The war was absolutely destroying the president. King was exhausted and uncertain where to turn to advance the cause. At the end of March, LBJ announced he would not run for reelection. Five days later, Martin Luther King was murdered. In the following days, LBJ was able to push through Fair Housing legislation. 

                  Four years later, an ailing  LBJ spoke at a conference in Austin. The final words of his last speech were, "We shall overcome." Decades later, Black Americans live in a better world thanks to all that Lyndon Johnson accomplished. Middle class Blacks are doing well and African-Americans have important positions throughout our society, but they still trail whites in all economic categories. "Johnson's and King's challenges remain to be answered." This is a great book, and I thank my brother Will for the suggestion. For me, the incredibly bigoted J. Edgar Hoover deserves all the disdain and enmity that was felt for him sixty years ago. This book highlights the extraordinary skills MLK used to organize and anticipate issues in a way that materially advanced the cause of civil rights. LBJ, of course, remains perhaps the most tragic figure in our history, a man who accomplished so much, but who fell so far from grace. Lastly, reading again about the mid-sixties led me to wonder if any president or national leader could have successfully navigated such a treacherous time. I think not.

                 

                      

Black Cloud Rising, Falade - B

                     This novel is about the African Brigade of former slaves who fought in the Civil War. The unit was commanded by Gen. Edward Wild; our narrator is a now free man of color named Dick Etheridge. After the brigade was formed at Fortress Freedom in Virginia, it headed south along the Dismal Swamp Road, freeing slaves as it went. They took Elizabeth City, N.C. and from there marched out  to confront the local vigilantes. As this section of Virginia and North Carolina along the coast was isolated, there was a claustrophobic feel to it, one exaggerated by the fact that all of the soldiers who had come from there knew all of the locals. Dick Etheridge was concerned about having to take up arms against his white cousin Patrick. The familiarity heightened the tension and exacerbated the violence. The marching column was attacked by the Confederate irregulars from the woods at the side of a road. The Black men charged with bayonets drawn. During the fire fight, Dick captures Patrick, chastises him and tells him to doff the butternut jacket and be on his way. Throughout the march, the negro soldiers were abused by the locals and looked down on by their white comrades in arms. The brigade, now an experienced fighting unit, headed north to Fortress Freedom.  From the perspective of the year 1899, Dick looks back and reflects on his long marriage, his business partnership with his cousin, and notes that the Blacks are now free, but not really. Not much changes in the Outer Banks.

Wolves of Eden, McCarthy - B

                     This superb novel is set in the Dakota Territory in 1866. The principal characters are a drunken Irish lieutenant named Molloy and his sergeant, Daniel Kohn. Kohn keeps Molloy on the straight and narrow (more or less). The other key participants are the Irish brothers Mike and Tom Kelly. They came to America to escape the arm of the law only to wind up fighting in the war during which Tom took a mini ball in his mouth. Mike has to translate his garbled Gaelic and English utterances. They are so down and out that they rejoin the army for a steady wage and regular meals. Molloy and Kohn are sent to Ft. Phillip Kearny at the end of the Bozeman Trail to investigate the death of the camp sutler*.  The sutler ran a string of whores, one of whom Tom falls for. When the mean-spirited sutler's wife slaps Tom's whore, all hell breaks loose, with Mike killing the sutler and the whores killing the wife. Kohn sorts it out and has Mike in chains when every man in the fort is called out to fend off a Sioux raid. The battle known as Fetterman's Massacre takes Kohn to his grave, and leaves Mike bleeding out on the plain In many ways, this is a wonderful exposition of life on the plains and in the army. 

*Sutlers provided goods to soldiers and were allowed to attach a soldier's wages for payment.

The 6:20 Man, Baldacci - C

                     This novel is of the page-turning genre, and succeeds on that level. Travis Devine is a West Point grad and decorated combat officer who joins a big-time Wall Street firm in his early thirties. When a colleague he is fond of is murdered, he starts to make discreet inquiries. Soon he is in the middle of a barn-burning catastrophe that spins into a completely over the top and complicated to the point of absurdity plot. One to be avoided. 

Winters In The World: A Journey Through The Anglo-Saxon Year, Parker - B

                     This book "will look at the festivals and traditions associated with particular times of year ... as well as investigating the language English writers used to describe their experience of the year."  The adoption of Christianity in the seventh century brought the Julian calendar to England. "Developing a festival calendar for the new English church meant harmonizing a religion which had its origins in the Middle East and the Mediterranean world with the seasonal and agricultural calendar of a country on the edge of Northern Europe." 

                   "Snow, hail, frost and ice beset the characters of many Old English poems, and it's clear that this season appealed strongly to the imaginations of Anglo-Saxon writers." Winter is imagined as a conquering warrior who sweeps through the country with frost and snow from early November to early February. Winter constrains, imprisons, and oppresses. Midwinter, the solstice and the birth of Christ come to symbolize hope for the future. Christmas came to an end on Feb. 2nd with Candelmas, the last feast of winter and the first of spring. It is midway between the winter and spring solstices. It celebrates Christ's parents taking him to the Temple forty days after his birth. "As Mary bears Christ to the temple, so winter is carried away and spring makes its entrance." Liberation from winter begins with floods in "fierce and wild" March. Spring, a time in agricultural communities where food stocks run low, was adopted by the church as a time for fasting for Lent. Easter, Christ's resurrection and the spring equinox are the high point of the church's liturgical calendar. They perfectly coincide with all of God's wonders coming back to life. "After Easter, the summer months brought a sequence of festivals which allowed people to take advantage of better weather to gather outdoors and celebrate in the sunshine." Bounteous fertility, greening meadows, and blooming flowers are all conjured up in the poets' pictures of May. The sun is described as God's candle, the jewel of gladness, and the noblest of stars. "The highpoint of summer was the solstice: the longest day of the year, the time of maximum light before the turn toward the waning days of autumn." Although there was certainly a pagan Midsummer celebration, no name for one has been found. Feasts, parades, music and bonfires marked the day. "For the Anglo-Saxons, an interest in the solstice, the healing powers of plants and the story of John the Baptist were all interrelated, and they all converged to make Midsummer a powerful time of year." For them, the fourth season of the year was harvest and a bountiful harvest was essential to sustaining life. There was a profoundly spiritual side to harvest as prayers were said to provide for a good harvest, and to give thanks for one.The last feast celebrated was Martinmas in mid-November.  It was a time of slaughtering and preparing meats for storage for the upcoming winter. It was known as a blood ritual and had roots in the pagan past before its adaptation by the Christian church. Autumn came for Anglo-Saxon England with the Norman conquest in 1066. But there was little change to the cycles of the seasons, feasts, and traditions outlined above. All the festivals named in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles were still celebrated when the Reformation came 500 years later. It was only the upheavals of the 20th century that made these rituals fade into the past. This is a somewhat quirky but delightful read.

Path Lit By Lightning: The Life Of Jim Thorpe, Maraniss - Inc.

                        "Born in 1887, in the Indian Territory of what later became Oklahoma, Thorpe was the quintessential underdog who rose from nowhere to become the greatest athlete in the world, the Natural who could do anything on the fields of play. He was an Olympic champion decathlete in track and field, a football All-American, a star pro and first president of what would become the National Football League, and a Major League Baseball player...also a graceful ballroom dancer and a gifted swimmer and ice skater." His sixty-five year lifespan encompassed a period where America tried to assimilate the Native Americans and make them white. "For all of his troubles, whether caused by outside forces or of his own doing, Jim Thorpe did not succumb. He did not vanish into whiteness. The man survived, complications and all, and so did the myth."

                        In the year of his birth, forced assimilation of the Indians became national policy. The Sac and Fox reservation where he was born consisted of half a million acres and would be reduced to a quarter of that in five years. Life at home was somewhat volatile as his dad, Hiram, "had a thirst for liquor and for women." His mother, Charlotte, was a stabilizing force who spoke French, English and two Indian languages, and who adhered to her Catholic faith. Jim and his twin Charlie were seven when they were sent away to school. Three years later, Charlie died of typhoid fever. Jim then went to the Haskell School in Lawrence, Kansas where, among other things, he first played football. In 1902, his mother died in childbirth. Two years later, he arrived at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, "the flagship school of the Indian Bureau." Hiram soon also passed away. Carlisle was a high school academically, and a college athletically. Thorpe first caught everyone's attention by casually exceeding the school record in the high jump while in workmen's clothing. He was soon playing halfback on the football team as well as competing in track and field. The 1908 season saw him named a 3rd string All-American. The following summer he was playing minor league baseball in the East Carolina league. He worked in Oklahoma over the winter and returned to Carolina in 1910. He returned to Carlisle for a one defeat season and first string All-American honors in 1911. He was a nationally honored athlete.  In the spring, he trained for the Olympics.

                      Of the 174 Americans who sailed to Stockholm, there were two from Carlisle, Jim and a Hopi long distance runner, Lewis Tewanima. During the opening weekend, he crushed the field in the Pentathlon and received his first gold medal.* The next day Tewanima took a silver in the 10,000 meters.

                       There is something here not working for me. It's probably a combination of sympathy for individuals who fall by the wayside after their years in the spotlight and, more importantly, the fact that the author goes way too deep on many peripheral topics. 

*The Stockholm Olympics were the last where the gold medals were actually gold.

The Violin Conspiracy, Slocumb - B+

                          This is a truly exceptional novel about a young Black man named Ray. He grows up poor in North Carolina and becomes a violin virtuoso without the help of any lessons.  Against the wishes of his mother, he accepts a scholarship to university, and continues to excel. Along the way, he is subject to massive amounts of racism of the "your kind" can't really play a violin at the concert level variety. But he can. His future is enhanced when his great grandmother tells him to go up to the attic to search for her grandfather's fiddle. He eventually finds it, his great-grandmother gives it to him, and he continues to advance. After college, he begins to play solos around the country and prosper under the tutelage of his college professor. They go to a music repair shop in Manhattan, where they discover that the fiddle is a Stradivarius worth $10m. Soon, his story is on the national news. At that point, his family sues him to compel him to share the value of the instrument. The Georgia family who owned his great grandmother's grandfather, the slave Leon, sues as well. In the midst of preparing for the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, the violin is stolen. Ray is forlorn, but prepares and wins the Silver Medal with a back-up instrument. Back in the states, he and the insurance company detective figure out who stole it. A great read.

The Lost Kings, Johnson - D

                     All the reviews heap praise after praise upon this novel. Words like psychological thriller and characterizations calling it 'the best of ' abound. I, however, remain clueless. 

Espana: A Brief History Of Spain, Tremlett - B

                      Spain's national anthem's lack of lyrics is a consequence of the country's inability to agree on the meaning of its past and the divisive history of its component parts. Its unique geography of a rugged impenetrable interior has shaped its history, as has its strategic location as a crossroads between Africa and Europe, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.

                      Because the Iberian Peninsula remained habitable during the ice ages, it has hosted humans and hominins for a million years. The Phoenicians founded Europe's first city at Cadiz in the eleventh century BC. They were followed by Greeks, Celts, and Iberians. From 206 BC and for nine centuries, Spain was part of Rome's empire and that of its Visigoth successor. The country was Christian, with a small Jewish population, by the time the Muslims arrived. From 711-714 AD, the entire peninsula was conquered by the invaders from North Africa. The Muslims "guaranteed lives, livelihoods, personal wealth and religious freedom in return of acknowledgement of Muslim rule." By 1100, eighty percent of the population was Muslim. The caliphate's capital city, Cordoba, was the largest in Europe, with a population of 100,000. "As had happened under the Romans and Visigoths, Iberia fragmented as soon as strong central control began to fail." 

                   The reconquest of Al-Andalus (the name of the Muslim state in Spain) took centuries and was a hotchpotch of different kingdoms at varying times inconsistently pushing back against the Moors. Al-Andalus was rich, prosperous and had an estimated population in 1000 AD of 3 million, six times larger than the Christian north. Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon's marriage transformed Spain, Europe and the world. Their central ideology was religious conformity. They decided to pursue the reconquest in 1482, and a decade later conquered Granada and defeated the Moors. The same year. Isabella authorized Columbus' trip to Asia. The arrival of the Europeans changed the Americas, and among other consequences, led to the death and decimation of most of the indigenous peoples. Thus, Spain was the first European country to authorize the importation of black Africans to replace the lost people of the Caribbean. The royal couple fell under the influence of an anti-semitic Dominican, Tomas Torquemada, who believed that many conversos were not sincere and initiated the Inquisition. Soon, in 1492,Isabella and Ferdinand banished Jews from Spain. Their grandson, Charles I of Spain and Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, inherited the Hapsburg mantle, and all of its possessions throughout Europe, along with Spain's holdings in the Americas. Charles used Spain's wealth to maintain his "impossibly stretched European Empire" which was in a constant state of battle with France. He ruled for forty years before abdicating, and splitting up the Spanish and German halves of his empire.

                  In the Americas, Spain held sway over lands stretching from San Francisco south through Mexico and all of the Pacific coast of South America. From this land, vast amounts of silver poured into Spain. Although Spain and England battled on the high seas, and the English harassed the silver fleets, Spain prospered in the 16th century. Soon the quality of its rulers began to contribute to a decline. In 1640, "Portugal was forever lost to Spain." "When Phillip IV died in 1665, Spain had had just five monarchs (counting Ferdinand and Isabella together) in 186 years. It had gained an empire, and the Golden Age had left a remarkable cultural legacy, but Spain was in crisis..." The death of Charles II without an heir in 1700 was the end of the Spanish Hapsburgs. The War of the Spanish Succession led to a Bourbon on the throne, and a more centralized monarchy. Revolution in France sent shockwaves into Spain. In 1808, Napoleon installed his brother on the Spanish throne and occupied the country. The people pushed back immediately, and with Wellington taking the lead for the British, the French were expelled. Ferdinand VII returned to the throne.

                  The king restored an absolutist monarchy, only to see his empire rebel. In a little over a decade, all of Latin America was gone. Only Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines remained. Spain was broke, ruled by reactionaries and soon engaged in civil war. Decades of conflict led to the end of the the monarchy in 1868. Democracy was followed by more turmoil and violence. Spain's problems were exacerbated by the loss of the remnants of empire at century's end. The country continued to be riven by regional rivalries of Galicia, Catalonian and  Basque nationalism. A brief economic boom during WWI failed to hold, and in 1921, a general declared a dictatorship. A second republic descended into civil war in 1936 when Franco led a military coup against the government. Both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany came to Franco's aid. The USSR backed the Republicans. Franco prevailed and dominated the country as El Caudillo until the mid-1970's. His rule was nationalistic, brutal, vengeful, and the country was despised for its affiliation with Germany and Italy. The country was an international pariah, but had begun to make economic progress by the time of his death in 1975. Spain quickly transformed into a democracy. She joined NATO and the EU in the following decade. Today, Spain is a successful member of the world economy, but one still haunted by its past. The various components that came together to create the kingdom are still tying to pull it apart. Both the Basque and Catalonian regions are seeking independence. That said, the country has lived in peaceful prosperity for half a century.

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Portrait Of A Thief, Li - B+

                      This fascinating novel is about museum thefts, but more importantly, about the Chinese-American experience of loss for the older generation and unbelievable expectations for the younger. A Beijing business recruits five college students of Chinese ancestry at exceptional American universities to recover five lost Zodiac figurines stolen in the 19th century, which scattered throughout American and European museums. The students are offered a phenomenal sum and take up the challenge. After the second successful theft, they are discovered, but not arrested. They abandon the project, but manage to succeed without further thefts. Fabulous read, and in development at Netflix.

The Great Stewardess Rebellion: How Women Launched A Workplace Revolution At 30,000 Feet, Wulfhart - B

                     In exchange for what was deemed a glamorous job involving travel and designer uniforms, young women in the 1960's were held to demanding physical requirements emphasizing their attractiveness in a job that ended at age 32, or earlier if pregnant or married. They were weighed often, held to strict make-up standards, and frequently subject to 'girdle checks' by male superiors. This is the story of how those women changed it all. "The stewardess rebellion is a story of harnessing the energy of the women's movement to make radical change."

                    Patt Gibbs went to work for American Airlines in 1962. AA had been the first to set the age 32 limit. Stewardess School was an intense six week program that she graduated from at the age of 20. She became a rep for the Air Line Stewards and Stewardesses Association, which was trying to bring the age 32 issue to the attention of Congress.  Exactly how the Civil Rights Acts provisions on discrimination based on gender would be enforced was a wide open question. The EEOC, pushed by a staff lawyer, Sonia Pressman, and the NOW finally began to look at issues pertaining to women in the workplace. A ruling from the EEOC turned against the airlines, who successfully appealed to the courts. The age 32 rule and the marriage rule were both under attack. In a round of negotiations, Patt and the ALSSA members threatened to switch their union from the TWU to the Teamsters. AA caved in for a 25-40% increase in wages in order to avoid the Teamsters. In 1968, the EEOC agreed that being a woman was not a 'bonafide occupational qualification' as the airlines had constructed the job. The EEOC also negated the age 32 and marriage rules. "The stewardesses had taken a temporary job, a 'training ground for future wives and mothers', and turned it into a career."

                  Tommie Hutto joined American in 1970. The decade saw many of the old rules fall away, and to some extent many were forgotten simply because men were now working as flight attendants. Lesbians, gay men, Latinx, Asians, and people of color were now all working as flight attendants. Tommie joined NOW and the nascent Stewardesses For Women's Rights (SFWR). One issue that SFWR was able to successfully tackle, with some help from Ralph Nader, was the airlines business of transporting radioactive materials. The FAA banned the practice. "SFWR's campaign against sexist advertising earned column inches" in major national newspapers. Tommie ran for and was elected a union representative. Under her leadership, the women were finally able to get single rooms for overnight trips.

                Patt Gibbs was in on the ground floor of one of the most important decisions the women ever made. Fed up with the work of the TWU, which obtained better wages for those who cleaned the planes than they did for the flight attendants, they began to work to become independent of the male-dominated union. Tommie, however, was union president and opposed to the move. TWA and Pan Am's flight attendants withdrew from the TWU and formed their own unions. The rebels won            and the Association of Professional Flight Attendants was formed.  Tommie was not happy, but the night of the election, she emptied out the union's NY office and turned everything over to the APFA. Although it got off to a slow start, the APFA eventually became an extraordinarily successful union. 

              Ironically, a year after the creation of the union, deregulation of the industry threw it into decades of financial disarray. AA and the union survived. Tommie was president, and a flight attendant well into the new century. Patt left, went to law school, and became a lawyer.  Their accomplishments were extraordinary. Women's rights remain at the forefront of the labor movement, and thankfully the obstinate, sexist attitudes of the management of half-a-century ago are fading away.

A World Of Curiosities, Penny - B+

                          The most recent Gamache novel is absolutely chilling. It ties  together the stories of a brother and sister Armand rescued a decade ago. Fiona and her brother Sam were being pimped out by their junkie mother when they killed her. Much against Armand's wishes, prosecutors put Fiona in jail, but Armand worked for her release and sponsored her to a prestigious engineering school. While celebrating her graduation in Three Pines, the town finds a sealed room from the middle of the 19th century filled with objects that are only a few years old. At the same time, Armand realizes a local suicide was actually murder, and Sam, whom Armand fears is hopelessly flawed comes to town. Armand concludes that the crimes committed are so complex that they could only have been committed by a psychopathic serial killer he had put away years before. He rushes to Quebec's special prison, discovers that John Fleming is gone and arrests the warden. His fears are confirmed. Fleming is coming for him or his family. Fleming is, and has been in, Three Pines innocuously and carefully disguised as a local. Both Sam and Fleming corner Ganache and others, who escape at the last moment. A great addition to the series.