Synopses & Reviews
A California teacher named Clarice T. Campbell wrote detailed letters to family and friends about her "small adventure" while studying at the universities of Alabama and Mississippi and teaching at black Mississippi and South Carolina colleges from 1956 until 1965.
Participant and observer, she challenged segregated bus stations, restaurants, churches, and mindsets. Along the way she met intolerant and admirable people, both famous and local.
Anyone who says nothing has changed must have forgotten or never have known the daily indignities, not to mention the powerless position, of African-Americans in the South before the 1960s. Motivated to educate or remind, Campbell has collected and edited the amazing letters she wrote. They document a time and a place, as well as her observant, feeling nature.
Those who have read them have noted her "astute observation of race relations" and her "lighter vein that entertains while it teaches."
During her residence in the South, she encountered racial injustice everywhere. As she proceeded with her daily activities-shopping, having her car repaired, dining in cafes and restaurants-she recognized matters that she deemed "wrong." But only she and a few others dared to speak out. With her clear insight into a closed society being broken open, her collective letters to the world outside are a chronicle of the Deep South's struggle and America's quest for civil rights.
Civil Rights Chronicle: Letters from the South is a storybook, an autobiography, and, for the reader seeking an eyewitness's keen documentation, a history of troubled times.
Clarice T. Campbell retired from teaching in 1988. She lives in Tupelo, Mississippi.
Synopsis
Anyone who says nothing has changed must have forgotten or never have known the daily indignities, not to mention the powerless position, of African Americans in the South before the 1960s. A white California teacher named Clarice T. Campbell wrote detailed letters to family and friends about her "small adventures" while studying at the universities of Alabama and Mississippi and teaching at black Mississippi and South Carolina colleges. She was a keen eyewitness during troubled times. her letters reveal a time and a place as well as her observant, feeling nature.
Motivated to educate or remind, Campbell has collected and edited these amazing letters. They tell of racial injustice she encountered, whether shopping, having her car repaired, or dining in cafes and restaurants. Everywhere, she recognized matters that she deemed "wrong." But only she and a few others dared to speak out. With her clear insight into a closed society being broken open, these collective letters to the world
Synopsis
In more ways than one, Clarice T. Campbell was a friend of the civil rights movement. An indefatigable campaigner for desegregation, Campbell was also an inveterate letter-writer; the fact that many of her letters concerned civil rights has come as a boon and a blessing for historians of that era. The letters Campbell wrote to family and friends during the heyday of the early sixties have been collected in
Civil Rights Chronicle, an eyewitness account of a troubled time.
Campbell's involvement in civil rights began in Pasadena where she worked as a teacher and helped integrate her local schools. When her husband died, Campbell moved south and began teaching history in black colleges. During those years she wrote detailed, perceptive letters that described the clash of race and culture from ground zero. What becomes immediately apparent is the importance of both individual and communal acts; the heroism of such figures as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks is admirable and necessary, but without organizations like the SCLC or the NAACP, they wouldn't have gotten far. Civil Rights Chronicle offers valuable reading for professional historians and anyone interested in America's troubled racial history.
Synopsis
A California teacher named Clarice T. Campbell wrote detailed letters to family and friends about her "small adventure" while studying at the universities of Alabama and Mississippi and teaching at black Mississippi and South Carolina colleges from 1956 until 1965.
Participant and observer, she challenged segregated bus stations, restaurants, churches, and mindsets. Along the way she met intolerant and admirable people, both famous and local.
Anyone who says nothing has changed must have forgotten or never have known the daily indignities, not to mention the powerless position, of African-Americans in the South before the 1960s. Motivated to educate or remind, Campbell has collected and edited the amazing letters she wrote. They document a time and a place, as well as her observant, feeling nature.
Those who have read them have noted her "astute observation of race relations" and her "lighter vein that entertains while it teaches."
During her residence in the South, she encountered racial injustice everywhere. As she proceeded with her daily activities-shopping, having her car repaired, dining in cafes and restaurants-she recognized matters that she deemed "wrong." But only she and a few others dared to speak out. With her clear insight into a closed society being broken open, her collective letters to the world outside are a chronicle of the Deep South's struggle and America's quest for civil rights.
Civil Rights Chronicle: Letters from the South is a storybook, an autobiography, and, for the reader seeking an eyewitness's keen documentation, a history of troubled times.
Clarice T. Campbell retired from teaching in 1988. She lives in Tupelo, Mississippi.
Synopsis
An outsider's correspondence that documents the fight for civil rights in the Deep South