Synopses & Reviews
On June 4, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson delivered what he and many others considered the greatest civil rights speech of his career. Proudly, Johnson hailed the new freedoms granted to African Americans due to the newly passed Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, but noted that freedom is not enough.” The next stage of the movement would be to secure racial equality as a fact and a result.”
The speech was drafted by an assistant secretary of labor by the name of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who had just a few months earlier drafted a scorching report on the deterioration of the urban black family in America. When that report was leaked to the press a month after Johnsons speech, it created a whirlwind of controversy from which Johnsons civil rights initiatives would never recover. But Moynihans arguments proved startlingly prescient, and established the terms of a debate about welfare policy that have endured for forty-five years.
The history of one of the great missed opportunities in American history, Freedom Is Not Enough will be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand our nations ongoing failure to address the tragedy of the black underclass.
Synopsis
A Bancroft Prizewinning historian narrates the birth, life, and afterlife of the explosive report that permanently altered the way we talk about race in America
Synopsis
A concise and judicious account of Mr. Moynihans political career, the report he made famous and the policy debates that the report inspired
Freedom Is Not Enough is written in an engaging style that makes these debates come alive again and that reminds us of their continuing importance.”Wall Street Journal
Synopsis
In Freedom is Not Enough, award-winning historian James Patterson narrates the birth, life, and afterlife of the explosive Moynihan report, which altered the way we view race in America. In 1965, President Johnson was leading an optimistic nation toward progress, especially in regard to the civil rights movement, which had just achieved the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. But this momentum was quickly lost, in part due to the negative reception of Daniel Patrick Moynihans Report on Black Family Life. Moynihan marshaled a formidable array of alarming statistics to paint a grim portrait of inner-city black family life, and argued that immediate national action was imperative if America hoped to prevent lower-class black families from crumbling. So pivotal was the Moynihan report that the past half-century of race relations cannot be fully comprehended without considering its role in predictingyet falling short of avertingdecades of failure. Freedom Is Not Enough provides invaluable new insight into this crucial moment in American history, showing how the Moynihan report represents one of the great missed opportunities in 20th century American history.
About the Author
James T. Patterson is Ford Foundation Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University. He is the author of Restless Giant, Brown V. Board of Education, and the Bancroft prize-winning Grand Expectations: The United States 1945-1974. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.