Victory over segregation on a major southern campus.
About the Author :
ROBERT A. PRATT is professor of history at the University of Georgia. He is the author of The Color of Their Skin: Education and Race in Richmond, Virginia, 1954-1989 and Selma's Bloody Sunday: Protest, Voting Rights, and the Struggle for Racial Equality.
Review :
In an era when most of the country appears to have given up on school desegregation as an important marker of racial equality, Robert Pratt provides a vivid account of how we have forgotten the heroes of the 1950s and 1960s who put their lives on the line to end racial segregation in higher education. He tells the dramatic story of how black lawyers, Donald Hollowell, Horace Ward, and Vernon Jordan, took on the racist political establishment to see that Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes gained access to the University of Georgia. It is a history worth reading before we have retreated too far.
Long overshadowed by the events at Ole Miss and Alabama, the desegregation of the University of Georgia in 1961 stands on its own as a major landmark in the civil rights struggle. Robert Pratt places the ordeal of students Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter in a broad historical context, in which 'respected' politicians and educators fought bitterly to preserve white supremacy at the close of the Jim Crow era. This is a gem of a book, at once wise, balanced, and compelling.
By a wide margin, this is the best study we have of the dismantling of white supremacy in a state system of higher education. But this book will also be valued for its intimate portraits of individuals on both sides of the struggle in Georgia, helping us to think in a more nuanced way even about those positions with which we disagree. A real achievement.
It is a gripping story, beautifully told. Pratt should be congratulated for exploring all angles of the story with such sensitivity and insight. . . . [A] fine book that makes important contribution not just to the history of Georgia but to the wider history of race, education, and voting.
[A] well-crafted examination of one university's painful sojourn through an era when civil-rights activists vowed 'not to be moved' from their quest for equal treatment under the law.
Robert A. Pratt's study of desegregation at the University of Georgia clarifies the school's genetic blueprint, calling attention to the distance southern colleges have traveled in their quest to enter the national mainstream. Building upon published accounts and making skillful use of autobiography and oral interviews, Pratt connects the personal stories of Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Earl Holmes . . . with the saga of Horace Ward.
Anyone interested in the multifaceted history of the civil-rights era, especially as it unfolded at a prominent southern institution of higher education, will find this a fascinating book.
The book will appeal to people who want to know more about legal cases in the Civil Rights era, and will appeal to academics curious as to how their colleagues in the South responded to integration.
