Better Day Coming

June 4, 2001
Fairclough (To Redeem the Soul of America; Martin Luther King, Jr
.), who teaches American history at the University of East Anglia, aims to present "an interpretation of the black struggle for equality in the United States between 1890 and 2000, concentrating on the South." The first half of the book covers 1890 to 1919, with sketches of such individuals as Ida B. Wells, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey. Quickly reviewing major events (e.g., the Great Migration, the Scottsboro affair), Fairclough guides readers through the 1910s, '20s and '30s, examining the failure of Garvey's black nationalism and recognizing the role of the Communist Party in fighting racism. After that, the book addresses a mélange of topics: education, employment, World War II, anti-communism, Brown
v. Board of Education, the Montgomery bus boycott, the sit-ins, the 1965 Los Angeles riots and the Poor People's Campaign. He also analyzes the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr., and the effects of the Black Power movement on the struggle for black civil rights. The final chapter, despite the subtitle's promise, skims over the remaining decades of the century. An easy read that relies heavily on secondary sources, this work may disappoint serious students of African-American history with its cursory treatment of some material. Still, Fairclough's approach will probably suit his intended audience, "the general reader... who may have little or no knowledge about the history of race relations since the American Civil War."