Divided Minds: Intellectuals and the Civil Rights Movement - Tapa dura

No movement in the 20th century posed such a stark moral challenge to American intellectuals as that of civil rights. Yet the response of prominent writers and thinkers was hesitant and ambivalent. William Faulkner spoke out for desegregation but asked the North to "go slow". Richard Wright and W.E.B. Du Bois had difficulty being heard while editors sought out more moderate voices. Other less patient voices struggled to emerge and put themselves at risk to air their views but it was James Baldwin who threw down a gauntlet to other intellectuals in his brilliant and revolutionary "The Fire Next Time". This text tells the history of the civil rights movement, full of stories of unaccountable bravery and inexplicable timidity - often the products of the same divided minds.