{"product_id":"the-race-beat-the-press-the-civil-rights-struggle-and-the-awakening-of-a-nation-9780679403814","title":"The Race Beat: The Press  the Civil Rights Struggle  and the Awakening of a Nation","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis is the story of how America awakened to its race problem  of how a nation that longed for unity after World War II came instead to see  hear  and learn about the shocking indignities and injustices of racial segregation in the Southand the brutality used to enforce it.  It is the story of how the nations press  after decades of ignoring the problem  came to recognize the importance of the civil rights struggle and turn it into the most significant domestic news event of the twentieth century.  Drawing on private correspondence  notes from secret meetings  unpublished articles  and interviews  veteran journalists Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff go behind the headlines and datelines to show how a dedicated cadre of newsmenfirst black reporters  then liberal southern editors  then reporters and photographers from the national press and the broadcast mediarevealed to a nation its most shameful shortcomings and propelled its citizens to act.  We watch the black press move bravely into the front row of the confrontation  only to be attacked and kept away from the action. Following the Supreme Courts 1954 decision striking down school segregation and the Souths mobilization against it  we see a growing number of white reporters venture South to cover the Emmett Till murder trial  the Montgomery bus boycott  and the integration of the University of Alabama.  We witness some southern editors joining the call for massive resistance and working with segregationist organizations to thwart compliance. But we also see a handful of other southern editors write forcefully and daringly for obedience to federal mandates  signaling to the nation that moderate forces were prepared to push the region into the mainstream.  The pace quickens in Little Rock  where reporters test the boundaries of journalistic integrity  then gain momentum as they cover shuttered schools in Virginia  sit-ins in North Carolina  mob-led riots in Mississippi  Freedom Ride buses being set afire  fire hoses and dogs in Birmingham  and long  tense marches through the rural South.  For many journalists  the conditions they found  the fear they felt  and the violence they saw were transforming. Their growing disgust matched the mounting countrywide outrage as The New York Times  Newsweek  NBC News  and other major news organizations  many of them headed by southerners  turned a regional story into a national drama.  Meticulously researched and vividly rendered  The Race Beat is an unprecedented account of one of the most volatile periods in our nations history  as told by those who covered it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45646910357557,"sku":"ByrdShop_0679403817","price":33.81,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780679403814.jpg?v=1781681326","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-race-beat-the-press-the-civil-rights-struggle-and-the-awakening-of-a-nation-9780679403814","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}