The preface of The Great Wells of Democracy sets the tone for establishing this book as a document for those who are unfamiliar with African American history and its struggles. The African American quest for equality is graphically described through historic events and personal vignettes about the author and occasionally his father’s experiences in a racist America.
Despite the decades of heroic fightback by African Americans, democracy seems to be elusive. These experiences are followed by detailed historical confirmation about his thesis of structural racism. Structural racism is illustrated as the right for Blacks to sit at a lunch counter, but not to have the right to live next door to whites. This racism extends to discrimination by banks and loan institutions towards African Americans who seek to purchase homes. These policies contribute to establishing Black neighborhoods that eventually make for segregated neighborhoods and schools.
The author’s personal anecdotes about himself and his father were heart arming and reminiscent of many African Americans’ experiences. These anecdotes about the author and his father’s experiences are interspersed throughout the book. Each of the examples is followed by historical data. One such example was the author’s job expectations upon receiving his doctorate. He followed this with statistics that illustrated the percentage of African American academics and scholars who were able to secure a “full-time teaching position at a college or university.”
These personal accounts were engaging and at times I found the transition to the more academic historical discussions a bit awkward. Marable is a master in relating actions that occurred in a specific time period. The book is chock full of names and struggles to illustrate historic civil rights events. He draws conclusions that are not often part of today’s mainstream thinking, relating the slave legacy to the shorter life span and spate of medical problems that are part of today’s African American life.
Marable deftly weaves events that have a national racial context together: the Rodney King case, Clinton and his attack on rap artist Sister’s statement about Blacks killing Blacks and Malcom X’s “chickens come home to roost.” Connecting a string of presidential initiatives provides a wonderful reminder to the reader of the initiatives and half steps of modern presidents to address the endemic nature of racism in the US. President William J. Clinton’s proposal for “a year long conversation about race” made him the fourth president “in half a century attempting to engage the nation in a dialogue about issues of race.” Harry S. Truman “authorized a commission that produced the document ‘To Secure These Rights.’” Challenging racial segregation in the armed forces and government hiring, Dwight D. Eisenhower elevated the Justice Department to enable it to enforce equal protection of citizens under the law. Lyndon Johnson established the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders that produced the Kerner report that stated “Our Nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal.”
This is not a book of the past. Reparations and its historical relationship and numerous people from Queen Mother Moore, James Foreman, Martin Luther King to the Black Manifesto are cited as paving the path to today’s movements and struggles. This book has a wealth of information for the young and the old, the student and the activist who is interested in contemporary, as well as, historical struggles of African Americans.
The Great Wells of Democracy: The Meaning of Race in American Life by Manning Marable Perseus Books Group, New York, 2000.
