The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation Book

"If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it does it still make a sound?" The age old philosophical question to verify the existence of an event resonates loudly through the theme of this book. If not for the reporters, editors, and photographers, would the realities of the civil rights movement have entered the consciousness of anyone outside the south? It arguably would have taken a different path. Enlightening in-depth analysis of how newspaper, and later, television journalism narrated the story of the critical events of the civil rights movement starting with post-WWII life through the Watts riots. The bulk of this book focused on the battle over desegregation in public education in the 1950's through the march on Selma for voting rights in the 1960's. Direct and detailed account although at times the players were hard to follow and the narration wandered at times. Still, a lot to digest here and an important and well done body of work. The details are not for the faint of heart and the racial hate rhetoric espoused by the rabid segregationists is alarmingly similar to the dog whistle verbiage embraced by the modern day hard right. Have we not learned anything or evolved from the past?