history / united states / state & local / south (al, ar, fl, ga, ky, la, ms, nc, sc, tn, va, wv)

As a member of a Georgia Christian commune, Koinonia, Greg Wittkamper was publicly and devoutly in favor of racial integration and harmony. When Georgia's Americus High School was integrated, he refused to participate in the insults and violence aimed at its black students. He was harassed and bullied and beaten but stood his ground. In the summer after his senior year, as racial strife in Americus reached its peak, Greg left town. Forty-two years later, in the spring of 2006, a dozen former classmates wrote letters to Greg, asking his forgiveness and inviting him to return for a class reunion. Their words opened a vein of painful memory and unresolved emotion. The long-deferred attempt at reconciliation started him on a journey that would prove healing and saddening. The Class of '65 transcends the ugly things that happened decades ago in the Deep South. This book is also the story of four other people--David Morgan, Joseph Logan, Deanie Dudley, and Celia Harvey--who reached out to their former classmate. Why did they change their minds? Why did it still matter to them, decades later? Their tale illustrates our capacity for change and the ways in which America has--and has not--matured in its attitudes about race. At heart, this is a tale about a pariah and the people who eventually realized that they had been a party to injustice.

" ... the ... story of Perry Wallace, a ... student and talented athlete who became the first African-American basketball player in the SEC at Vanderbilt University during the tumultuous late 1960s ... Places Wallace's struggles and ultimate success into the larger contexts of civil rights and race relations in the South"--Provided by publisher.

"A collection of Carl Hiaasen's best columns from the past twelve years, covering topics, like hurricanes, off-shore drilling, voting rights, and political corruption, that have become national issues. A VINTAGE PAPERBACK ORIGINAL. Dance of the Reptiles is Carl Hiaasen's third collection of the very best of his columns for the Miami Herald. Covering topics large and small, from local issues like polluted rivers, the criminal justice system, and animal welfare to national stories like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Trayvon Martin case, Bernie Madoff's trial, and, of course, his classic commentary on Florida's presidential election woes"--.

Offers insight into the lives of Elizabeth Eckford, an African American woman who was one of the Little Rock Nine, and Hazel Bryan, a woman who attended Little Rock Central High School and was photographed shouting racial epithets at Elizabeth outside of the school, and looks at the impact of their reconciliation on the lives of these two women and on the community.