THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, April 10, 1996 TAG: 9604100025
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY MARGARET B.S. BRISTOW
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
I CRINGED, SURPRISED and at first disappointed, after reading the table of contents to ``Thinking Black: Some of the Nation's Best Black Columnists Speak Their Mind'' and discovering no essay by 1994 Pulitzer Prize winner William Raspberry of The Washington Post.
But after reading all 34 essays in the book, written by the likes of Pulitzer Prize-winner Harold Jackson, Michael Cottman, Dorothy Lewis, Derrick Jackson, Wiley Hall, Richard Prince and Michael Paul Williams, I could not lament the absence of Raspberry or, for that matter, syndicated columnist Clarence Page, two favorites.
The collection, edited by USA Today's DeWayne Wickham, is divided into five chapters: ``Our Mothers, Ourselves''; ``About Black Men''; ``Glimpses of the Past''; ``The Color Line - and Degrees of Blackness''; and ``The Ballot, the Bullet, and Other Alternatives.'' The essays do just what Wickham intended them to do: ``give voice to the many joys and pains of black America, offering lesser known black journalists . . . a chance to be heard - and to have their thoughts considered - beyond the confining limits of their newspaper circulation.''
Feminists, such as Barbara Christian, bell hooks and Alice Walker, would love the first chapter. Forceful essays written by Betty DeRamus of The Detroit News and three other women remind us that being a successful black female journalist is no panacea from the sturm and drang of black muliebrity.
Chapter 2 comprises seven essays that reinforce a provocative admonition in Baltimore Sun columnist Harold Jackson's contribution. Jackson quotes Booker T. Washington as saying, ``Opportunity is like a bald-headed man with only a patch of hair in front. You have to grab that tuft of hair, grasp the opportunity while it's confronting you, or else you'll be grasping at a slick bald head.'''
Some of these columns pay tribute to blacks who did grasp the opportunity, such as 101-year-old multimillionaire Arthur George Gaston; Jermaine Hill, who runs a home for children in East Oakland, Calif.; the late journalist Robert Maynard; and writer and activist James Baldwin.
The five essays in ``Glimpses of the Past'' pay homage to other noteworthy African-Americans: baseball players of the 1930s and '40s; musicians, such as Smokey Robinson and Curtis Mayfield; civil rights leaders; and former Tennessee State track coach Ed Temple, the only coach to send seven women to the Olympic Games (1960).
Chapter 4 comprises 10 essays, including a controversial one by New York Post columnist Lisa Baird that was rejected by her editor. Baird sympathetically portrays Colin Ferguson, the black man who killed five white people on a Long Island commuter train. The other essays echo Wickham's dictum: Race matters in America.
The eight essays in ``The Ballot, the Bullet, and Other Alternatives'' share a disturbing proclivity present in many of the earlier columns: They are long on criticism but short on pragmatic solutions to race issues. Well-written, though.
The title of Wickham's book comes from a warning - think black - issued by Baltimore journalist H.L. Mencken in 1929 to black leaders. Mencken being a known racist, it appears here to be out of context. Wickham should have better explained his choice of the title, which now has a positive connotation.
Such quibbles aside, ``Thinking Black'' bravely continues the tradition of Freedom Journal, the first African-American newspaper, founded in Boston. It is to be commended for substance and style, shadow and act. MEMO: Margaret B.S. Bristow is an English professor at Hampton University. She
lives in Newport News.
ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
BOOK REVIEW
``Thinking Black: Some of the Nation's Best Black Columnists
Speak Their Mind''
Editor: DeWayne Wickham
Publisher: Crown. 267 pp.
Price: $23.
by CNB