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■ WORLD AWARENESS
Jerry Farberwlll perform his unique blend of comedy and jazz on
Sunday, Feb. 4 at 7 p.m. at Wax Alley. His performance will mark
the beginning of World Jewry Month, which is a series of pro-
grams sponsored by Georgia Hlllel.
The Red and Black • Tuesday, January 23, 1990 • S
A&E
Pulitzer Prize winner speaks on MLK
By SUSAN HIRSCH
Contributing Writer
“My purpose is to write a history
of the civil rights movement out of
the conviction from which it was
made, namely that truth requires a
maximum effort to see through the
eyes of strangers, foreigners, and
enemies."
■Taylor Branch,"Parting the Wa
ters"
Pulitzer prize winning Georgia
author, Taylor Branch, visited
Athena Thursday to talk about his
experience as an outsider writing
the storv of racial history.
In Athens Academy gymnasium,
before a 400-member audience that
spanned the generation born a de
cade before King’s birth to the chil
dren bom a decade after his death,
Branch described how it is funda
mental that people “have some
sense of each other’s humanity to
understand what the civil rights
movement was about.”
‘The civil rights movement was
an inner opening for blacks and
whites,” Branch said, “an under
standing that there are things in
side yourself that you have in
common with other people that you
never knew were there.”
Branch spent seven years
writing “Parting The Waters:
America in the King Years 1954-
63,” a 1000-page volume of social
history which won the 1989 Pu
litzer Prize for general nonfiction,
the National Book Critics Circle
award and was a nominee for the
1989 National Book Award.
Speaking softly with a gentle
southern drawl, Branch said his
book brought him a new under
standing of the civil rights
movement and King’s complexity
and sopistication.
''Parting the Waters,” details
King’s youth and education, his re
luctant acceptance of power, the
Montgomery bus boycott, the 1960
presidential election Freedom
Rides, the siege of Birmingham,
voter registration, the integration
of Ole Miss and other tormenting
incidents which defined the
struggle. The book ends with Ken
nedy’s assassination.
Researching King, Branch read
over 300,000 pages of FBI files, in
cluding tapes from the Kennedy
White House and FBI wiretap
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transcripts.
“He had genius as an orator, and
and unparalleled gift to convey
complex ideas to the lordB and la
dies of London, as well as the
sharecroppers of Mississippi,” he
said.
"King said all people are
brothers and sisters, and he under
stood that democracy embodies
that Bame idea. And that’s why he
always said that two segregated
souls never met in God,” he said.
Branch said King refused to
allow hate and violence to keep
him from making human contact
with his enemies.
Branch said the feeling of
common humanity among blacks
ignited the “Montgomery Bus Boy
cott.”
‘The boycott wasn’t about what
Rosa Parks did,” he said. “There
had been lynchings and black
women had refused to give up their
seats on buses before and nothing
happened.”
Instead, Branch said the black
community, “hopelessly class di
vided,” was inspired by Parks’
unique character and dignity.
Branch said, historical resources
are “the footprints of culture ” Yet
writing racial history is difficult
because it’s sensitive, hidden and
therefore, perishable.
Without written resources,
Branch said it’s necessary to re
construct most of racial history
through oral accounts.
While it was not easy to collect
stories, Branch said he had an ad
vantage as white outsider, since he
was divorced from “insider poli
tics."
University comparative litera
ture professor Dr. Mbulelo Mza-
mane, who met with Branch before
the lecture, praised Branch’s work
for restoring social history that has
been lost.
“Branch’s work bought home to
most of us that the real history
makers, as distinct from the sym
bols, were operating at the low
column community levels- women,
students and volunteers of every
description,” he said.
He said current debate over the
use of the ethnic appellation “Af
rican-American” for blacks indi
cates a shift to the origins of black
identity.
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Time Magazine selected Nicholas Nickleby
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■Ji v /
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THE NATIONAL PLAYERS • TOUR 41
rwyersit^) Tuesday, January 2 3, 1990
7:00 p.m. Fine Arts Theatre
Tickets $4.00 Students $8.00 Public
Available at the Tate Student Center Cashier’s Window
Taylor Branch: Award-winning author
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