Southern Journey: A Return to the Civil Rights Movement (ISBN 0688140998)

Amazon.com Review:
In January 1991, Tom Dent began a journey that would take him through the South United States, visiting cities and towns that had been significant during the Civil Rights Movement. He began in Greensboro, North Carolina, where sit-ins at a Woolworth's lunch counter in the 1960 helped spark black protest against segregation, and ended in November in Mayersville, Mississippi, a town of just 475. Dent's fascinating journey takes place mostly on the back roads and state highways and, for the most part, he talks to ordinary folks who played vital roles in the Civil Rights Movement, but whose names will probably be lost to history. One of those was Unita Blackwell, who in the 1960s tried to register to vote in Mississippi and was told she would never work again. When Dent visited her, she was mayor of Mayersville, and she assessed the changes she'd seen this way: "I suppose what we really gained is the knowledge that we struggled to make this a decent society, because it wasn't. And maybe it still isn't now, but at least we tried."

Considered a classic but . . .:
This is considered a classic civil rights book. Dent quite literally gets into a car and starts driving, hitting many of the more famous signposts that mark the highway of American civil rights. He tracks down original players, walks the walk, talks the talk. For novices and younger people (who did not live during those times), this is a good introduction. I found his style to be a bit dry, so much so that it made it hard to keep up with the book. Some of the interviews just aren't that interesting and read more as reflections than first-person histories. A shame, really. I prefer -- and recommend -- "Eyes on the Prize," other works.