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FREEDOMWAYS  FOURTH QUARTER 1966

The James Reeb Story is a significant contribution to the history of the Movement and to Americana generally. Reeb's own inner pilgrimage from the early confines of a personalistic, dogmatic, biblical fundamentalism in the Middle West on through the spectrum of his Eastern academic enlightenment to his later humanistically-motivated involvement in the community organization makes a fascinating story. It also helps the reader understand some of the motivations that took hundreds of other ministers to Selma, and that have involved so many of them in the Movement. These men are not Johnny-come-latelys nor are they opportunists. Many have behind them similar deep conflicts and tensions between the Faith they preach and the conditions of life within which they must practice, and are seeking a resolution of their inner dilemmas through personal commitment to social justice.

It would be a disaster if, in the current argument over black and white relationship in future activity within the Movement, the sincerity of such men should be questioned and their usefulness as allies dismissed. James Reeb's life and death prove otherwise. The struggle ahead is long enough and difficult enough to need the involvement of all men and women who share the vision of equality and are prepared to pay its price. If The James Reeb Story contributes to this outcome, his death will have its just dividend.

Wm. Howard Melish

BLACK AFRICA REVISITED

POEMS FROM BLACK AFRICA, edited by Langston Hughes. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Ind. 158 pages. $4.95.

PERHAPS the very first point to be made about this anthology is that Langston Hughes was somewhat indiscriminate in his choice of materials, due to his ambition to include poems widely representative of the length and breadth of Africa. Most of the poems from Ghana and Nigeria, for instance, should have found no place in an anthology of this kind. The over-all effect is comic in some respects, and this is unfortunate in a work undertaken with such serious intention.

But Langston Hughes renders one good service to African poetry by his selection. Since the sixties, there has been a determined attempt to divert the course of African writing from so-called protest writing and culture conflict theme to the concern of the individual mind

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