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FREEDOMWAYS     THIRD QUARTER 1969

Hughes, Langston. BLACK MISERY. Illustrations by Arouni. New York: Paul S. Eriksson. $2.50 (cloth). (This children's book is among the last two or three books written by Hughes before his death in May 1967. It deals with how it feels to be black in the U.S.)
Katz, Bernard (editor). THE SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF EARLY BEGRO MUSIC IN THE UNITED STATES. New York: Arno Press and The New York Times. xlii + 146 pages. $7.50. (This is a much-needed, very useful collection of articles or essays on Negro music [with over 150 songs-many with music-woven into the articles] edited with the introductions by Bernard Katz, a long-time, knowledgeable worker in the field of Negro studies and the father of William L. Katz, general editor of The American Negro: His History and Literature Arno Press series of which this book is a part. Most of the pieces are early 19th century writings, but the important essays [or sections from them] by Du Bois, J. W. Johnson, R. N. Dett and John Lovell, Jr. are here. Russell Ames's The Story of American Folk Song [1955] attempted to follow up and expand on Lovell's social implications thesis and Lawrence Gellert's Negro Songs of Protest [1936 , 1939] and later articles on Negro protest music. Sterling Brown's The Negro in American Culture-Music [a manuscript done for G. Myrdal's An American Dilemma] sides with those who say that American whites have produced folksongs as well as Negroes thus correcting Krehbiel slightly. Another somewhat similar but more varied compilation with emphasis on the 20th century is The Negro in Music and Art [1967, 1968] edited by Lindsay Patterson in the ten-volume International Library of Negro Life and History set.)
Killens, John O. SLAVES. (This is the scenario of the film Slaves with Ossie Davis et al. and directed by Herbert Biberman who made the great film Salt of the Earth.)
Kimbrough, Jess. DEFENDER OF THE ANGELS: A BLACK POLICEMAN IN OLD LOS ANGELES. New York: Macmillan. ix + 273 pages. $6.95. (This book is the author's fictionalized account of his years with the Los Angeles police force.)
Lester, Julius. REVOLUTIONARY NOTES. Richard W. Baron Publishing Co., 243a E. 49 St., New York 10017. xi + 209 pages. $5.95 (This book is a collection of Lester's syndicated columns and articles that appeared in the Guardian newspaper and other publications during 1968. Lester, a musician and photographer, does a radio program on WBAI in New York. Other books by him are Look Out, Whitey! Black Power's Gon Get Your Mama! and To Be A Slave, a runner-up for the Newberry Medal.)
Levine, Naomi (with Richard Cohen). OCEAN HILL-BROWNSVILLE: A CASE HISTORY OF SCHOOLS IN CRISIS. Afterword by Mario Fantini, The Ford Foundation. New York: Popular Library. 160 pages. $.75 (paper). (The two authors are employed by the American Jewish Congress. Although they put in some of the arguments of the black people who want to control and improve education in their communities, their conclusions are almost all in favor of the white UFT teachers, the central Board of Education and the white middle class and against blacks' really controlling the public schools even in their own ghettos. Kenneth Clark describes this black powerlessness. Even the vice and rackets in the ghetto are Mafia controlled. But this book is still much better than Martin Mayer's wrong-headed, ridiculous book The
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Transcription Notes:
in second paragraph, review of THE SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF EARLY BEGRO MUSIC IN THE UNITED STATES, there is a typo of "American", not corrected in transcription ---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-15 16:38:17