American Blacks are entering a new phase in the struggle against white supremacy. Standing firmly in the African American tradition, Walton believes in the possibility of reconciliation with those whites who desire it, offering a hand of friendship and pragmatic ideas for paths forward.
Born into the Civil Rights Movement, author Anthony Walton observed firsthand the opening of opportunity for racial reconciliation. He also saw systemic racism and the vicious backlash against Black progress embodied in the Southern Strategy, Tea Party, and MAGA. Over time, Walton came to believe that moving forward requires a Third Reconstruction to accomplish what remains: better health outcomes, secure voting rights, and sustained economic and educational opportunity. Only this approach, he believes, will accomplish what remains unfinished for true African American equality. Blending social history, bracing analysis, and autobiography, this dazzling collection includes essays published in The New York Times and The Atlantic--including Willie Horton and Me and the much-anthologized Technology vs. African Americans--as well as new work that probes Walton's earlier thinking. Throughout, the author delivers insights that wrestle with the hydra-headed, ever-changing realities of an American society in which the more things change, the more they stay the same. The End of Respectability illuminates recent American history as experienced by a writer who has remained open to hope, unfazed by failures, and unflinchingly dedicated to the truth. This book will leave you changed. And just may incite you to be a part of the change we need.To most Americans, Mississippi is not a state but a scar, the place where segregation took its ugliest form and struck most savagely at its challengers. But to many Americans, Mississippi is also home. And it is this paradox, with all its overtones of history and heartache, that Anthony Walton--whose parents escaped Mississippi for the relative civility of the Midwest--explores in this resonant and disquieting work of travel writing, history, and memoir.
Traveling from the Natchez Trace to the yawning cotton fields of the Delta and from plantation houses to air-conditioned shopping malls, Walton challenged us to see Mississippi's memories of comfort alongside its legacies of slavery and the Klan. He weaves in the stories of his family, as well as those of patricians and sharecroppers, redneck demagogues and martyred civil rights workers, novelists and bluesmen, black and white. Mississippi is a national saga in brilliant microcosm, splendidly written and profoundly moving.