The Civil Rights Reader: Capturing the Ties Between Art and Social Justice

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – University of Arkansas doctoral student Amy Schmidt is associate editor for The Civil Rights Reader: American Literature from Jim Crow to Reconciliation, a newly published anthology that draws upon the inspiration of poets and writers from the 1890s to the present to redefine the emotional, political and spiritual process of the tumultuous Civil Rights struggle in America.

The anthology stands apart from typical collections through its focus on creative writing. Works by some of the most influential writers to engage issues of race and social justice in America are featured, including James Baldwin, Flannery O'Connor, Amiri Baraka and Nikki Giovanni.

The book begins with pieces from the post-Reconstruction era when racial segregation became legal and moves through writings such as Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, in which he writes that “All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality,” giving the segregator “a false sense of superiority.” Authors in the final section include Malcolm X and the poets Rita Dove and Anthony Grooms.

The book, edited by Julie Buckner Armstrong, associate professor of English at the University of South Florida, is intended to be a broad, inspirational introduction to the literature and the history of the Civil Rights movement in America.

As associate editor, Schmidt was instrumental in pulling together the numerous texts and permissions for the book. She began the project four years ago, in fall 2005 when she was in the master’s program in Southern studies at the University of Mississippi. Her contributions were supported in part by a grant from the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation.

Schmidt said that the director of the Institute, Susan Glisson, and Armstrong both felt the need for an anthology that gave new dimension to Civil Rights literature.

 “While a number of anthologies exist for historical writings, speeches and such, one that took creative writing as the focus was noticeably absent,” Schmidt said.

After she and Armstrong discussed the scope of the anthology, they decided to take a long view of the movement.

“We wanted one that wasn’t confined to Brown v. Board through King’s assassination, so the anthology starts with the beginning of Jim Crow and ends with contemporary writings,” Schmidt said.

The most arduous task was in gaining permissions from authors, but a number of writers, their agents or their estates were especially helpful, some reducing their rates considerably or granting permissions free of charge.

The entire process of gathering the materials and completing the anthology took well into the summer of 2008. Schmidt and Armstrong presented their ideas for the anthology at the Modern Language Association’s annual conference in December 2006.

Christopher Metress, editor of The Lynching of Emmett Till: A Documentary History, describes the finished collection as “the first of its kind, one that is much needed and long overdue.”

The book was released Jan. 15 by the University of Georgia Press.