En Route to Victory
G., E.
Jim Peck is one of those remarkable men who make us all feel a little more human and dignified. Like his colleagues in CORE, he didn't need the bona fides of 53 stitches in his head, earned on...
...He took the beatings and stitches along the road to free dom...
...Like his colleagues in CORE, he didn't need the bona fides of 53 stitches in his head, earned on a Freedom Ride through Birmingham, Alabama, to establish his right to be heard on the struggle for human rights...
...we would have liked to read about a lot of other things as well—a critical examination of other approaches, other activities and organizations, projections of activity, of what comes next, and much else...
...In the meantime, Freedom Ride is a worthy and readable account of a great episode...
...This is not a book about Jim Peck, though he does tell a little about himself, from his first freedom, ride in 1947 (when it had not yet earned capital letters), in order to explain the purpose of his participation in the 1961 Freedom Ride...
...There will be other books, other discussions, as there are never-ceasing actions...
...Nor is it a book about CORE which, after years of pursuing its work with little publicity and infinitely less funds, became front-page news (with hardly more funds...
...Wisely, where he can, Peck lets the participants speak for themselves, as, for example, some of the students who were engaged in the sit-ins...
...It is a book about the conception of nonviolent action that lay behind the Freedom Ride, and the actual events themselves— the general development of actions for civil rights, through Mont gomery, the sit-ins, the Ride itself, the arrests, and so forth...
...No one book, however, will do that...
...We would perhaps have liked to read a more thorough discussion of non-violence as a conception, and as it relates to the struggle in the South today...
...Altogether, the book makes up for its slimness of size in competence of reporting and presentation...
...If we've made progress along that road, and we have indeed, it's precisely because of men like Jim Peck and such vehicles as the Freedom Ride...
Vol. 10 • January 1963 • No. 1
