The Wilmington Ten : violence, injustice, and the rise of black politics in the 1970s /

The tragedy that became the Wilmington Ten began in February 1971, when black high school students boycotted a local school to protest the way integration had been implemented. A week of violence ensued, some of it intended to put aside the "1898 mentality," a culture of fear and racial repression dating to a riot that rocked the North Carolina city in that year. In September 1972, ten persons (nine black men and a white woman) were tried and convicted of arson and conspiracy to shoot at police and firefighters. The convictions were overturned in federal court in December 1980 following a national and international effort by a broad coalition of organizations. Janken (African American and diaspora studies, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), author of White: The Biography of Walter White, Mr. NAACP (CH, Mar'04, 41-4229), demonstrates that the original trial was a racist sham--a corrupt state solicitor, fabricated testimony, absurd jury selection--and that the state and federal courts performed nearly as unethically during the appeals process. Even Jimmy Carter demurred, fearful of losing white support. Though an occasionally confusing narrative may limit classroom use, this first book-length scholarly treatment of the event is meticulously researched and compelling in its analysis. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. --William Graebner, SUNY Fredonia

Janken (White: The Biography of Walter White, Mr. NAACP) recreates in meticulous detail a trial that became a cause celebre in the 1970s. Setting the scene, he describes how the desegregation of the Wilmington, N.C., school system in 1970 led to rioting, arson, and finally the arrival of the National Guard in early 1971. In the wake of this violence, 10 people-nine African-American men and one white woman-were arrested, tried, and convicted of arson and conspiracy. Janken's account of their experiences takes readers through their trial, which involved prosecutorial misconduct and flagrantly biased jury selection; the attempts of a coalition of activists to free them; and the overturning of their convictions in 1979. The bittersweet conclusion concerns the difficulty with which the Wilmington 10 resumed their lives, or attempted to. Younger readers may be most surprised by the blatant racism expressed by some of the court officials-for example, the prosecutor making pleased note of the KKK affiliation of potential jurors. The story's minutiae can become overwhelming, but the subject matter is fascinating, and it's illustrative of how far Americans still have to go in bridging our society's divisions. 12 illus. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

In 1971, high school students in Wilmington, NC, staged a boycott to protest the systematic mistreatment of African American students by school administrators, police, and the larger community. The boycott led to four days of violence that resulted in two deaths, six injuries, and several ruined businesses, some of which were destroyed by owners to take advantage of the civil unrest before the National Guard restored order. The riots would eventually result in the conviction of ten young protestors sentenced to a total of 282 years in prison. Using recently declassified government documents, personal interviews, and archival research, Janken (White: The Biography of Walter White, Mr. NAACP) provides the first examination of a pivotal moment in the black freedom movement of the 1970s and spends the first third of the book constructing a time line of how a town fell apart over school integration. The rest of the volume documents the corrupted trial of the protestors and how their conviction resulted in mass protest of the injustice. VERDICT Janken's highly recommended history of student racial protest provides a historical perspective on the current struggle for diversity within academia and the black lives matter movement.-John Rodzvilla, -Emerson Coll., Boston © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A new look at the injustice visited on a group of African-American high school students engaged in the battle for desegregation in the public schools. Janken (African-American and Diaspora Studies/Univ. of North Carolina; Walter White: Mr. NAACP, 2003, etc.) revisits this painful episode in the civil rights struggle of early 1971, when the boycott by black high school students of two newly desegregated Wilmington, North Carolina, high schools turned violent and provoked a white-supremacy response and precipitous police roundup. The initial protests were led by a student "boycott committee" radicalized by the ongoing culture and politics of Black Power and frustrated by the discrimination they endured continually in their formerly all-white schools: racist taunts by other students, sidelining of black students for government and sports teams, uneven disciplinary action meted out by administration, and the need for black educators and counselors, among other grievances. The students sought help from black church leaders in town, especially the white minister of Gregory Congregational Church and the assistant he recruited for help, Ben Chavis, a young civil rights organizer, who would become the lightning rod for focusing and leading the student group's demands. After the conflict spread from the schoolyard to the town, resulting in the burning of several white establishments and violent clashes with the homegrown vigilante Rights of White People, the boycott leaders, including Chavis, were charged in a frame-up and jailed. The story of the Wilmington Ten really begins here, as Janken follows systematically the problematic witness who perjured himself at the trial, coached by the prosecution, and the faulty jury selection process. Moreover, the alliances the group garnered from supportive civil rights groups helped ignite a national outrage about the cause and helped join the larger discussion of racial equality smoldering across the country. A passionate, intensely engaging portrait of the group's initial mission, as well as the terrible personal lifelong toll the struggle took. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.