Review by Choice Review
In the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress created the Community Relations Service as a Department of Justice agency charged with helping to prevent, if possible, or to resolve racial or ethnic disagreements that accompanied enforcement of the legislation. Both the act and the nature of the work performed required that the Community Relations Service maintain a low profile and actively discourage publicity. As a result, this agency is still largely unknown to the US public, even though it has worked effectively behind the scenes to settle disputes that have arisen as the nation has moved toward the establishment of a more equal society under civil rights legislation. Levine, a former associate director of the agency, has written the first history of that work. He recounts methods and practices used to diffuse conflicts that stretched from Selma and Montgomery, AL, at the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement to more recent events involving Native and Asian Americans. This book is a useful study of both the workings of a federal bureaucracy and the quest for social justice in the recent US. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. J. P. Sanson Louisiana State University at Alexandria
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
