Description
Book SynopsisAll Eyes Are Upon Us explores the history of racial struggles in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York from World War II to the present. The Northeast has long basked in its reputation as the home of abolitionism and a refuge for blacks fleeing the Jim Crow South. But its cities have also stood as strongholds of segregation and racism. At times, this region witnessed bold experiments in interracial democracy: the schools of Springfield, Massachusetts, attempted to abolish racial and religious prejudice; white fans in Brooklyn embraced Jackie Robinson; voters repeatedly supported black candidates, including Senator Edward Brooke in Massachusetts and Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm in Brooklyn. Yet during these same moments, an opposing narrative unfolded— one highlighted by worsening black poverty, hardening patterns of segregation, and exploding incidents of racial violence.
All Eyes Are Upon Us probes the conflict between these two warring traditions.
Trade Review“This groundbreaking history shows a civil rights movement beyond Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis. An important new voice in twentieth- century history, Sokol expands the civil rights story to include segregated schools and racial politics in the northeast.”—
Daily Beast“Carefully balancing an appreciation of the symbolism of interracial politics with recognition of the forces that remain untouched by it,
All Eyes Are Upon Us reminds us— if we need reminding— that the events unfolding in Ferguson, Mo., Staten island, and too many other communities are embedded in a complex and problematic history of both racial advances and obstacles to progress.” —
Washington Post“
All Eyes Are Upon Us is a prescient book. . . . Ambitious, engrossing, analytically lucid. . . . it is certainly possible that when this decade ends it will have confirmed the relevance of W. E. B. Du Bois’s grim prophecy about America’s everlasting racism. Jason Sokol’s exceptional
All Eyes Are Upon Us prepares us for just such a possibility.” — David Levering Lewis,
New York Times Book Review
