Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften A History of the American Civil Rights Movement Through Newspaper Coverage: The Race Agenda, Volume 1: 15 (Mediating American History)

From the cardinal Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that desegregated U.S. public education to the demonstrations, marches, and violence of the civil rights movement, A History of the American Civil Rights Movement Through Newspaper Coverage: The Race Agenda, Volume 1 traces the crusade for justice through the lens of major newspaper coverage to reveal the combating sectional press attitudes of the era. The book details attempts, blatant and subtle, to frame the major events of the movement in themes that have resonated from before, during, and since the Civil War. States' rights versus constitutional guarantees of freedom and equality, nullification versus federal authority, and regional social and cultural mores that buttressed the prejudices and political arguments of segregation and desegregation across the nation are some of the issues covered. This analysis of the press coverage of events and issues of that tumultuous period of U.S. history-by newspapers in the North, South, Midwest, and West-exposes perspectives and press routines that remain ingrained and thus relevant today, when journalistic treatment of political debate, ranging from traditional newspapers and broadcast platforms to those of cable, social media, and the Internet, continues to set an often volatile and oppositional political agenda. Review "In his first of two volumes ... Hallock gathers a treasure-trove of primary sources from a dozen daily newspapers across the country. Through close analysis of news accounts, story placement, headlines, photos, and editorials, Hallock reveals in granular detail how the nation's mainstream press set the agenda, framed the debate, and both molded and reflected 'social, cultural, and political opinion' during key moments in civil rights era." --Sid Bedingfield, Journalism History 45(3), September 2019 " A History of the American Civil Rights Movement Through Newspaper Coverage: The Race Agenda (Volume 1) picks up where The Race Beat stopped. It is an excellent addition to the literature of media coverage of civil rights, providing depth and breadth to the question: what did the press report and when did they report it?" --Kathleen Wickham, Professor of Journalism at the University of Mississippi and author of We Believed We Were Immortal: Twelve Reporters Who Covered the 1962 Integration Crisis at Ole Miss "'Words do matter, ' Steve Hallock declares, and the words in this powerful volume recapture the tense moments of the civil rights era through the newspapers of the day. The lessons learned here apply to our own troubled time." --Jonathan Bean, Professor of History at Southern Illinois University, author of Race and Liberty in America: The Essential Reader, and an advisory member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission "A valuable, important, and searching analysis of press coverage and commentary during the civil rights years in America." --Gene Roberts, co-author of The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation "Scholars and journalists have produced books, articles, and documentaries about certain aspects of the civil rights movement, but, until now, only Gene Roberts's and Hank Klibanoff's The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation offered a comprehensive analysis of how media coverage shaped public perceptions throughout the modern civil rights movement. Steve Hallock extends their study, both through selection of sources and emphasis on regional influences on coverage. Skillfully employing textual analysis, Hallock's work gives us a greater understanding of how regional loyalties and racial motives shaped the coverage of the modern civil rights movement. Hallock shows how media outlets framed events in the movement and used that framing to set agendas in response to these events. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the media's role in driving agendas and shaping public opinions d