In the summer of 1967, in response to violent demonstrations that rocked 164 U.S. cities, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, a.k.a. the Kerner Commission, was formed. The Commission sought reasons for the disturbances, including the role that law enforcement played. Chief among its research projects was a study of 23 American cities, headed by social psychologist Robert Shellow. An early draft of the scientists’ analysis, titled “The Harvest of American Racism: The Political Meaning of Violence in the Summer of 1967,” provoked the Commission’s staff in November 1967 by uncovering political causes for the unrest; the team of researchers was fired, and the controversial report remained buried at the LBJ Presidential Library until now.
The first publication of the Harvest report half a century later reveals that many of the issues it describes are still with us, including how cities might more effectively and humanely react to groups and communities in protest. In addition to the complete text of the suppressed Harvest report, the book includes an introduction by Robert Shellow that provides useful historical context; personal recollections from four of the report’s surviving social scientists, Robert Shellow, David Boesel, Gary T. Marx, and David O. Sears; and an appendix outlining the differences between the unpublished Harvest analysis and the well-known Kerner Commission Report that followed it.
“The [Harvest of American Racism] report was rejected by Johnson administration functionaries as being far too radical—politically ‘unviable’… Social science can play an extremely positive role in fighting racial and other injustice and inequality, but only if it is matched with a powerful political will to implement the findings. That will has never come from within an American presidential administration—that will has only been forged in black and other radical communities’ movements for justice. The political power for change, as incremental as it has been, has come from within those communities. Washington responds, it does not lead."
—from the Foreword by Michael C. Dawson
Born in the Australian bush, Stella Miles Franklin became an international publishing sensation in 1901, at the age of 21, with My Brilliant Career, whose portrayal of an ambitious and independent woman defying social expectations still captivates readers. In a magisterial biography, Jill Roe details Miles’ extraordinary life.
Early success launched Miles into influential literary and socialist circles in Sydney and Melbourne, where she met Banjo Paterson (composer of “Waltzing Matilda” and author of The Man from Snowy River) and suffragist Vida Goldstein (who introduced her to Christian Science). Researching the lives of working women, Miles disguised herself as a domestic for a year. She then lit out for adventure abroad, landing in San Francisco just after the Great Earthquake. At Jane Addams’ Hull House in Chicago, she joined the women’s labor movement, working for the National Women’s Trade Union League and writing for its magazine.
Moving to Britain in 1915, Miles joined the war cause and served in Macedonia as a hospital orderly and then worked in London for various feminist and progressive causes, including the National Housing Council. Always she wrote, becoming a prolific author of plays as well as novels and archetypal bush stories. Returning to Australia in the 1930s, she supported women’s causes and promoted Australian writers, leaving her estate to endow the nation’s premier literary award.
The culmination of decades of research in thousands of papers left by Miles, Her Brilliant Career stands as the definitive life of this remarkable writer and feminist.
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