Mr. Wolters RIGHT TURN; has been an excellent research source for me. His depiction of events is accurate and written without bias. I would love to get my hands on his first book; NEGROES AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION.

While I am no fan of political correctness, this is in fact a rather one sided view on the results of integrating American schools. As one who went to intergrated schools in the 1970s, I find some of what Wolters writes about undeniable. Yes there were many riots and yes not all Black kids were the innocent heroes often portayed in TV-movies of this era. But to completely dismiss school integration as a failure is asinine. Those of us who have experienced this era must also admit that in spite of the problems we had during this period, positive results such as lasting frinedship and better understanding among the races DID happen frequently ("Remember the Titans," anyone?).

If Wolters and others would like to go back to the days of seperate and unequal de jure schools and when fear prevented interracial friendships, they are welcome to take a trip on a one-way time machine backward. Meanwhile, many of us enjoy the present and the future just fine.

This is a great book for anyone wanting to study the problems of integration. A book like this is hard to find. Author Raymond Walters covers the history of integration beginning with a few years prior to the Brown desegregation ruling. This book is not exactly a polemic against integration; I consider it objective, but so many downsides to forced integration are presented that the reader will not come away with a positive outlook on all of the changes of the last half century regarding integration.

Prior to the 1954 desegregation ruling, blacks had inferior schools due to their inability to raise as much money for their schools because they had less valuable property to tax than whites and did not create as much wealth. This lead to inequalities in how much funding was provided for black and white schools. Before Brown, some state governments decided to spend more on black schools to equalize them financially with the white schools, so they could avoid integration and uphold the separate but equal ruling. The Brown hearing itself involved a black family who did not want to bus their child to an all black school far away when there was a white one close by.

The original ruling for desegration was interpreted to mean that a school could not use race as a basis for choosing its students; but there would be no forced busing to forcibly integrate a school to achieve a certain racial balance. But during the sixties, environmental explanations for black's inferior performance in schools came into vogue. It was considered that blacks in segregated schools were in inherently inferior schools because the segregated blacks got the impression that they were too inferior to participate in white society. Psychologist Kenneth Clark brought out his black and white dolls and found out that (gasp!) black children were choosing white dolls over black ones in the segregated south, which obviously meant that blacks were being psychologically warped into thinking they were inferior to whites in segregated schools. (It's silly, I know, but bear with me.)

Consequently, the new solution ruled by the courts was to rule that schools had to forcibly integrated to achieve a certain racial balance so that blacks wouldn't feel inferior and that they would learn the values of white middle class society and maybe some of the smarts of one race would rub off on the other. Ability tracking was even done away with in some schools because it was thought that this rubbing-off principle wouldn't work if remedial students weren't sitting around the bright ones. And blacks disproportinately made up remedial classes. Never mind if brighter students were held back by the mediocre pace of a class with integrated intellectual levels.

When the schools became forcibly integrated, there was a massive resistance by whites once they found out that in integrated schools crime and foul language were increasing and the standards of education were more geared towards integration and equality rather separation and quality. Even the many blacks were dissatified with forced busing and integrated classrooms that took no account of differing intellectual abilities. One mother complained that her daughter was frustated in the new integrated class because it was above her abilities.

Whites began to move out of the inner cities to white suburban schools or, as in one case down south, whites closed the public school, which left the blacks without a school for a time, and created a private white segregated one. Integration worked better in places where there wasn't a high minority population such as in Topeka, but proved disastrous in places like Washington, DC and Wilmington, Delaware in which nearly all the whites eventually moved out as the schools became bad inner city schools.

I saw the book as good demonstration of the weaknesses of the environmental theory of why races perform at differing levels. There is a general fear to say that such differences are innate since then the problem of differences can't be rectified by liberal social engineering and many people are loathe to differiate between inferior and superior in a society that believes in egalitarianism so much.

Wolters himself comes to fuzzy conclusions near the end. At one moment, he says he supports getting back to local control over schools as opposed to federal control with its forced integration. In another moment, he seems to deplore the increasing segregation of northern schools and declares that more compulsion is needed. But other than that funny little line, Wolters lays down the cold, hard facts about the dire consequences of having integrated schools.

W.E.B Du Bois (1868-1961) was one of the leading and most controversial African-American leaders of the 20th Century. He received a PhD from Harvard and wrote in 1903 a short book, "The Souls of Black Folk", which remains an American classic. He wrote several scholarly works on African-American history which are still valuable. He helped found the NAACP and for many years edited its magazine, The Crisis, which worked agressively and tirelessly for civil and political rights for African-Americans. Near the end of his long life, Du Bois became embittered with the United States. He became a communist,, renounced his American citizenship, and died in Ghana in 1961 at the age of 95.

In his informative and clearly-written history, Professor Wolters discusses the nature of Du Bois's accomplishment by discussing his relationships, his agreements and disagreements, with other African-American leaders of his day. The book is an important study of the history of black America (indeed of all America) and it sets out the many and varied approaches African-American leaders have used to bring justice to their people. Not surprisingly, it shows areas of agreement but also areas of strong disagreement and in-fighting.

Professor Wolters contrasts Du Bois, with his emphasis on academic education and on agressive support of civil rights, with that of Du Bois's predecessor and rival, Booker T. Washington. He also stresses the large areas of agreement between the two men. Similarly, Wolters discusses Du Bois's reactions to Marcus Garvey, a black leader in the 1920's with broad mass appeal who tried to get American blacks to unite and establish a homeland in Africa. He points out that late in his career Du Bois came close to Garvey's position in many ways, involving African-American self-help from the bottom-up rather than from the top-down. Wolters then describes Du Bois's break with the NAACP and its leader Walter White. The break was occasioned by the NAACP's commitment to integration. Du Bois had moved away from this approach arguing instead that black Americans ought to work among themselves and within their community to achieve economic, political and social justice. Wolters gives a relatively brief treatment to Du Bois's final years.

Wolters finds that a philosophy of pluralism governed Du Bois's efforts throughout his long career. Under his concept of pluralism, black Americans had two identities: an American identity and a black identity. He urged that blacks live in both worlds -- in other words, he urged African-Americans to share in the values of the American experience while creating their own uniquely black contribution to America and to civilization. Early in his career, Du Bois expressed his pluralistic vision as follows (Wolters, p.38):

"One ever feels his two-ness,-an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn assunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife."

In his commitment to pluralism, Du Bois opposed the earlier 19th Century African-American leader, Frederick Douglass, who was assimilationist in his thinking (there should be no differences between Americans of different colors) as well as, to a degree, later-day integrationists, such as the NAACP and Dr. King. He came closer to the views of Garvey and to the views of Garvey's more modern successors. Du Bois became more militant in his beliefs as he aged.

There is a long disagreement between assimilationist and pluralist visions of America in many areas besides African-American history. The tension between the two visions is still with us today as we try to understand and shape our country. The assimilationist vision is that of a melting pot. Pluralists speak in terms of instruments in a symphony orchestra, each with its own voice yet contributing to a whole.

Wolters book does not describe in great detail the broader issues between assimilationism and pluralism. He gives an excellent carefully-crafted account of how this question affected African-Americans in their quest for justice. In expressing his own opinions in the book, Wolters is careful to point out areas of alternative interpretations among scholars. The reader thus may form his or her own opinions.

This book is a fine study of the life and ideas of a man who, as Wolters observes, is one of the leading figures of the 20th Century.