The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 101, July 1997 - April, 1998 Page: 268

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

superbly edited collection of some of the most important speeches, letters, and
writings of Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and A.
Philip Randolph.
The book is organized into four parts made up of about twenty-four short
pieces by each black leader (only fifteen in Garvey's case) arranged chronolog-
ically. Wintz writes a concise introduction that places each work in historical
context, identifies what it reveals about the figure's ideological orientation,
and provides its exact location in the larger published volume of collected
writings or the archive from which it was extracted. Also, a fine index is includ-
ed, a rarity in anthologies, that is very useful for comparative analysis of the
four men. The introduction does a fair job of summarizing their lives, but,
unfortunately, it is imprisoned in August Meier's outdated analysis of black
ideologies of some three decades ago. Between 1890 and 1930, Wintz says, the
political options available to blacks were limited to a "militant antisegregation-
ist/accommodationist self-help dichotomy" (p. to). Toward the end of the
period, Pan-Africanism and socialism emerged as additional options. Cultural
studies have advanced the field of history too much to allow us to continue to
plow in the categories of yesterday. A more sophisticated approach to "politi-
cal thought" is needed.
The absence of women leaders or a discussion of gender in relation to the
thought and activism of Washington, Du Bois, Garvey, and Randolph cannot go
unnoticed. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Lucy Parsons, Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Church
Terrell, and Mary McLeod Bethune are some key women in the nadir period
who should have been added to a volume on black political thought. Otherwise,
Wintz should have titled his book "Masculine African American Thought."
Despite an outmoded approach, this handsome anthology should prove useful
in undergraduate classes supplemented with other materials.
University of Houston AMILCAR SHABAZZ
Desegregating Texas Schools: Eisenhower, Shivers, and the Crisis at Mansfield High. By
Robyn Duff Ladino. Foreword by Alwyn Barr. (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1997. Pp. xv+208. Foreword, acknowledgments, introduction, notes,
bibliography, index. ISBN o-292-74692-X. $13.95, paper.)
Robyn Duff Ladino has produced a valuable work on the most prominent
crisis involving desegregation of public schools in Texas. The author examines
both the background of the Jim Crow system in Texas and the unsuccessful
attempt to desegregate Mansfield High in 1956. She devotes considerable atten-
tion to the roles played by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Texas governor
Allan Shivers in this episode. The author views Mansfield as a microcosm of the
changes occurring throughout the South during the 1950s. Although local
African Americans failed in their effort to open Mansfield High to black stu-
dents, Ladino argues that their challenge to the racial caste system paved the
way for later advances. The author makes excellent use of available primary

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