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DAVID WALLS

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David Walls is professor of sociology and dean of extended education at Sonoma State University in California. His most recent book is The Activist's Almanac: The Concerned Citizen's Guide to the Leading Advocacy Organizations in America (Simon & Schuster/Fireside, 1993). His article "Acting Globally: Transnational NGOs and Political Networks" appeared in The Workbook's Fall/Winter 1998 issue. His recommended reading list offers a background tour of social movements through the twentieth century.

Eleanor Flexner's Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States (Harvard University Press, 1996, revised edition). I first read this book around 1970, after three productive and frustrating years of community organizing in the central Appalachian coalfields, and being urged by my female colleagues to learn something about the emerging women's liberation movement. Flexner dramatically altered my time perspective on social movements and social change. I remember thinking: 'Oh, now I get it. It's 100 years, not three to five years.'

Flexner looks back from winning the vote for women with the 19th Amendment in 1920 to the hundred years of sustained agitation that preceded it, and especially at the 50-year continuous organizational effort for woman suffrage from 1869 to 1920. Flexner is not only attuned to the imperative of organization, but shows an unusual sensitivity to issues of class and race, including sections on working-class and African-American women. The two-hour video documentary "One Woman, One Vote" draws on Flexner's outline as well as contemporary scholarship.

The 20th century has seen four great transformative social movements in the United States: the movements of women, African-Americans, labor, and environmentalists. We have not only excellent books providing an overview of these movements, but also several remarkable video documentaries that bring to life the valiant activists, many unknown and others now forgotten, who dared and sacrificed to bring about a more inclusive democracy, social justice, and a healthy world to live in.

During the past decade we've been blessed by an abundance of magnificent memoirs, biographies, and histories of that segment of the African-American freedom struggle we call the Civil Rights Movement. Considering all the possibilities, I believe that Juan Williams' Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 (Penguin Books, 1987) is the best and most accessible starting point to grasp the range of civil rights movement campaigns and personalities. Williams highlights the grassroots leaders, women as well as men, and shows their connections to networks and organizations, including NAACP chapters, black churches, and black colleges. The six videos in the first "Eyes on the Prize" series roughly parallel the chapters in the book, and provide an incomparable vivid documentation of visual images and spoken words. My young students are astonished to learn that college students in their early twenties provided courageous leadership at crucial moments that revitalized the Movement, as with the sit-ins, freedom rides, and the Mississippi Summer Project.

Community organization as widely practiced in the United States is an offshoot of the labor movement, via the figure of Saul Alinsky. The best overview of his work is Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky -- His Life and Legacy (Alfred A. Knopf, 1989) by Sanford D. Horwitt. Alinsky is the inspiration for such networks of faith-based groups as the Industrial Areas Foundation, PICO, DART, and the Gameliel Foundation, as well as secular groups like ACORN. The recent video, "The Democratic Promise: Saul Alinsky and His Legacy," covers some history as well as the efforts of contemporary IAF organizations.

The Labor movement shows signs of revival, and activists would do well to get acquainted with its history and potential. To understand the organization of the CIO, you have to read up on the chieftain of the United Mine Workers. Saul Alinsky wrote John L. Lewis: An Unauthorized Biography (Vintage Books, 1970), full of entertaining stories. The more accurate and definite work is by Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine: John L. Lewis: A Biography (University of Illinois Press, 1986). For the nearly forgotten figure who organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and faced down two Presidents to win access to World War II defense jobs for African-Americans and desegregation of the military, see A. Philip Randolph, Pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement (Louisiana State University Press, 1990) by Paula F. Pfeffer. An excellent video, "A. Philip Randolph: For Jobs and Freedom," highlights his role in the March on Washington movement, which he finally carries off in 1963. If you wonder why people from the United Auto Workers keep showing up in civil rights actions and among the new feminists in the1960s, check out Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit (University of Illinois Press, 1996) by Nelson Lichtenstein. For a look at the Detroit sit-down strikes of the 1930s (which inspired the sit-ins of the 1960s) and the actions of the Women's Emergency Brigade, see the video, "Sit Down and Fight: Walter Reuther and the Rise of the Auto Workers Union."

The environmental movement also spans the century. Ecology activists can get perspective on their roots in Stephen Fox's The American Conservation Movement: John Muir and His Legacy (University of Wisconsin Press, 1986). Philip Shabecoff takes the story to the present in A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement (Hill & Wang, 1993). For an alternative interpretation, which links environmentalism to the Progressive-era public health movement and the Sixties' New Left, see Robert Gottlieb's Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement (Island Press, 1993).

We can all find inspiration in the lessons and legacies of these four great social movements of the twentieth century. I like to recall the words of veteran San Francisco environmentalist Harold Gilliam, written on Earth Day 1990, 'When you've been climbing a mountain for a long time and the summit seems to be as far away as ever, it can give you new heart for the ascent to look back and see how far you've come'."

The Most Dangerous Man In Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor Nelson Lichtenstein Basic Books, 1995 (575 pages) Reissued as Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in New York (Univ. of Illinois Press, 1997) Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States Eleanor Flexner Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1959 (384 pages) Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 Juan Williams Viking Press, 1987 (300 pages) Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky, His Life and Legacy Sanford D. Horwitt Alfred A. Knopf (distributed by Random House), 1989 (595 pages) A. Philip Randolph, Pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement Paula Pfeffer Louisiana State University Press, 1990 (336 pages)

Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement Robert Gottlieb Island Press, 1993 (413 pages) John Muir and His Legacy: The American Conservation Movement Stephen R. Fox Little, Brown, 1981 (436 pages) John L. Lewis: An Unauthorized Biography Saul Alinsky Putnam, 1949; reprinted by Vintage 1970 (387 pages) A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement Philip Shabecoff Hill and Wang, 1993 (352 pages) Search: All Products Books Popular Music Classical Music Video Toys Consumer Electronics Keywords: The Workbook/SRIC, in Association with amazon.com, receives a commission on all sales of these and other books when accessed directly through our web pages.