Ella Baker Freedom Bound (review)

strictive covenants, street layout and zoning designed to reinforce class and racial distinctions, and die separation of work from residence diat consequendy defined a downtown business district. Neighborhood groups and African American leaders did generate political opposition to elite planning and secured significant political change in 1977, when Charlotte switched from at-large voting to a district/at-large system, but Hanchett ends his analysis before he can assess the subsequent impact ofthis shift on the city's spatial development. For the century Hanchett studies, however, he provides a broad context for understanding that die shape ofour cities is far from happenstance. Ella Baker Freedom Bound ByJoanne Grant John Wiley and Sons, 1998 270 pp. Cloth $24.95, Paper $16.95 Reviewed by Edward O. Frantz, a doctoral candidate in the department ofhistory at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Until this biography, students had to be content with only morsels ofinformation from other publications about civil-rights activist Ella Baker, butJoanne Grant's narrative traces Baker's combative spirit back to the legacy of her grandparents, who were former slaves, and stresses a continuity ofresistance within the African American community. The book covers Baker's upbringing in a middle-class family, her education and graduation from Shaw University, her exposure to the Harlem Renaissance, and her stints as newspaper reporter, librarian, wpa teacher, and NAACP recruiter. The heart of the text is devoted to Baker's years as director of branches of the naacp and sclc, as well as her aid to die young people of SNCC. Through Baker's eyes the reader finds a critical view of Martin Luther KingJr. and naacp president Walter White. The discussion ofBaker's influence on sNcc, however, is the book's highlight. Grant weaves autobiographical references and recollections with the broader story ofthe civil rights organization and depicts Baker's preference for grassroots leadership at the expense of her own. Baker's persona, though, does not fully emanate from the text, nor does die ex88 southern cultures, Summer2000 : Reviews tent ofher commitment to grassroots organization. In addition, Grant's attempt to remedy die oversight of the role of women in the Civil Rights movement ultimately fails; gender politics are not central to this biography. Despite diese problems, though, diis is a very significant contribution to Civil Rights movement history. Portraits of Conflict A Photographic History of North Carolina in the Civil War By Richard B. McCaslin University ofArkansas Press, 1997 432 pp. Cloth $75.00 Reviewed by William C. Harris, professor of history at Nordi Carolina State University, and author of William Woods Holden: Firebrand ofNorth Carolina Politics, which was published by lsu Press in 1987 and won the Mayflower Cup and the Jefferson Davis Award. This attractive and well-designed photographic history fulfills in admirable fashion Richard McCaslin's objective: "to present a carefully selected array ofimages that convey the experience ofmany citizens of the North State" during the Civil War. A major strength of McCaslin's volume is the narrative account of North Carolina during the war, which places the photographs firmly in context. He also provides a useful history ofearly photography in the state and describes the contemporary process for making photographic images. His explanation of the different types ofprints and die technical problems and artistic qualities associated widi each also will be of special interest to readers, as will his inclusion ofphotographs ofUnion soldiers, freedpeople, black soldiers, and an array ofobscure and well-known figures. McCaslin provides the reader with iUuminating biographical sketches and an appendix diat oudines die postwar lives of those who survived die conflict. A few errors and questionable interpretations have crept into McCaslin 's text, but he nonetheless manages to provide an important photographic documentary of the Civil War. Reviews 89 ...