Book Note #3
An occasional series on books I am reading or have read.
A few years ago, I learned that I’m not only a Boomer, I’m also a member of a micro-generation named Generation Jones. According to Google’s AI overview, the term was “coined by cultural historian Jonathan Pontell. It references both the idea of ‘keeping up with the Joneses,’ as well as the slang term ‘jonesing,’ meaning craving more.”1 My favorite description of this group born in the second half of the baby boom from 1954-1965 comes from Lindsey Pollack in her book The Remix: How to Lead and Succeed in the Multigenerational Workplace.2 She says this generation was “too young for Woodstock and too old for the mosh pit.” Very true.
I developed my own version before I read this book when I told an audience that I was too young to remember where I was when President Kennedy was killed, but old enough that my home state of Oklahoma was still legally segregated when I was born and for several years afterward. This also means that I lived through much of the Civil Rights Movement but had no clue about what was happening. This was in part due to my age, but more about my status as a white person who didn’t have to worry about what facilities she used. I also understand now we lived in a white suburb of Oklahoma City so I rarely, if ever, saw any of the markers that told people the world was separated by race.
It’s one, but not the only reason that I found the book I checked out from my local library to be so helpful. Julian Bond’s Time to Teach: A History of the Southern Civil Rights Movement is a masterclass in understanding the issues, battles, successes and failures of an important time in our history. It reminded me of realities I had known but don’t have to think about on a daily basis, taught me details of stories I know only in broad strokes, and reminded me yet again that progress is never simple or linear.
It also showed me that Julian Bond was a master educator. This book is a collection of his class lectures, which according to the liner notes “he wrote out in full sentences and polished repeatedly over the years” and makes me wish I had had the chance to be in his classroom. This book is the next best thing.
Topics range from: “White Supremacy and the Founding of the NAACP” through a travelogue of southern towns, from court cases to backroom discussions, to the final chapter, “Vietnam, Black Power, and the Assassination of Martin Luther King.”
One of the editors, Pamela Horowitz, wrote in the Foreword, “As one of his teaching assistants put it, ‘He helped his students understand that history changed because of people like them.’ In other words, they could change the world.” It’s an important memory anytime, but particularly right now as so many people in power are attempting to roll back those gains and changes. Learning that others made a difference by their words and deeds teaches us we can do the same.
I not only recommend it, I ordered my own copy before I even finished it. I have no doubt it is a book, I will reach for again and again.
Take care,
Gage
p. 13. Chapter 2 includes some “Rules for Remixers” many of which are good reminders about being part of a diverse community under any definition of diversity.