front cover of Letters from Robben Island
Letters from Robben Island
A Selection of Ahmed Kathrada's Prison Correspondence, 1964-1989
Robert D. Vassen
Michigan State University Press, 1999

Late one night in July, 1963, a South African police unit surrounded the African National Congress headquarters in Rivonia and arrested a group of Movement leaders gathered inside. Eventually eight of them, including Nelson Mandela, who was already serving a sentence, Walter Sisulu, Dennis Goldberg, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Elias Motsoledi, Andrew Mangeni, and Ahmed Kathrada, were convicted of sabotage and, on June 12, 1964, sentenced to life in prison. Soon, these men became widely known as the "Rivonia Trialists." Despite their imprisonment, the Trialists played active roles in the struggle against South Africa's racist regime. Instead of being forgotten, as apartheid officials had hoped, they became enduring symbols in a struggle against injustice and racism. 
     Kathrada and his colleagues were classified as high security prisoners, segregated from others and closely watched. Every activity was regulated and monitored. Among the many indignities visited upon them, the prisoners were prohibited from keeping copies of incoming and outgoing correspondence. Kathrada, or "Kathy" as he is known, successfully hid both. 
     Letters From Robben Island contains a selection of 86 of the more than 900 pieces of correspondence Ahmed Kathrada wrote during his 26 years on Robben Island and at Pollsmoor Prison. Some were smuggled out by friends; others were written in code to hide meaning and content from prison censors. These are among his most poignant, touching, and eloquent communications. They are testimonies to Kathrada, his colleagues, and to their commitment to obtaining human dignity and freedom for all South Africans.

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Resolving Racial Conflict
The Community Relations Service and Civil Rights, 1964-1989
Bertram Levine
University of Missouri Press, 2005


In 1964, when the Civil Rights Act was passed, Congress wisely created an agency based in the U.S. Department of Justice to help forestall or resolve racial or ethnic disputes evolving from the act. Mandated by law and by its own methodology to shun publicity, the Community Relations Service developed self-effacement to a fine art. Thus the accomplishments, as well as the shortcomings, of this federal venture into conflict resolution are barely known in official Washington, and even less so by the American public. This first written history of the Community Relations Service uses the experiences of the men and women who sought to resolve the most volatile issues of the day to tell the fascinating story of this unfamiliar agency.



This multiracial cadre of conciliation and mediation specialists worked behind the scenes in more than 20,000 confrontations involving racial and ethnic minorities. From Selma to Montgomery, at the encampment of the Poor Peoples’ Campaign in Resurrection City, to the urban riots of the sixties, seventies, and eighties, from the school desegregation battles north and south, at the siege of Wounded Knee, and during the Texas Gulf Coast fishing wars between Southeast Asian refugees and Anglos, these federal peacemakers lessened the atmosphere of racial violence in every major U.S. city and thousands of small towns.



These confrontations ranged from disputes that attracted worldwide attention to the everyday affronts, assaults, and upheavals that marked the nation’s adjustment to wider power sharing within an increasingly diverse population. While Resolving Racial Conflict examines some of the celebrated breakthroughs that made change possible, it also delves deeply into the countless behind-the-scenes local efforts that converted possibility to reality.



Among the many themes in this book that provide new perspective for understanding racial conflict in America are the effects of protest and conflict in engineering social change; the variety of civil rights views and experiences of African Americans, Native Americans, Asians, and Hispanics; the role of police in minority relations; and the development and refinement of techniques for community conflict resolution from seat-of-the-pants intervention to sophisticated professional practice. Resolving Racial Conflict will appeal to students of civil rights and American history in both the general and academic communities, as well as students of alternative dispute resolution and peace and conflict studies.
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The Way It Was
The University of Iowa, 1964-1989
Duane C. Spriestersbach
University of Iowa Press, 1999

The fall of 1964 was an exciting time at the University of Iowa. Its fourteenth president, Howard Bowen, had just arrived, and on a sunny October afternoon he made his first speech to the faculty. This occasion was note worthy enough—former president Virgil Hancher had held the job for twenty-four years—to attract the attention of a professor of speech pathology who had previously confined his considerable energies to teaching and research. Bowen's vision of what the university could become was so intriguing, so compelling, that this professor wrote and offered to help him achieve his objectives in any way possible. This quixotic offer changed Duane Spriestersbach's life and becomes the starting point for his story of his years as a University of Iowa administrator.

Drawing upon his personal files, the university archives, and interviews with many faculty members and administrators, Spriestersbach has created both an institutional and a personal history of the university. Judged by any standard, these years were tumultuous ones for higher education. Economic pressures from the state legislature, issues surrounding grants from such agencies as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, the civil rights movement, student and faculty protests during the Vietnam era, massive changes in the physical and administrative shape of the campus, and the computerization of all parts of campus life had far-reaching consequences. Spriestersbach was at the center of these events at the University of Iowa; his perspective is unique, refreshing, and educational.

Spriestersbach's account of the Vietnam years and of the evolution of computers at Iowa will be particularly interesting to readers. He reported to four presidents, served as acting president, managed hundreds of meetings both dramatic and mundane, and reacted to many administrative restructurings. In this story of his life at the University of Iowa, he reveals the truth behind these words from his 1964 letter to President Bowen: “I think I am an idealist, a person with imagination, and a guy in a hurry. I believe investigation will show that I am a person with competitive administrative and executive abilities.”

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