Dry Victories
June Jordan"We think there was two times. Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Era, that still be hanging us up, bad," says writer June Jordan in a note to the readers of this terse and provocative book. " 'We' is poor and tired of poverty. Black and white, right here in America. 'We' is poor and bored by piece a papers don't hardly mean nothing at all."
Black and white, we are all still living with the efFects of those two turbulent periods in American history. Both were times of hope and promise, but, says the author, the victories were dry, "nothing-at-all" victories.
Traditionally, Reconstruction has been regarded by many historians as an era when Blacks went "too far," but Miss Jordan shows that they were not permitted to go far enough. In this explosive and defiant book, two young Black boys examine Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Era and help the reader to see where Americans were, where they are now, and where they need to go.
Lavishly illustrated with photographs and drawings, arranged in cinematic fashion, DRY VICTORIES speaks out dramatically to Americans on a question that can no longer wait and that helps them to remember what they cannot forget. As June Jordan says, "History don't stop to let nobody out of it."