Breaking the Silence is an avowedly personal account, in close-up and long-shot, of the racial struggle in the United States over the last five years.
W. J. Weatherby, a journalist who worked for the 'Guardian' in the southern states of America, has come as near as most white men to sensing the anguish of an 'inferior' race. His record of a friendship with a Negro girl in New Orleans provides, with its alternating currents of love and hatred, trust and suspicion, a perfect reflection in miniature of the political fight.
The beginnings of school integration in New Orleans, the entry of the first Negro student to the University of Mississippi, the murder of civil rights workers, and events in Alabama, in New York and on the Selma march - all these, together with the leading personalities on both sides, are accurately reported in this book by a trained observer.
But the human experience of a man and a woman caught up in a conflict of sympathies adds a unique dimension to an honest and moving story.
Cover design by Denis Neale