Summer 1961

The Essential Jill Johnston Reader

Jill Johnston began the 1960s as an influential dance columnist for the Village Voice and by the start of the next decade she was known as a keen observer of postmodern art and lesbian feminist life who challenged how dance, art, and women can and should be seen. The Essential Jill Johnston Reader collects dozens of pieces of her writing from across her career. These writings—many of which appeared in the Village Voice and the New York Times—survey the breadth of her work, braiding together her thinking, writing, and activism. From personal essays, travel writing, and artist profiles to dance and visual art reviews as well as her infamous series of columns for the Voice in which she came out as a lesbian, these pieces demonstrate the evolution of her philosophies and writing style. Illustrating how Johnston drew on lessons from dance to reconsider what it means to be a woman, this collection brings a fascinating and brilliant voice of American arts criticism, radical feminism, and gay liberation back to contemporary audiences.

Charles H. Thompson on Desegregation, Democracy, and Education

The goals of achieving equal citizenship rights for African Americans and international respect for human rights inspired Charles H. Thompson to focus his attention on ending segregation as public policy in the United States. As editor of The Journal of Negro Education, from 1932 to 1963, Thompson tirelessly championed equal educational and economic opportunities for African Americans and other targets of discrimination. Charles H. Thompson on Desegregation, Democracy, and Education captures the evolving struggle for civil rights from the perspective of an education insider, brilliant scholar-activist, and arguably the leading dean in African American higher education between 1938 and 1963. This study focuses on Thompson's efforts, between 1953 and 1963, to mobilize his readers, including African American teachers, to support the civil rights movement including voter registration drives, boycotts, the sit-ins, as well as the NAACP litigation campaign. He encouraged them to support principled, African American leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and their campaigns for social justice. Thompson remained confident that they and their allies would prevail so long as they adhered to the ethical principles that informed their movement and applied political and economic pressure intelligently. The desegregation of public education and the strengthening of African American higher education, for Thompson, served as wedges for extending democracy in the US.

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