Freedom Rides guidebook commemorates 50th anniversary
The civil rights history of the Freedom Rides has been well documented in a number of fine and award-winning volumes. But until now there has not been a short history on the subject. The Freedom Rides and Alabama by Noelle Matteson, newly published by NewSouth Books, is a much-needed account: a concise guidebook which describes key people, places, and events and which provides historical context for the rides …
Montgomery Advertiser praises The Tuskegee Airmen, An Illustrated History as “the best”
In a glowing article, The Montgomery Advertiser’s Al Benn praises NewSouth Books’ new title The Tuskegee Airmen, An Illustrated History: 1939-1949 as “the best of the batch” of books on the Airmen “because it takes a different approach” to the story of this famed military unit. Benn enthusiastically describes the book as “an encyclopedia crammed with everything you ever wanted to know about the organization” …
Virginia Pounds Brown wins Alabama Historical Association’s Virginia Van Der Veer Hamilton Award
NewSouth Books would like to congratulate Virginia Pounds Brown, author of The World of the Southern Indians: Tribes, Leaders, and Customs from Prehistoric Times to the Present, on winning the Alabama Historical Association’s Virginia Van Der Veer Hamilton Award for contributions to Alabama history. The Virginia Van Der Veer Hamilton Award is given every other year to a distinguished professional whose work “encourage joint historical endeavors and mutual understanding among nonprofessional and professional historians” …
Oprah show spotlights Freedom Riders 50th Anniversary
The Oprah show brought together today 179 participants from the 1961 Freedom Rides, in tribute to the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of that movement. In attendance was NewSouth author Bob Zellner, a SNCC field secretary who describes his experience with the Freedom Rides in his memoir The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement …
Student Freedom Riders to talk Beyond the Burning Bus with Phil Noble
NewSouth Books would like to commend the journey of the 2011 Student Freedom Ride, which will mark the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides through the South. The program is composed of 40 college students from over 30 states, hand-picked by American Experience, whose goal is to spark a national debate concerning the role of civic engagement in today’s society. The group will travel the course laid out by the original Freedom Rides, arriving in Anniston, Alabama, on May 11. While there, they will meet Rev. J. Phillips Noble, who will give the riders autographed copies of his book, Beyond the Burning Bus: The Civil Rights Revolution in a Southern Town, which discusses the effects of the Anniston bus bombing of 1961 on that small Southern town …
Lawyer Jock Smith profiled for Ford Freedom Award
NewSouth Books would like to congratulate Jock Smith, author of Climbing Jacob’s Ladder: A Trial Lawyer’s Journey on Behalf of “the Least of These” for being profiled by this year’s annual Ford Freedom Award Program. Smith will be profiled along with other African American legal figures in a sixteen-page student supplement that will be disseminated to requesting schools …
Rheta Grimsley Johnson writes “On Faith” in Washington Post
“The one belief I never revealed in three decades-plus was my disbelief,” writes syndicated newspaper columnist and NewSouth author Rheta Grimsley Johnson in a March 28 guest-post on the Washington Post “On Faith” blog; Johnson would later talk about religion in her memoir Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming. “I figured that straw for a Bible Belt columnist would be the last. I never said I did believe. But I never said I did not. It was a sin of omission” …
Anna Olswanger’s Shlemiel Crooks musical to premiere
A number of reviewers have complimented Anna Olswanger’s award-winning children’s book Shlemiel Crooks for the music of its Yiddish-inflected language. Now, Shlemiel Crooks and a number of Olswanger’s other stories will actually be set to music, as a new Shlemiel Crooks musical comes to the stage. Shlemiel Crooks: The Musical, directed by Wendy Gross Baker, premieres April 10 at the Merkin Concert Hall in New York, featuring the hall’s professional Poppy Seed Players troupe …
60 Minutes discusses NewSouth’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
The important conversation continues on the NewSouth edition of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. On last night’s episode of 60 Minutes, reporter Byron Pitts held a far-reaching conversation with NewSouth Books editor Randall Williams and University of Oregon professor David Bradley about the controversies surrounding Twain’s works, the use of racial epithets in today’s society, and NewSouth’s publication …
Bob Zellner interviewed on Keith Beauchamp’s Injustice Files
Civil rights activist Bob Zellner continues to advocate for equality and understanding even while balancing some newfound attention. Zellner has been interviewed for an Oprah show segment on the fiftieth anniversary of the Freedom Rides set to air May 4, and and pre-production activities continue on a feature film to be executive produced by Spike Lee based on Zellner’s award-winning memoir, published by NewSouth Books, called The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement …