And All Our Wounds Forgiven

Julius Lester's strong emphasis on sexuality throughout the book is his attempt to get to the real truth behind individual motivation combined with real personal skills, such as John Calvin Marshall's eloquence or Robert Card's steadfastness. Lester writes from both female and male viewpoints on what makes one tick, while never straying from the objective facts of the situation, in this case a variation on Martin Luther King's approach to garnering equality for all. Professor Lester strongly places in Marshall's words that discrimination oppresses all and only equality can make individual people free. Focusing on black only or white only denies the fullness of life. In a nutshell, Julius Lester, in his writing, is a classical liberal desiring freedom for all, not rights nor attitudes based on truly irrelevant concerns like skin color and superficial identity. John Calvin Marshall tried to move his people and all people beyond that, but had to deal with his own non-rational impulses.

This is a peculiar and memorable book about the legacy of Civil Rights. Lester is perhaps most famous for having made insensitive and controversial statements about James Baldwin and his alledged anti-Semitism. I would have been interested in a more radical approach here in this book, but one can turn to more transgressive writers like bell hooks for that.