The Accommodation: The Politics of Race in an American City

I bought and read this book many years ago when the local bookstore, Black Images, still had copies available. I had only lived in Dallas 10 years or so at that time but as a social worker in the city had come to know it well over the years. This book was amazing! By everything I knew it was very accurate and true and frightening that this could happen. I was thankful that such truths could be documented and put into print in our wonderful nation. Then I loaned my copy of the book to a friend, forgot who it was over the years, and could not find a copy when I searched for it years later. I finally found a copy of it online complete with Jim's signature and message giving it to a leading editorial writer of a major newspaper in Dallas. It is a powerful book but sadly I think many in Dallas want what it says to be hidden. As I recall I could not even find it in the Dallas Library, but that appears to have been due to my faulty searching, or else people have given enough copies of it to the Library that there are now many copies of it available throughout the Dallas Library System.

Mr. Schutze is a very talented columnist for the Dallas Observer. He writes this insightful look at the beguiling nature of Dallas Racial politics, adn how a group of oligarchs made a deal for desegregation, but left years of seething rage in place.