New prize for these eyes The rise of America's second civil rights movement

Juan Williams, a Panamanian American journalist and political analyst known for his candid opinions on race and culture at outlets like The Washington Post and Fox News, has written a groundbreaking history of what he terms the "Second Civil Rights Movement" in the United States. Williams first gained national prominence for his best-selling volume Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954--1965 (CH, Jan'88), which accompanied the Emmy Award--winning PBS documentary series of the same name. His other books include Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary (CH, Sep'99, 37-0622) and What the Hell Do You Have to Lose?: Trump's War on Civil Rights (2018). Williams's current book provides a twenty-first-century update to his original, groundbreaking text, although it stops short of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, in which Donald Trump was elected over Kamala Harris, the first Black female vice president. That result has since produced a slew of challenges to civil rights. Even so, Williams acknowledges that the Second Civil Rights Movement, much like the first, has moved in contentious times. In his original volume, Williams charted the first Civil Rights Movement from the U.S. Supreme Court's pathbreaking ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) case to the March on Washington (1963), led by Martin Luther King, Jr., to the march on Selma (1965). This movement advanced the efforts of Black labor leader A. Philip Randolph and the union he founded, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), and the desegregation of the armed forces under President Truman in 1948. These forces also contributed to a second Great Migration of millions of Black people leaving the South for northern and western cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Detroit, and Los Angeles after World War II and continuing through the 1960s. As is well known, this period was replete with violence against African Americans, including bombings and countless lynchings, prompting widespread social action to fight for equal rights. Unfortunately, this tumultuous period also witnessed the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Williams briefly recounts this history in the introduction to New Prize for These Eyes to lay the groundwork for better understanding the present. In his new follow-up volume, Williams's chronology primarily centers on the period 2004--23, beginning with Obama's entrance into national politics as a largely unknown Illinois politician with a sterling rallying cry at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in an attempt to boost the candidacy of presidential nominee John Kerry. Obama rode that speech to two successful Democratic presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012. However, Williams criticizes Obama for not standing up firmly enough for civil rights for Black Americans, especially against police violence. This issue erupted onto the national stage in 2012 following the murder of teenager Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman. Sadly, this was followed two years later by two more tragic killings. In 2014, police infamously shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Around the same time, Eric Garner was killed in a choke hold by police in Staten Island for selling loose cigarettes. In none of these cases were the police officers or vigilantes involved in the killings found guilty in a court of law or even, in some cases, prosecuted. However, the collective outrage over these injustices sparked the Black Lives Matter movement nationwide. In 2020, Americans once again learned of another killing of an unarmed Black man by police. Upon witnessing the infamous killing of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis, which was captured on video, protests erupted nationwide. In this case, however, the officer involved was not only prosecuted but convicted. That same year saw the killings of Breonna Taylor in Louisville and Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Georgia. In Arbery's case, the killers responsible for his death were also convicted and sentenced. Within this context, Williams lays out the political contests of 2016 and 2020. As he notes, Black voter turnout reached a record low in 2016, which Williams argues likely cost Hillary Clinton the presidential election. However, the efforts of former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams in Georgia to increase voter registration, particularly among Black voters, later helped Joe Biden win South Carolina and Georgia against Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Voter turnout surged across the electorate in 2020, in which record-high numbers of Black Americans voted. Unfortunately, much of the Democratic Party's gains in the 2020 election were lost in the 2024 election, but the timing of this book's publication means that the 2024 election results are not covered. Instead, Williams interestingly presents a somewhat hopeful view for the future despite the U.S. Supreme Court's negative decisions pertaining to abortion rights and affirmative action in 2022 and 2023, respectively. Despite the new conservative nature of the U.S. Supreme Court, Williams feels that the appointment of the first Black female justice in 2022, Ketanji Brown Jackson, is a positive note. At the time of this writing, Donald Trump had just won the 2024 presidential election over former Vice President Kamala Harris and has since issued a barrage of executive orders to reduce the federal government staff and cut DEI initiatives and U.S. aid abroad, among other cuts. Williams warns that despite the successes of the first Black president, Barack Obama, and inroads made by the U.S. Supreme Court prior to its current conservative leaning, the Second Civil Rights Movement will have to continue struggling against white supremacy and the MAGA movement to succeed. Finally, he feels that a new generation will eventually need to fuel a Third Civil Rights Movement to advance the rights and needs of a new generation, because by the year 2045, the United States will cease to be a white majority nation, according to U.S. Census Bureau projections. Thoroughly investigating the state of race relations in the United States over the past two decades, Williams presents a balanced and enigmatic history of American life in the twenty-first century. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers through faculty. --Andrew Mark Mayer, emeritus, College of Staten Island/CUNY

Fox News political analyst Williams (We the People, 2016) follows up his 1987 history of the Civil Rights movement, Eyes on the Prize, with this account of the civil rights activists of the twenty-first century. Beginning with Barack Obama's speech at the 2004 DNC, this book traces the backlash to Obama's presidency and the rise of left-wing efforts from the Black Lives Matter movement to large-scale voter registration initiatives in swing states. Suspicious of top-down leadership, and adept at using social media to communicate their messages, the members of this "second civil rights movement" aim to advance racial justice in every sphere of American life. While generally evenhanded, Williams places great importance on activism taking place at the national level, an emphasis that often overlooks the deeply local, community-driven initiatives common among the younger generation of organizers. Despite this pitfall, New Prize for These Eyes ably explores the ongoing fight for racial justice over the course of the last two decades. If journalism may be considered the first draft of history, this book is a worthy second draft.

Following in the footsteps of civil rights heroes. Years before he became best known as a Fox News political analyst, Williams wrote his first book,Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954--1965, a companion to the acclaimed documentary series that aired on PBS in 1987. Williams has followed that work with an examination of what he calls America's Second Civil Rights Movement. "They cannot fairly be compared," he rightfully observes of the two distinct struggles for equal rights. "This Second Civil Rights Movement had to deal with persistent, deep-seated cultural issues that the First Movement had left unresolved, and in some cases, new issues that arose in the backlash to its legislative and political victories." Not surprisingly, Williams centers much of the book on Barack Obama, who has credited the Civil Rights Movement for making possible his own rise to power. Williams explores the hope, backlash, and disappointment that Obama's presidency elicited, addressing police violence against Black Americans, demographic shifts, academic and economic progress and regression, and the Trump and Biden presidencies. "There is no real argument about the fact that a large percentage of Black and brown people continue to struggle to survive in twenty-first-century America," he writes. "But whites in Trump's Republican Party shun the history of America's racial oppression as well as stories of racial inequality today. Instead, they express fear of the government discriminating against white people." The case of Black Lives Matter is especially telling, Williams writes, noting how the movement went from "instant online sensation" to "high visibility scapegoat for the Republicans." Generations after the Civil Rights Movement, it is clear that activists have much work ahead of them: They must still keep their eyes on the prize. An important appraisal of the present-day struggle for civil rights. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.