30 Days a Black Man The Forgotten Story That Exposed the Jim Crow South [Hardcover]

As a story from the Jim Crow past, Bill Steigerwalds recounting of Sprigles mission . . .? reminds us of what an honest conversation about race can accomplish as we continue on the path toward a more equitable future.This is a vivid, well-researched account of a journalistic coup. White Ray Sprigle passing for black in the Jim Crow Souththe danger, the narrow escapes, the abuses, the revelations. But it is also a set of portraits: of the brave black men who helped Sprigle fulfill his assignment; a portrait of the Deep South; and a portrait of the United States in the late 1940s.Bill Steigerwald is an author who always delights and informs, here recounting the frightening story of two courageous men, one black and the other a white Pittsburgh newspaper reporter posing as black, traveling through the Jim Crow South of 1948 to expose a vicious and brutal system of racial segregation.The courage displayed by Ray Sprigle and John Wesley Dobbs on their journey into the Deep South is one of the major feats of investigative journalism during the pre-Civil Rights era. Bill Steigerwalds book is an unflinching examination of race relations in this countrys recent past and the true impact that uncompromising journalism can have on our world.A fascinating account of an anti-Jim Crow muckraking adventure&Sprigle's audacity was forgotten, but Steigerwald turns it into rollicking, haunting American history.Steigerwald sees Sprigle as an unlikely hero who delivered harsh truths to an audience that . . . might never have seen those stories given the eras segregated press& [I]ts a story worth discussing today.In 1948 most white people in the North had no idea how unjust and unequal daily life was for the 10 million African Americans living in the South. But that suddenly changed after Ray Sprigle, a famous white journalist from Pittsburgh, went undercover and lived as a black man in the Jim Crow South.Escorted through the Souths parallel black society by John Wesley Dobbs, a hlS