My Soul Looks Back in Wonder

by A.D. Amorosi

Along with his dual role as a gentle-giant commentator for news agencies on the right (Fox cable) and the left (NPR's Morning Edition), author Juan Williams has carved for himself a niche as one of the best and humblest detailers of black America's battles -- past and present -- in the wars toward civil rights. And that's if Williams had only written the engaging Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary or This Far by Faith: Stories from the African American Religious Experience. But Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 is his baby -- a totemic, restorative historic work that, like the PBS series with which it works in tandem, colors outside the lines of the usual tributes to Malcolm and Martin while maintaining a gentleness toward the reader not usually found in the works of, say Taylor Branch. Some of those same characters (and Williams' own humanistic characterizations) can be found in My Soul Looks Back in Wonder: Voices of the Civil Rights Experience (Sterling). But instead of focusing on the movement's most pronounced names, Williams finds his own voice in the struggle as well as an uplifted chorus of worker-bee activists whose names went unknown but whose roles were essential. With the American Association of Retired Persons' Voices of Civil Rights project (with which Sterling Publishing is affiliated for this book), Williams tackles segregation, then and now, and those in the trenches of every color and creed who continue to fight for racial equality. Sounds big? Even sentimental? It is. But be glad Williams' soft-spoken revolution is televised.

Juan Williams reads and signs, Sat., May 15, 2 p.m., Barnes & Noble, 1805 Walnut St., 215-665-0716.

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