Crossing Border Street

the long version

"Honigsberg's narrative conveys the emotions and personal dangers activists faced and examines the work of three charismatic black leaders: A.Z. Young, Robert Hicks, and Gayle Jenkins. He describes how the Deacons worked with the Bogalusa Voters League to boycott the white owned businesses in the downtown area and to integrate the local schools, restaurants, parks, and paper mill. He also relates the story of Gary Duncan, a black man charged with battery for touching a white boy in Plaquemines Parish, the fiefdom of arch-segregationist Leander Perez. Honigsberg was part of the team that took the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and eventually established the constitutional right to a jury trial.". "Honigsberg considers the impact of the change that occurred in the fall of 1967, when Martin Luther King's dream of blacks and whites working together in a cooperative partnership gave way to the new cry of "Black Power." His memoir provides a glimpse into the civil rights movement and those who were forever changed by its struggle for human dignity and vision of racial justice and equality."--BOOK JACKET.