Book Talk: The Color of America Has Changed with Mark Brilliant @ CHS 1/20/11

Thursday January 20, 2011 6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Book Talk: The Color of America Has Changed with Mark Brilliant
Free Event @ The California Historical Society

From the moment that the attack on the "problem of the color line" began to gather momentum nationally during World War II, California demonstrated that the problem was one of color lines. This talk presents an overview of The Color of America Has Changed: How Racial Diversity Shaped Civil Rights Reform in California, 1941-1978. The book taps California’s civil rights history to reveal how the Civil Rights Era was truly a nationwide and multiracial phenomenon. Brilliant examines California’s multiple “race problems” shaped and complicated the multifaceted efforts of civil rights reformers. While civil rights historians have long set their sights on the South and, more recently, turned their attention to the North, advancing a “long civil rights movement” interpretation, The Color of America Has Changed calls for a new understanding of civil rights history that more fully reflects the racial diversity and accompanying civil rights complexity of America - a civil rights history that is as "wide" as it is "long." The book will be available for sale at the event.

Mark Brilliant is Assistant Professor of History at U.C. Berkeley.

California Historical Society
678 Mission Street
San Francisco