The Whole Nine Yards

Things That Make White People Uncomfortable by Michael Bennett
Chicago, Ill. : Haymarket Books, 2018.
xxxviii, 220 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.

Seattle Seahawks defensive star (until 2018), Michael Bennett, has a lot to say about injustices in the United States in this remarkable book from Haymarket Books.

It is a great read, revealing Bennett's passion for social justice - especially around issues of racism and police violence.  But Bennett is not a single issue crusader; he is also a feminist, food justice activist and workers' rights advocate. 

Though called Things that Make White People Uncomfortable, the first half of the book could as easily have been called Things to Make Football Fans Uncomfortable as he exposes the heartless, predatory "business" of college football and the tough exploitation to be found in the actual business of professional football.

Whatever you end up thinking of the positions that Bennett takes on issues, you have to admire him as a man of integrity and heart.  I would definitely recommend his book.

Bloody Chicago

A Few Drops of Red: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919 by Claire Hartfield

Boston : Clarion Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, [2018]

198 p. : ill., map ; 27 cm. 

Books like this make me glad (and proud) to be a young adult librarian.  This is great book of history in that it is accessible, compelling, and succinct without simplifying the complicated forces of labor, war, immigration, race and economics that led to murderous attacks on African Americans in Chicago in 1919.      

Hartfield's book takes the reader into the cauldron of race relations and economic warfare that was Chicago at the turn of the century.   The city was the slaughterhouse/meat packing center of the world, a major destination for European immigrants, and was rife with robber baron exploitation (for this book, especially Gustavus Swift).  The owners of the meat industry sought to crush any worker attempts at unionization and used any differences they could to divide workers - skilled vs. unskilled, Polish v. Irish, and of course - white vs. black.  When they needed strikebreakers, they brought in African American workers under guard - a move that further inflamed racial hatreds and tensions especially in the breaking of a strike in 1904.  

With the onset of WWI and labor shortages, the draw for southern African Americans led to mass migrations of African Americans to Chicago.  The jobs were there, but housing was strictly limited to the boundaries of "The Black Belt" and conditions became overcrowded and poorly maintained.  Then when WWI ended, returning white workers were given the industrial jobs and the blacks were fired.
It was a powder keg waiting to explode and the spark came on a hot, hot day in July 1919, at the lakefront when an African American teen was killed by a white man and nothing was done about it. The violence lasted days and only ended with the intervention of national guard troops.
This is definitely a book to recommend for history buffs, and especially local Illinois history buffs.