Bitters in the Honey: Tales of Hope and Disappointment Across Divides of Race and Time » (New Edition)

Most Americans are familiar with the story of what happened at Little Rock's Central High School in September of 1957. Indeed, the image of Central High's massive double staircase - and of nine black teenagers climbing that staircase, clutching their schoolbooks, surrounded by National Guardsmen with fixed bayonets - has become wedded in the American consciousness to the history of the civil-rights struggle in this country.. "Now, drawing on oral histories, Beth Roy tells the story of Central High from a fresh angle. Her interviews with white alumni of Central High investigate the reasons behind their resistance to desegregation. The alumni, now near retirement age, tell stories of the shaping of white identities in the latter half of the twentieth century, of dissatisfaction and even anger lingering still after forty years. This treatment of the Central High crisis is unique among studies done to date. It will help readers to better comprehend the complexity of racism, not only as it was evidenced at Central High in 1957, but as it continues to impact our lives today.

Journal of American History

"Poor whites felt stigmatized by black demands for first-class citizenship. . . . [For them] with the aid of the federal government, blacks absconded with the American dream. Witness Beth Roy's working-class informants [quoted in Bitters in the Honey] in Little Rock, who collectively assigned their own failures to blacks. Whites who succeeded believed they did so because of individual merit; they earned their success. By contrast, in the stories reported to Roy, if they failed, it was because black people 'stole' the American dream."