Point of Reckoning

Book cover of Point of Reckoning by Theodore D. SegalBuy the Book: AmazonBarnes & NobleBookshopDuke University Press
Title: Point of Reckoning: The Fight for Racial Justice at Duke University
Published by: Duke University Press
Release Date: February 2021
Pages: 408
ISBN13: 978-1-4780-1142-2

 
Overview

On the morning of February 13, 1969, members of Duke University's Afro-American Society barricaded themselves in the Allen administration building. That evening, police were summoned to clear the building, firing tear gas at students in the melee that followed. When it was over, nearly twenty people were taken to the hospital and many more injured. In Point of Reckoning, Theodore D. Segal narrates the contested fight for racial justice at Duke, from the enrollment of the first Black undergraduates in 1963 to the events that led to the Allen building takeover. Segal shows that Duke's first Black students soon recognized that the university was unwilling to acknowledge their presence or fully address its segregationist past. By exposing the tortuous dynamics that played out as racial progress stalled at Duke, Segal tells both a local and national story about the challenges that historically white colleges and universities throughout the country continue to face.

 


Praise

“In vivid detail, Theodore D. Segal introduces us to men and women, black and white, who tried to differentiate between integration and desegregation, between being welcomed and included, between remaining true to themselves as Black Americans as compared to becoming darker versions of white Americans. As Segal uncovers, not only did the actors have conflicting notions of what was at stake, they often differed on what was desired. In that sense, he exposes the long history of today's raging debates on campus about race and diversity.”
Professor Earl Lewis, Director and Founder of the Center for Social Solutions, University of Michigan

Point of Reckoning is a remarkable and unforgettable story that traces the white racial foundations of Duke University while uncovering how whiteness actively resists change in the face of Black dehumanization. Segal renders the unremarkable existence of racism remarkable and painfully reveals what happens to a dream deferred—it explodes. As we currently bear witness to Black suffering and inequity, righteous indignation and Black protests near and far, Point of Reckoning is an urgent text that offers hope as it dares to illuminate the past in order that we might not be condemned to repeat it.”
George Yancy, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Philosophy at Emory University and author of On Race