The Foreign Service Journal, November 2008

Missouri lawyer and civil rights activist. The Grant family is emblematic of the many black middle-class and blue-collar families throughout the country who, beginning at the turn of the 20th century, went to school, paid their dues and forced America to face its prejudices. Fighting segregation in their local communities for decades, through courageous acts in day-to-day life, they built the foundation for the more publicized civil rights crusade to follow. St. Louis, where the author grew up, was still in the grip of JimCrow laws that divided blacks fromwhites in virtually every sphere. She recounts the battles fought by her father, details how her family built a prosperous life and describes the challenges she herself faced in navigating her way through institutions marked by racial prejudice. Gail Milissa Grant is a retired FSO with USIA. A former assistant professor of art and architectural histo- ry at Howard University, Ms. Grant managed interna- tional cultural and educational exchange programs dur- ing a more than 20-year career overseas. She is now a writer and public speaker based in Rome. Broken Brotherhood: The Rise and Fall of the National Afro-American Council Benjamin R. Justesen, Southern Illinois University Press, 2008, $35.00, paperback, 304 pages. The first nationwide civil rights organization, the National Afro- American Council, was established in 1898 by a small group of influential African-American leaders including journalist T. Thomas Fortune, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Bishop Alexander Walters, educator Booker T. Washington and Representative George H. White, R.-N.C. Its story, told in lively detail by Benjamin Justesen in Broken Brotherhood , is a vital part of post-Reconstruction political history. The council brought national attention to such crit- ical issues as lynching, disenfranchisement and racial discrimination. One of its major projects was a Louisiana lawsuit, one of the earliest court tests of the constitutionality of voter disenfranchisement laws across the southern United States. Though the organi- zation was disbanded after only a decade, its members and associates constituted a “Who’s Who” of African- American intellectuals, politicians, religious leaders and journalists, many of whom would go on to distin- guished careers in the newly formed National Urban League and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. A former FSO, Justesen is also the author of George Henry White: An Even Chance in the Race of Life (Louisiana State University Press, 2001), the first biog- raphy of this African-American pioneer. He later com- piled and edited a volume of White’s speeches and writing, In His Own Words: The Writings, Speeches and Letters of George Henry White, (iUniverse, 2004). The Blockade Breakers: The Berlin Airlift Helena P. Schrader, The History Press, 2008, $34.95, hardcover, 320 pages. On June 24, 1948, the Soviet Union abruptly closed all access to the Western sectors of Berlin, cutting off more than two million civilians who were dependent on the surrounding ter- ritory and the West for food, fuel and other basics. The Allies had a choice: they could withdraw and hand over the entire city to the Soviet Union, or they could try to supply the city by air. No airlift of this dimension had ever been attempted before, and there were serious technical, political and military obstacles to its implementation. The compli- cated relationship between the Berliners and the Western Allies added more uncertainty. Against the advice of senior military commanders, the political lead- ership in London and Washington insisted it be done. In this book, the author, who lived in Berlin for 20 years, focuses on the terrific logistical challenges and the complexity of the relationship between the Allieds and the Berliners. A wealth of firsthand accounts cap- ture the excitement and tension of the undertaking. A historian specializing in ancient Sparta, the medieval era and World War II, Helena P. Schrader joined the Foreign Service in 2005. After serving in Oslo, she is currently posted in Lagos. Her study of British and American female pilots in World War II , Sisters in Arms (Pen & Sword Books Ltd.), and a his- torical novel based on their experience, The Lady in the Spitfire (iUniverse), were published in 2006. Two more historical novels on World War II, Chasing the Wind (see p. 35) and An Obsolete Honor: A Story of the German Resistance to Hitler (see p. 36), were published in the past year. She is also the author of three histori- cal novels set in ancient Sparta, The Olympic Charioteer (iUniverse, 2005), Are They Singing in 24 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 8