It is curious that I turned by chance to two books that intersected in their description of racial discrimination in Washington D.C. during World War II, when that city was the "capitol of freedom". I am referring to David Brinkley's book on wartime Washington and to Gordon Parks memoir.

The third book in this issue's "book bag", Cartoonist Bill Mauldin's memoir of his life up to the end of WW II is a great treat.

A Choice of Weapons by Gordon Parks

Harper & Row, NY, 1965.

A 1965 memoir by Gordon Parks, poet, photographer, photojournalist, fashion photographer, film director, composer.

From his birth in 1912 and his experiences in a wide range of jobs: waiter, railroad porter, basketball player, with the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), breaking into photography, and his work with the FSA (Farm Security Administration) and the OWI (Office of War Information). Other FSA photographers were: Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Jack Delano, Carl Mydans, John Vachon, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, Walker Evans, and John Collier, among others.

Parks, also a novelist (The Learning Tree), writes with great clarity and emotion about his own struggles as well as those of the people he meets during the depression, his experience with discrimination, and with the many people, black and white, who helped him as he tried to find the way to express his art and to work to support himself and his family.

The story ends with Parks, a black photo-correspondent with the OWI, denied transportation to go overseas with the 332nd fighter group, made up of black fighter pilots, he had covered during their training. Someone in the Pentagon wanted to make sure that the group received no more publicity.

(A copy of Parks' book is part of the collection of the Midland Public Library)

Kodak web page on Gordon Parks - photographer

Washington Goes to War by David Brinkley

Alfred A. Knopf, NY, 1988. ISBN 0-394-51025-9

This 1988 book by the televison news commentator is a delightful read full of information about the sleepy southern town that was totally transformed by the explosive expansion of government brought on by the Second World War. Many of the inhabitants wished that Mr. Roosevelt and his New Dealers would go away so that life might return to that of the McKinley Administration. Refugees and others who came to visit Washington were shocked by the segregation of the city. Capitol Transit, a privately owned bus company, had a chronic labour shortage, just could not keep enough drivers to drive buses. When they tried hiring one black driver, all the white drivers quit. So the company fired the black driver. The company had to close service on some routes throughout the war. This in a city full to overflowing with government workers, trying to get from overcrowded housing to work. The company sold 13 years later, did not attempt again to hire a black bus driver.

Brinkley includes stories about the planning and construction of the Pentagon, the world's largest building at the time. He also describes Roosevelt's thoughts on what to do with all that office space that the military would not need after the war's end.

C-SPAN Booknotes Transcript of interview with David Brinkley about his memoir.

The Brass Ring: A Sort of Memoir by Bill Mauldin