They Didn't Put That on Huntley-Brinkley!: A Vagabond Reporter Encounters the New South

In loosely related vignettes and essays, former Atlanta Journal-Constitution correspondent James recalls what he considers ``the hidden story'' of the civil rights movement from 1959 to 1977. Though the book meanders, James is an engaging writer, with an eye for irony, a sharp ear for dialogue and a penchant for elegiac cadences. His reminiscences of fellow journalists are less interesting than his tales of ordinary people like Ralph Jones, the forgotten haberdasher who was the instigating force behind the Greensboro, N.C., sit-ins, and Lula, a domestic worker who waged her own civil rights revolution in the house of her Alabama employers. James tells a hilarious tale about a trip to a Mississippi town, where white cafe proprietors refused him service and his unhinged Uncle Dudley warned local blacks about ``the duplicity of Martin Luther King and Lyndon Johnson.'' Willing to challenge saintly memories, James traces Jesse Jackson's start in self-promotion and tells a chilling story of an apolitical black man terrorized by black night riders for refusing to follow their political line. (Apr.)