Content area
Full Text
Malcolm McLaughlin , The Long, Hot Summer of 1967: Urban Rebellion in America (New York : Palgrave MacMillan , 2014, £60.00). Pp. xiii + 227. isbn 978 1 1372 6962 1 .
Reviews
The brutal killing of Michael Brown in the formerly obscure Missouri city of Ferguson in August 2014 offers proof - as if any were needed - that the racial divide remains a chasm in the United States. Among its most horrifying features was the image of scores of protesters holding their hands in the air chanting "don't shoot," while SWAT teams paraded caches of weaponry more appropriate to a warzone.1The widespread protesting and violence that erupted in the wake of Brown's death also offered uncomfortable echoes of the so-called long, hot summer of 1967, when urban upheavals threatened to consume the United States. Those who are wishing to delve further into the history of that summer will find Malcolm McLaughlin's The Long Hot Summer of 1967 illuminating and sobering.
McLaughlin's study is not merely a chronicle of the urban unrest but an important attempt to place the protests and the federal response they produced in a social and intellectual context. Its prime focus is the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, also known as the...