Book Review: It Was Never About a Hot Dog and a Coke

Non-fiction/ Memoir

It Was Never About a Hot Dog and a Coke!

Rodney L. Hurst, Sr.

WingSpan Press

2008

ISBN: 978-1-59594-195-4

Soft cover

191 pages

Author Rodney L. Hurst, Sr. offers a historical gift to the literary world in his memoir It Was Never About a Hot Dog and a Coke. Hurst provides a detailed account of his involvement in the August 27, 1960 sit-ins at Jacksonville, Florida whites-only lunch counters. The demonstration erupted in violence instigated by a white mob wielding baseball bats and ax handles. The day became known as Ax Handle Saturday. This event elevated a young Hurst to the position of civil rights fighter and shaped the life of a man who continues to be vocal about the plight of African Americans in the United States.

Hurst was only eleven-years-old when he joined the Youth Council National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) under the encouragement of his junior high school American History teacher, Rutledge Pearson. Through the years, Pearson became Hurst's mentor and friend. The admiration that Hurst feels for his late teacher is expressed throughout the pages of this book.

"How do you maintain your dignity in a segregated society designed to take your dignity? You continue to hold your head high (19)."

Jacksonville in 1960 was typical of many southern towns. Jim Crow laws were both real and enforced in churches, schools, and retail stores. The Youth Council, lead by Pearson, Hurst, and other prominent adult figures in the NAACP, strategically and non-violently pushed for the integration of white lunch counters in Woolworth, Kress, and McCrory Department stores. Hurst, who at sixteen-years-old was president of the Youth Council, and his peers-young and courageous junior high and high school students-sat quietly at lunch counters as white waitresses and managers refused to serve them. And the white patrons tormented them with racial slurs and physical assaults. The violence that took place on August 27^th was the white community's response to the on-going sit-ins, but the blood that was spilt that day involved blacks who were not even a part of the Youth Council's cause.

I am writing this review in the month of April during the week of the fortieth anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination and nearly three weeks after Barak Obama's speech on race in America. As I read about the sit-ins and the responses of some white citizens in Jacksonville (Hurst makes a point of highlighting whites who were supportive of the Youth Council's efforts), I frequently turned away from the book. The images the narrative conjurer's up were disturbing. As an African American woman, I have grown-up seeing the type of images Hurst describes. But as a mother with a son who is now only a year younger than Hurst was when he was leading this group of young people, I am disgusted by the cowardice that drove a mob of so-called adults to attack children. Reading this book while absorbing the significance of the aforementioned events left me raw and also proud. Proud that Hurst was courageous enough to participate in the Civil Rights Movement and proud that he continues to serve the cause over forty years later.

"When we started sit-in demonstrations, we wanted everyone to know eating a hot dog and drinking a Coke would not be our focus.  Human dignity and respect would be our fundamental focus... (55)."

It Was Never About a Hot Dog and a Coke is a dramatic, effective account of demonstrations that contributed to the shaping of civil rights for African Americans in the United States. The author's offering of historical detail is a gift that should be shared with the young and the old as proof that individuals can permanently alter oppressive systems that ultimately affect us all.

Melissa Levine

for

Independent Professional Book Reviewers

http://www.bookreviewers.org/