Raymond Arsenault

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOKA “thoroughly captivating biography” ( The San Francisco Chronicle ) of American icon Arthur Ashe—the Jackie Robinson of men’s tennis—a pioneering athlete who, after breaking the color barrier, went on to become an influential civil rights activist and public intellectual.Born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1943, by the age of eleven, Arthur Ashe was one of the state’s most talented black tennis players. He became the first African American to play for the US Davis Cup team in 1963, and two years later he won the NCAA singles championship. In 1968, he rose to a number one national ranking. Turning professional in 1969, he soon became one of the world’s most successful tennis stars, winning the Australian Open in 1970 and Wimbledon in 1975. After retiring in 1980, he served four years as the US Davis Cup captain and was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1985.In this “deep, detailed, thoughtful chronicle” ( The New York Times Book Review ), Raymond Arsenault chronicles Ashe’s rise to stardom on the court. But much of the book explores his off-court career as a human rights activist, philanthropist, broadcaster, writer, businessman, and celebrity. In the 1970s and 1980s, Ashe gained renown as an advocate for sportsmanship, education, racial equality, and the elimination of apartheid in South Africa. But from 1979 on, he was forced to deal with a serious heart condition that led to multiple surgeries and blood transfusions, one of which left him HIV-positive. After devoting the last ten months of his life to AIDS activism, Ashe died in February 1993 at the age of forty-nine, leaving an inspiring legacy of dignity, integrity, and active citizenship.Based on prodigious research, including more than one hundred interviews, Arthur Ashe puts Ashe in the context of both his time and the long struggle of African-American athletes seeking equal opportunity and respect, and “will serve as the standard work on Ashe for some time” ( Library Journal, starred review).

They were black and white, young and old, men and women. In the spring and summer of 1961, they put their lives on the line, riding buses through the American South to challenge segregation in interstate transport. Their story is one of the most celebrated episodes of the civil rights movement, yet a full-length history has never been written until now. In these pages, acclaimed historian Raymond Arsenault provides a gripping account of six pivotal months that jolted the consciousness of America.The Freedom Riders were greeted with hostility, fear, and violence. They were jailed and beaten, their buses stoned and firebombed. In Alabama, police stood idly by as racist thugs battered them. When Martin Luther King met the Riders in Montgomery, a raging mob besieged them in a church. Arsenault recreates these moments with heart-stopping immediacy. His tightly braided narrative reaches from the White House--where the Kennedys were just awakening to the moral power of the civil rights struggle--to the cells of Mississippi's infamous Parchman Prison, where Riders tormented their jailers with rousing freedom anthems. Along the way, he offers vivid portraits of dynamic figures such as James Farmer, Diane Nash, John Lewis, and Fred Shuttlesworth, recapturing the drama of an improbable, almost unbelievable saga of heroic sacrifice and unexpected triumph.The Riders were widely criticized as reckless provocateurs, or "outside agitators." But indelible images of their courage, broadcast to the world by a newly awakened press, galvanized the movement for racial justice across the nation. Freedom Riders is a stunning achievement, a masterpiece of storytelling that will stand alongside the finest works on the history of civil rights.

For six decades John Robert Lewis was a towering figure in the U.S. struggle for civil rights. As an activist and progressive congressman, he was renowned for his unshakable integrity, indomitable courage, and determination to get into "good trouble."In this biography of Lewis, Raymond Arsenault traces Lewis's upbringing in rural Alabama, his activism, his championing of voting rights and anti-poverty initiatives, and his decades of service as the "conscience of Congress."Both in the streets and in Congress, Lewis promoted a philosophy of nonviolence to bring about change. He helped the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders plan the 1963 March on Washington, where he spoke at the Lincoln Memorial. He was instrumental in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and he advocated for racial and economic justice, immigration reform, LGBTQ rights, and national health care.Arsenault recounts Lewis's lifetime of work toward one overarching realizing the "beloved community," an ideal society based in equity and inclusion. Lewis never wavered in this pursuit, and even in death his influence endures, inspiring resistance in the fight for social justice.

Award-winning civil rights historian Ray Arsenault describes the dramatic story behind Marian Anderson's concert at the Lincoln Memorial―an early milestone in civil rights history―on the seventieth anniversary of her performance.On Easter Sunday 1939, the brilliant vocalist Marian Anderson sang before a throng of seventy-five thousand at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington―an electrifying moment and an underappreciated milestone in civil rights history. Though she was at the peak of a dazzling career, Anderson had been barred from performing at the Daughters of the American Revolution's Constitution Hall because she was black. When Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR over the incident and took up Anderson's cause, however, it became a national issue. Like a female Jackie Robinson―but several years before his breakthrough―Anderson rose to a pressure-filled and politically charged occasion with dignity and courage, and struck a vital blow for civil rights.In the 1963 March on Washington, Martin Luther King would follow, literally, in Anderson's footsteps. T his tightly focused, richly textured narrative by acclaimed historian Raymond Arsenault captures the struggle for racial equality in 1930s America, the quiet heroism of Marian Anderson, and a moment that inspired blacks and whites alike.

St. Petersburg and the Florida Dream, 1888-1950 chronicles the early history of St. Petersburg and the lower Pinellas Peninsula. A forerunner of the modern Sunbelt city, early St. Petersburg successfully mixed southern and northern cultures and used vigorous public relations and advertising to promote itself. By the mid-twentieth century, the "Sunshine City" had developed into one of the most important resort communities in the United States, a self-styled subtropical playground that stood tantalizingly apart from the mainstream of urban America. Before the age of expressways, heat pumps, fast-food restaurants, and suburban shopping malls, local life revolved around institutions and traditions long associated with the Florida Dream - the centuries-old promise of perpetual warmth, health, comfort, and leisure. Arsenault describes these institutions and many of the personalities that enlivened them.

Book by Arsenault, Raymond

Excellent Book

On April 9, 1939, a cold Easter Sunday, a woman in a fur coat walked down the steps of Lincoln Memorial, ready to perform open-air after being refused the largest hall in Washington because she was Black.As contralto Marian Anderson raised her voice to sing the words of "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" to the 75,000 who gathered to listen to her, an unforgettable historic moment unfolded. The great voice of “The Lady from Philadelphia,” first discovered by her local neighborhood, took her to global fame on the stages of Europe, Asia, and America. She became the first Black woman to perform at the Met in New York, she sang for presidents and kings, was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and with her dignity, courage, and unwavering belief in equal rights she became an icon in her supportive role for the civil rights movement. The present edition is the first release of Marian Anderson’s complete recorded legacy for RCA Victor. Along with the first-ever complete release of her legendary Farewell Recital at Constitution Hall in 1964, many recordings appear here on CD for the first time. From her debut in 1924 for the Victor label to her last LP from 1966, all recordings have been meticulously restored and remastered from the original analog masters using 24 bit / 96 kHz technology. 72 works are appearing on CD for the first time, 9 recordings previously unreleased. The 228-page coffee-table book is richly illustrated with numerous photos and facsimiles, a new essay by Raymond Arsenault – author of The Sound of Freedom and Freedom Riders – and full discographical notes. It is a homage to the artistic life of a singer “one is privileged to hear only once in a hundred years” (Toscanini) and who left us a legacy of humanity, generosity, talent, and faith. This book includes 15 CDs containing Marian Anderson’s complete recorded legacy for RCA Victor.

The adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1791 marked the creation of a uniquely innovative mechanism for constitutional change by which Americans have continued to renew and redefine their governance over a two-hundred-year period. Now, in time for the bicentennial celebration of this great document, seven distinguished scholars combine their expertise to explore the history and contemporary meaning of these first ten amendments to the Constitution.

Elizabeth Fields fears that her dear friend Anna Martin will forever be the spinster-never to court; never to wed. At twenty-seven, Anna is steadfast in her refusal to allow a man into her heart. Instead, she devotes all her energies to her duties as headmistress of The Martin School for Young Ladies, the well-regarded finishing school founded by her deceased father. Despite Elizabeth's best matchmaking efforts, Anna had never met a man who can hold a candle to her "ideal man". But that was before she met Captain Richard Sedgwick, master of the cargo schooner Connaught Explorer. After surviving the direst of circumstances at sea, Richard explodes into Anna's life and things will never be the same again. In Richard, Anna sees all of the manly traits for which she has always handsome, rugged good looks; honor; courage, and savoir-faire. In short, Anna finds Richard to be perfect-except for one small detail...Richard's love is the sea. Will Anna succeed in turning Richard's head from his beloved ship and his many adventures? Can she overcome her own misgivings concerning Richard's career, and her own naïveté in matters of the heart? And will Richard actually survive his journeys to come home safely to her? "Tempestuous Seas" is a sweeping adventure-romance set in coastal Virginia during the Age of Sail. Marked by its complex characters, thrilling adventures and sumptuously-described locales, "Tempestuous Seas" is bound to please fans of the genre, as they follow Richard and Anna through the trials that threaten to keep them apart for all time.