This book on publisher and editor Lucile H. Bluford examines her journalistic writings on social, economic, and political issues; her strong opinionated views on African Americans and women; and whether there were consistent themes, biases, and assumptions in her stories that may have influenced news coverage in the Kansas City Call. It traces the beginnings of her activism as a young reporter seeking admission to the graduate program in journalism at the University of Missouri and how her admissions rejection became the catalyst for her seven-decade career as a champion of racial and gender equality. Bluford's work at the Kansas City Call demonstrates how critical theorists used storytelling to describe personal experiences of struggle and oppression to inform the public of racial and gender consciousness. Lucile H. Bluford and the Kansas City Call illustrates how she used her social authority in the formidable power base of the weekly Black newspaper she owned, shaping and mobilizing a broader movement in the fight for freedom and social justice. This book focuses on a selection of Bluford's news stories and editorials from 1968 to 1983 as examples of how she articulated a Black feminist standpoint advocating a Black liberation agenda-equal access to decent jobs, affordable health care and housing, and a better education in Kansas City, Missouri. Bluford's writings represented what the mainstream news ignored, exposing injustices and inequalities in the African American community and among feminists.

This book on publisher and editor Lucile H. Bluford examines her journalistic writings on social, economic, and political issues; her strong opinionated views on African Americans and women; and whether there were consistent themes, biases, and assumptions in her stories that may have influenced news coverage in the Kansas City Call. It traces the beginnings of her activism as a young reporter seeking admission to the graduate program in journalism at the University of Missouri and how her admissions rejection became the catalyst for her seven-decade career as a champion of racial and gender equality. Bluford's work at the Kansas City Call demonstrates how critical theorists used storytelling to describe personal experiences of struggle and oppression to inform the public of racial and gender consciousness. Lucile H. Bluford and the Kansas City Call illustrates how she used her social authority in the formidable power base of the weekly Black newspaper she owned, shaping and mobilizing a broader movement in the fight for freedom and social justice. This book focuses on a selection of Bluford's news stories and editorials from 1968 to 1983 as examples of how she articulated a Black feminist standpoint advocating a Black liberation agenda-equal access to decent jobs, affordable health care and housing, and a better education in Kansas City, Missouri. Bluford's writings represented what the mainstream news ignored, exposing injustices and inequalities in the African American community and among feminists.

Description This book follows on from when the story of my childhood, told in Child of the Thirties, ended. I begin this memoir in the summer holidays after I left school in 1945; free time in those days is very different from free time today My mother was still in a psychiatric hospital. I have tried to contract the events of over sixty years into a single book, giving a personal view of some the many changes that have occurred in society, together with some incidents in my personal life. I discuss a number of issues concerning the changes in care of the mentally ill. There are many contrasts made between aspects of life during the past sixty years with expectations and aspirations of today. Constancy is a theme that occurs throughout the book. The constancy of my father s concern for my mother; his regular visiting, and unsuccessful attempt to have her living at home again; his lonely life was impressed upon me as I wrote. In 1959 I met m mother again, and saw her for the first time in twenty years. From then on I kept in constant touch my mother, visiting her regularly until she died in 1992 About the Author Sheila Brook was born in 1931 and lived in Middlesex for many years. Long periods of her early childhood were spent living in other people s homes owing to her mother s recurrent episodes of mental illness. Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War her mother was again admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Twenty years passed before she and her mother met again. Sheila has lived in Hertfordshire for over forty years, and when her children were older she began a new career as a primary school teacher. Severe, long-standing, facial neuralgia forced her to take early retirement after some years of teaching, and the satisfaction she had in her chosen career made this hard to bear. Her first book, Child of the Thirties, covered the first fourteen years of her life, and her story now continues in Where is the Key, as she describes many of the changes that have occurred in her own life and in society in general through the second half of the twentieth century. Sheila has suffered from various forms of severe neuralgic pain but has managed to maintain an active life, playing tennis until she had turned seventy, and then enjoying a weekly Keep Fit class. She is an avid reader when time permits and loves her garden. She used to enjoy cooking, but finds this less satisfying since her husband s death in 2007. She enjoys doing jigsaw puzzles when time permits, but her writing has taken up all her spare time in recent years. The constant pain she suffers, made worse when sitting down, and also her acute sensitivity to loud noise now limit her involvement in many social activities. Sheila wrote her first book in her maiden name of Brook as a tribute to her late parents. Her mother features with affection in her second book. As she continued her story she appreciated how much anxiety and sorrow her father had suffered, and how mental illness had deprived her mother of her home, her family and her freedom.

A Unique Piece of Social History by Sheila Brook ISBN 13: 978 1 84747 024 9 Published: 2006br> Pages: 326 Description 'Child of the Thirties' charts Sheila's memories of her early pre-war schooldays preceding her mother's last admission to a Psychiatric Hospital in l939, where she remained until her death in 1992. About the Author Sheila was born in 1931 and her formal education was followed by what used to be called 'commercial training' as a shorthand typist. Her first job, in 1947, was as a secretary to the Almoner of a private, pre-NHS clinic in London, before becoming private secretary to a Harley Street consultant. She left work when she married in 1952 subsequently had two sons. Sheila trained as a teacher and in 1971 began teaching full time in a primary school, before being forced to take early retirement for health reasons. Sheila now lives in Hertfordshire with her husband and enjoys folk dancing, keeping fit, gardening, cooking, reading and doing jigsaw puzzles Book Extract We experienced very severe winters in the early nineteen forties with dense, 'pea-soup' fogs, when you could scarcely see a hand in front of you, hard frosts, heavy falls of snow. always chilly. Carpet was quite thin and lino was a cold surface - especially to one's feet when stepping out of bed in the morning. Cold houses often meant frozen or burst pipes and there was real hardship if the coal shed became empty. As I walked to school on wintry mornings I sometimes saw rows of icicles hanging down from the gutters or a mound of ice bulging from the top of a drainpipe. An icy tongue of frozen water drooped from the base of a down-pipe. A burst pipe was possible if a sudden thaw occurred. Occasionally the water froze in our galvanised iron cold-water tank in the loft. Loft insulation was not common in those days, pipes were not lagged and loft floors or roof timbers were not protected from the weather - but if ever it was needed, insulation was required then. If no water ran when the cold tap was turned on in the morning, or the toilet cistern didn't refill after flushing, we knew we were in trouble. We would have to let the kitchen boiler go out. had thawed, or the plumber had been called in to mend a burst pipe. Plumbers were not 'central-heating consultants in those days, but 'burst pipe repairers' who were kept very busy in winter months.