As a kid growing up in a quiet northern California suburb, the early days of the civil rights movement in the late 1950s came only as close as our black & white TV screen and the occasional photo-spread in LIFE magazine. Richard Doster brings those images to real life in Crossing The Lines, his second novel set in the south.
Crossing The Lines continues the story of newspaper reporter Jack Hall whose big break comes when he is asked to join the sports writing team of a major Atlanta daily. Because he had some experience reporting on the “negro” community at his previous paper, Hall’s editor sends him to Montgomery, Alabama to report on a minor incident involving a woman who refused give up her seat in a WHITES ONLY section of a city bus.
There’s news out of Montgomery that there might be a short-lived bus boycott and Hall agrees to go, despite the protestations of his wife.
“I seem to possess an unusual background; I guess I’m one of the few reporters in the world who’s actually seen a boycott, who’s been to a Negro church, and interviewed a Negro pastor.”
Hall meets a young Martin King, a young pastor who impresses the cynical newspaperman with his faith and quiet demeanor. The two form a relationship built on mutual benefit and Hall becomes an eye witness to some of the civil rights movement’s most pivotal events.
Doster weaves his fictional characters into stories of actual events so seamlessly that it is difficult to know where reality ends and fiction begins. The dialog given King and others is historically accurate based on the author’s exhaustive research.
As he sees and learns more about the struggle for justice, Jack Hall also confronts the long-held racial stereotypes of white Christians with whom he goes to church, including his wife Rose Marie who can’t understand why people are making such a fuss.
Doster gives his fictional characters honest feelings and doubts. The dialog between reporters in the newsroom is a bit tamer than I suspect it really is, but other than that, Crossing The Lines is a good read that opened my eyes to an important period of American history I didn’t realize I had missed.
