Yes, the book is much different - and better - than the movie. Why does Peggy Noonan stress this is an important book to read. I agree with her, but if you can point me in the direction of her article, I would appreciate it.
Last year I read Black Boy - I forget the author but it was a great read. Sort of like reading about the Nazi attrocities during WW II. Very evil things happened to blacks in the south during the Jim Crow era - and some of those people are still alive who did those things.
I would appreciate it if you put me on the ping list.
I went to Amazon.com and found that it was an autobiography by Richard Wright. It's got some good reviews there. Guess I'll have to add this to my ever-growing reading list!
I'm too young to remember Jim Crow but since most of my family is from down south (Alabama), I often visit there, but not many in my family are willing to talk about it. My father grew up there during the 1930s and 1940s and remembers how everything was segregated. Blacks and Whites were not allowed to share the same bathroom, drinking fountains and lunch counters, etc. Blacks were made to go to the back of the bus and if they were in a department store, whites were allowed to cut in front of them. It was actually like this up to the 1960s! But like I said, nobody down there wants to talk about it. It's as if they all want to pretend it never happened. My father never went for that kind of thing and I think that is one of the reasons he decided to stay up North after he got out of the Navy. Especially since he served with many black men in the Navy and realized that they weren't the inferior people that some of his kinfolk made them out to be.