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My Book, The Accommodation, Is Coming Out Again. I Wonder Why.
Sep 30, 2020
Last week Deep Vellum Publishing Company, a small distinguished nonprofit Dallas publisher, announced it will re-publish my 1987 book, The Accommodation , about the racial history of Dallas. I have been thinking about it all week, ever since I found out.
First of all, the re-publishing of the book has precious little to do with me. Years ago I conveyed the rights to the book to Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price. There’s a whole personal back-story there about why I did that and why he and I had a falling out and why he sat on the rights for so long. ( Ed. Note : Jim explained this peculiarity to us on our EarBurner podcast, back in the early months of the pandemic. Listen here . )
But you know what? This week when I was pondering, I decided his and my personal stories about this are not all that interesting anymore. Commissioner Price and I are two old guys who should get over it. I hope somewhere in this new adventure a moment will arrive for us to shake hands again. But much more interesting things are in play right now than our personal feud – more important things to talk about.
I was inspired to write my book by one specific moment in my life. On the evening of August 20, 1984, when it was still 97 degrees outside, I sat in the over-air-conditioned Dallas Convention Center listening to the late W.A. Criswell, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas. He was delivering a typically flouncy long-winded invocation to the Republican National Convention that was about to nominate Ronald Reagan to his second term as president.
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