Free Book Publicity

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Online press releases and social media networking and marketing earn free book publicity, public speaking engagements, name recognition and credibility.

Get Free Publicity
Public Speaking Engagements
Increase Your Book Sales
with Online Press Release Distribution

Online press release submission can give thousands of people browsing the web their first good look at you, your services, books and other products. That first look may be the impetus for them to consider you when they need a public speaker, services you offer and publications you may be selling. The more your target audience  sees your name and products, the more likely they'll remember you and your book, which can lead to referrals, leads and sales. Start to build your target audience by using social media networking.

When you build a group of friends, followers or connections in social media networks, you have a start at building your target audience made of of specific individuals who have a knowledge or you and perhaps an interest in you and what you do. This is an advantage you can use to market what you offer. Create groups within your social media networks to target friends, followers or connections for your press releases. Research the Internet for other social media and professional networks that feature the types of services and products you provide. Social media marketing is changing how the world sells.


Giving your target audience an understanding of what you have to offer can also lead to public speaking engagements, placing you in front of live audiences that will spend cash for your book and who may see your talents as consulting or coaching possibilities for their company or for themselves as ambitious individuals.

http://www.free-press-release-center.info/sample-press-release.html

Free Publicity for Authors to Increase Book Sales,
Receive Invitations for Public Speaking Engagements

Online press release services and distributors like FPRC displayed on the right are helpful in showing writers how they can construct a good press release and take advantage of free publicity opportunities. They do stress that your online submissions meet the press release service's  minimum editorial requirements and are properly written and formatted. If you write the press release or article yourself, the publicity of online distribution is free publicity. As an author, you already know how to write. Why not go the next step and learn how to design an Internet promotional campaign for yourself. Who knows better than you what to say about yourself and your book? 

Affordable Press Release Distribution Services and
Professional Press Release Writing Services since 1983

By producing press releases for a target audience, you can develop a reputation as an expert in your field and you will gain influence in many circles, including those social circles in your local community where you may already be known and are likely to receive invitations for speaking engagements. 

Writing Tips and Writing
Workshops May Enhance
Your Ability to Market
Books Online With
Internet Press Releases

Send2Press is an example of an online press release writing tips and distribution service that charges for writing, formatting and distributing press releases. Online distribution services also list useful writing tips on how to write, format and optimize a press release for search engines. Some press release websites conduct writing workshops, where they ask participants to actually make lists of their thoughts, take out a pen and paper and make notes. Many times, the writing workshops charge for their Internet courses and require participants to purchase additional software and eBooks.

WOW Motto:
Invest in Yourself
Write Now!

WOW! provides modestly priced writing workshops designed for women but not exclusively used by women. All writers need basic instruction and refresher information on press release writing and getting their word out. One WOW Internet course is described in this way: Are you worthy? News worthy, that is. In this three-week workshop, we learn how to craft a press release that is professional and gets the right attention as well as how to make money writing press releases. WOW! says, "Whether you are looking to boost your income or work on your craft, we know that education is an important part of a writer’s career."

Bigmama Didn't Shop
At Woolworth's
by Sunny Nash

Some press release services include lessons on search engine optimization (SEO), which I covered in my Tuesday, October 26, blog, Write Amazing Headlines for Your Online Articles, a topic I will revisit because of developments in online book marketing, writing tips for Internet sales and search engine optimization strategies. I have written press releases on my book, Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's, which appear on my Selected Press Release Page of this blog. If people have written positive reviews of your book, include them in your press releases. If not, get quotes from people who have read and liked your book.

When the target audience reads positive reports about you and your book, they think more highly of you. Today authors can write, publish and promote books but Internet marketing is essential to an author’s success in book sales and getting public speaking engagements. Whether you wrote an eBook for your online business or a paperback or hardcover book produced by a publishing house, you will need certain marketing strategies to publicize your book to its target market. Today, online marketing is important even if you have a New York publisher behind you. The important elements are listed below and also illustrated in the video that follows.

• Summary--sentence to introduce your press release
• Content--who, what, where, when, why and how
• Contact Information--include your URL.



Many Good Press Release Service
Offer Free Online Distribution
of Press Releases and Articles

Control your book marketing plan by writing your own press releases and using social media marketing to distribute your press releases. You can do it. You wrote a book! Find information on writing and formatting press releases on the Internet. To the left is PR Urgent,  a free press release service. According to PR Urgent, "A news release, press release or press statement is a written or recorded communication directed at members of the news media for the purpose of announcing something claimed as having news value." To take PR Urgent's statement a step further, in today's competitive book markets, authors need to show their press release and Internet savvy by using search engine optimization (SEO) strategies and keyword suggestion software for maximum impact. Using SEO and keyword suggestion software will help your press release message get discovered on the Internet.

When you have written your press release, you need to get it published online. There are many free and paid websites to publish your press releases. Remember, though, no service will publish your press release if it is poorly written and filled with misspelled words. Take care to be sure you have produced a professional press release to take your book sales and writing career to the next level.

Buy:  Bigmama Didn’t Shop At Woolworth’s by Sunny Nash

Bigmama Didn't Shop
At Woolworth's
by Sunny Nash

Chosen by the Association of American University Presses as one of its essential books for understanding race relations in the United States, Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's (Texas A&M University Press) by the award-winning author, Sunny Nash, is also listed in the Bibliographic Guide to Black Studies by the Schomburg Center in New York and recommended for Native American collections by the Miami-Dade Public Library System in Florida.

New Growth 2
Edited by Mark Busby

Use other books like those to which you may have made a contribution to help you publicize your book. Write a press release about your contribution to the book and work in your title. Be subtle, though. Now hard-sales tactics. I contributed to New Growth 2: Contemporary Short Stories by Texas Writers (Corona Publishing Co.), edited by Mark Busby.

Mark Busby, Editor, New Growth 2

The 24 Texas writers in the book are: Rick Bass, Ewing Campbell, Rafael Castillo, Nan Cuba, Terence Dalrymple, Robert Flynn, Dagoberto Gilb, James Hannah, James Hoggard, Peter LaSalle, Paul Scott Malone, Sunny Nash, Naomi Shihab Nye, Carolyn Osborn, Terry Pringle, Clay Reynolds, Paul Ruffin, Jim Sanderson, Daryl Scroggins, Jan Seale, Sallie Strange, Carmen Tafolla, Donley Watt and Chris Woods.

Click Follow Button in Sidebar for Latest Posts Covering:

The History of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement

Modern Race Relations in America

 Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's by Sunny Nash

© 2011 Sunny Nash.

 All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

  

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Write Amazing Headlines for Your Online Articles

 Custom Search

Great headlines give people reasons to visit blogs and websites, watch televisions shows, start conversations, and read online and printed books, magazines, newspapers, press releases and articles.

Find Key Phrase Headlines

in Newspapers and other

Printed Publications

If you write great headlines, you give people reasons to visit websites, watch televisions shows, start conversations with people they just met and read books, magazines, newspapers, press releases and articles online and in print.

It does not matter what your subject is. Your headline counts. For example in this blog, I write about race relations in America. Over the years,  I learned that I must grab my readers as fast as I can and give this information and resources they can use.

Use Keywords
in Headlines & Titles

In the 10 seconds it takes to read a headline, they decide if they want to read more of what you have to say, unless, the reader is a student and the piece was assigned by a teacher or if the reading materials are intended to be read as an employee training assignment or supplementary instruction for professional education. In which case, you have no choice but to read further or get fired for not complying with your company's requirements or flunk the course.

Your opening phrases, headlines, titles or subheads of your stories or videos are the first impressions your target audience has of you, what you have to say and what you have to sell. The headline determines how much time and interest your prospective reader will give you or your product. The old saying, "Don't judge the book by the cover," is not quite accurate these days when it comes to online writing.

To get noticed by your target audience and search engines, you and everyone else who writes anything or has a website or blog need to know how to write amazing headlines to grab readers' attention at a glance and keep visitors roaming around your websites for whatever purpose you may have for the readers to be there. Even email messages need a proper title or headline to entice recipients to open messages.

Search Engines
Can Find Your Headlines
on the World Wide Web

Your online headline is a short description of your article so that people can find you on the World Wide Web. Test headlines out by reading the text out loud. Does the headline sound interesting enough to read more? If the headline is boring or confusing, scrap it and start over. Test it with SEO tools. By using SEO tools, you can generate the best keywords and keyword phrases. Great headlines for your website and your online business, press releases and articles get traffic to your desired destination. Just like newspapers and magazines, websites need to hook readers.

SEO Tools
Useful in Web
Optimization

The search engine optimization (SEO) tools page to the right links to some of the best online SEO tools to help you to optimize your website and move your search engine ranking to a higher position, getting you more hits and probably more sales if you can make what you are selling sound like it is worth buying. One way to test the ability of your headline to attract interest is to try it out on your social media network. The response of your social media network can give you valuable feedback on the effectiveness of your headline. Did they click it or not?

If you are working with a new web page, you need to inform the search engines, and there are many, that the new page exists. If you have another website, one that is indexed by search engines already, link the new website to the existing website. Also make it part of your overall plan to learn everything you can about the needs of people you think may be potential visitors and the target audience of the website. Keyword research is ultimately about your knowledge of your  target audience. Keeping this in mind, words that are important to your target audience form the list of the keywords you must include in your web content if you intend to take advantage of search engine optimization techniques.

Sunny Nash Signs
Bigmama Didn't
Shop At Woolworth's
for Eddie Smith

In some cases, websites and blogs are not meant to sell traditional products. Websites and blogs are used as publicity sites for authors and serve as a place on the Internet to point people they may wish to have information about them, their books, videos and engagements. However, if you have written a book like I have, Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's, you may want to use your blogs and websites to sell your books.

If you promote your book and yourself for speaking engagements with a business card, your most important keyword is your name and the title of your book. People who want to know more about you before they book you for an engagement will key in your name and the title of your book to find your website when they search the Internet, becoming targeted traffic to the pages of your website.

Keywords Help People Find You
On the World Wide Web
and Connect You to Potential Sales

Develop a List of Keywords
Place Keywords in Headlines

Sound Friendly Rather Than Commercial

State Product Benefits Over Product Features

Make the Headline Easy to Read

Keep the Headline as Brief as Possible

Add Subheads To Your Articles

Place Keywords in Subheads

A keyword or a keyword phrase describes a topic used by Internet users to find information online. To be found by search engines, you need to include pertinent keywords in your online content. Keywordkeywords to ensure that online content contains the right words should be the goal, especially in writing your headlines. When a keyword is entered into a search engine, the websites featuring the keyword or keyword phrase will be displayed by the search engine. A keyword phrase is a combination of keywords used to compose a search query for information on a specific subject.

Keywords, important in Internet writing, attract your target audience and lets you know what it wants. Online content and off-line marketing efforts can benefit from knowing what a target audience wants and what that target audience is searching for online. Search engines log statistics, gather a large amount of keyword data and provide the best source of information for finding those essential keywords to add to online content. When researching keywords, remember, these data are estimates to be used to select some keywords you believe are appropriate for your applications, tags and meta tags.

A tag, HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), a marker where an object or text is placed, is formatted with a less than and more than character < > at either end, a backslash ( /) contained within a tag indicates "end of data" or more commonly known as an "end tag." Meta tags are also composed of Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), placed in and between the head tag of a web page. Meta tags are hidden from the site of the browser’s visitors. However, search engine crawlers read meta tags and draw instructions from them. There are several types of meta tags but, from a search engine optimization or SEO viewpoint, the title, description and keyword tags are the most important meta tags, giving search engines details about websites and their online contents.

You can test the keywords you choose for driving web traffic to your website or other destination by setting up a Google Adword campaign. Run the campaign for a few days to see the response to your keywords and keyword phrases. Take note, though, that according to Google, a quarter of its daily searches are related to changing trends, news and current events. Because search engines collect data based on changing conditions, knowledge and desired information, new keywords and keyword phrases will not be found immediately by keyword suggestion tools due to search engines constantly updating indices of the World Wide Web.

Keyword search tools can help generate the best keywords for your website, by using words in the website’s title, name, headline, subhead or online content. Remember, writing search engine optimized online  content is not a natural gift like writing fiction or poetry. Writing search engine optimized online content takes study and attention to the new Internet rules if you want to become successful at online marketing. There is hope, though. As you work with the concept of keyword optimization in your particular field of writing, you will become familiar with necessary tags and keyword usage.

Although print media is suffering in the wake of online news distribution, there is something to be learned from conventional newspapers that date back to the American colonial period. The New England Courant, for example, is one of the oldest American newspapers, founded in Boston in 1721 by Benjamin Franklin's older brother, James Franklin. The most expensive newspaper of that time, the Courant was the first American newspaper to expand its selections to include literary content and humorous essays. Expansion of content increased the number of headlines to attract more and more targeted readers to promote sales and improve advertising revenue, and to earn extra money for Franklin's struggling printing business, where his little brother Ben was employed as an apprentice by the time he was 12 years old.

Web visitors will read a great headline and want to read more that your website has to offer. your target audience will stay awhile, explore your pages and possibly make a purchase. If the headline is poorly constructed, visitors will not give the article any attention, but will bounce out of your website without reading any further, if they even enter at all. The Courant had a simple philosophy, clean, simple and high quality. This means there must be a useful message under the headline. Other newspapers of the time were not able to compete for lack of proper syntax and grammar. The language and the crafting of eye-catching headlines of the Courant set the standards for the next 100 years and more of American journalism.

I guess I am partial to newspapers because I majored in journalism at Texas A&M University and then went on to have syndicated columns for Hearst and Knight-Ridder newspapers. In fact, I have built my career on the journalism model, only now, I am leaning more toward online than print publications.

There are many reasons for introducing pages, press releases, articles and websites with great headlines. Remember, no matter what you write, you must have a compelling headline to entice your target audience to visit your website and to attract the attention of search engines.

Bigmama Didn't Shop
At Woolworth's
by Sunny Nash

Chosen by the Association of American University Presses as one of its essential books for understanding race relations in the United States, Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's (Texas A&M University Press) by the award-winning author, Sunny Nash, is also listed in the Bibliographic Guide to Black Studies by the Schomburg Center in New York and recommended for Native American collections by the Miami-Dade Public Library System in Florida.

Sunny Nash wrote music biographies of jazz guitarist, Kenny Burrell; jazz trumpeter, Clark Terry; and R&B singer-songwriter, Ben E. King for the African American National Biography by Harvard and Oxford, edited by Henry Louis Gates and Evelyn Higginbotham. Nash's work also is collected in The African American West, A Century of Short Stories; Blacks in the American West and Beyond--America, Canada, and Mexico: A Selectively Annotated Bibliography; Reflections in Black, A History of Black Photographers 1840 - Present; Ancestry; African American Women Confront the West: 1600-2000; Black women in Texas history; Companion to Southern Literature; Texas Through Women's Eyes: The Twentieth-century Experience; Black Genesis: A Resource Book for African-American Genealogy; African American Foodways; Southwestern American Literature Journal; and other anthologies.

Sunny Nash's research and writing are cited in Remembering Woolworth's: A Nostalgic History of the World's Most Famous Five-and-Dime; The Source: a guidebook to American genealogy; Bibliographic Guide to Black Studies by the Schomburg Center in New York; Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics; Journal of Women's History; Ebony Magazine; Hidden Sources: Family History in Unlikely Places; and others.

Buy: Bigmama Didn’t Shop At Woolworth’s
by Sunny Nash

© 2011 Sunny Nash

All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

~Thank You~

   

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Press Releases, SEO and Keywords

Custom Search

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Internet press releases that use search engine optimization (SEO) and keywords hook target audiences and attract the attention of the search engines.
  

Sunny Nash
Ezine Articles Expert

Writers who have authored books are finding innovative methods that use keyword optimized headlines for online promotion; keywords and keyword phrases within press releases; and search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to promote themselves as authors, speakers, consultants, career coaches  and Internet experts.

SEO roles continue to expand into building professional credibility for authors and other professionals who know how to use the SEO to promote projects in their areas of expertise and interest. As SEO industries continue to gain momentum and attract increasing profits, the Internet will be used more frequently to establish name brands, professional brands and product brands. Not yet replacing conventional media like television, radio, cable, newspaper and magazines, the Internet is now a place to go for authors on a budget who wish to promote their books in Internet publications such as online newsletters, online press release wire services, blogs, websites and social media networks.

• Name Brands
• Professional Brands
• Product Brands

The Internet is the new seductive advertisement medium that is becoming the most cost effective means around for creating buzz or a full-blown publicity machine through text and video streams. To succeed in today's competitive  Internet environment, the author must become educated in the growing field of online publishing and online promotion, which rely on strategically placed keywords in text and video titles and online press release headlines. And this education must include knowing the changes that occur from moment to moment.

Some of the moment-to-moment changes that are affecting marketing in general and especially marketing on the Internet are the increasing uses of social media networks like FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FriendFeed and others. These social media networks allow users to connect with those who already have an interest in their work and become potential customers and clients for their products and services. Social media marketing is still developing as an area to use for selling, so keep an eye on it and use it when you can do so without obnoxiously over-exposing yourself or appearing to be to commercial.

Real Books Will Be Around

Publicity for books, professional services and other projects, in which a writer may be engaged, are enhanced by the distribution of a series of press releases that targets Internet audiences that are already interested in the author's subject or audiences that an Internet press release headline may attract to the author's subject area.

The Internet can level the playing field between traditionally published authors with agents and publishers behind them, self-published writers who are on their own to promote their books and engagements, and writers whose work appears only in the virtual world. Although devices for downloading books are growing in popularity, there is still a market for a real books that can be signed by an author at an event.

If writers are willing to hire a press agent or to write news items about their own projects, they can apply search engine optimization (SEO) techniques within the Internet articles and press releases to obtain maximum exposure in the online marketplace, starting with keyword rich headlines.

Internet press releases are intended for the same purpose as other press releases—to announce news to  the traditional media to interest magazine and newspaper reporters in writing feature articles about authors and to attract search engines to Internet press releases posted on websites, blogs and social media networks. Remember, the online book promotion process and other free Internet book publicity campaigns begin with tightly constructed, well crafted keyword rich headlines.

The difference between an author’s online press releases and other press releases--both intended to create publicity--is the need for keywords in Internet press releases, which can be suggested by free or commercial Search Engine Optimization services. SEO services, whether free or commercial, suggest keywords and some will analyze a website's efficiency in driving traffic to the site. It is worth taking a look at SEO services to get keyword ideas for your press release headlines.

Headlines are the place to start. A tightly written press release headline should summarize the press release with a phrase rich in keywords that will attract the attention of search engines. Do some research to find out which keywords web browsers are looking for and readers are typing in to search for material. By constructing your headline from those keywords, you will improve your visibility among target audiences.

A good press release headline, designed for search engine optimization, should be clear and concise, short and to the point. Long, flowery headlines with extra words that serve no purpose should be eliminated. Headlines that contain unnecessary words can cloud the search engine's ability to find keywords and may bury the ranking of your article or press release. Another habit to avoid is being clever in the headline. The purpose of the headline is to introduce your press release  and to drive traffic to your destination and not to impress other writers. Above all, the headline must be true.

• Keep Headlines Brief
• Target Search Engines with Keywords
• Find Your Audience with Your Headline

Search engine optimization experts agree that headlines should not exceed 65 characters and ideally should occupy no more than one line to be fully displayed on Google and the strongest keywords should be placed first in the headline. Also avoid special characters such as ® (registered trademark) and ™ (trademark) in headlines. They tend to confuse search engines and cause your press releases to be passed over, although search engine software is becoming more sophisticated about screening through special characters.

Sunny Nash is the author of Bigmama Didn’t Shop At Woolworth’s, former syndicated columnist for Knight-Ridder and Hearst newspapers; an internationally acclaimed photographer; and an award-winning producer. See a list of more Sunny Nash Blog Posts. 

Bigmama Didn’t Shop At Woolworth’s



Signed Copies Available

By all means, if you have written a book or you want to write a book, be sure to use the Internet press release or online article as part of your strategy for marketing your book and promoting yourself. The headline of your press releases could include the title of your book or your name if your title and name are not too long. You want to make it as easy as possible for people to find your information on Google. If the press release will allow you to show an image, use an image of your book cover or maybe a picture of you holding your book with the front cover clearly displayed. Be sure to include ordering data at the end of you press release. 

Buy:  Bigmama Didn’t Shop At Woolworth’s by Sunny Nash

Sunny Nash

Chosen by the Association of American University Presses as one of its essential books for understanding race relations in the United States, Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's (Texas A&M University Press) by the award-winning author, Sunny Nash, is also listed in the Bibliographic Guide to Black Studies by the Schomburg Center in New York and recommended for Native American collections by the Miami-Dade Public Library System in Florida

© 2011 Sunny Nash

All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

~Thank You~

  

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Is Political Correctness Politically Incorrect in Post-racism America?

Political Correctness may be politically incorrect in post-racism America and could cause confusions in communication.

No Offense,
I wear cowboy boots, too.
I love my cowboy boots.
There are cowboys I love.

Are we there yet? Are we done with racism? I certainly hope so. But I don't think we are. Political correctness suggests that we still have reason to worry about hurting someone's racial sensitivity. OK. Let's simply stop talking to each other or about each other in private or in public, especially when it comes to race or what is left over from the old days of Jim Crow laws when Rosa Parks sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. 

Like it or not, race and other ethnic and religious differences are the reason political correctness was created. Then add physical features, body type and size, taste in music and other factors and there you have it--the necessity for political correctness.

Political Correctness
By Hughes, Geoffrey
(Google Affiliate Ad)

The problem with political correctness is the same as the problem faced with any issue that becomes political. It prevents rational discussion and usually becomes reduced to name calling and insults. Before Rosa Parks' became the mother of the civil rights movement, there was no political correctness. African Americans and other people of color could be talked to in any fashion and there were no consequences, unless the victim lost his or her temper, in which case, the offender could retaliate. Try finding language to use that will insult without sounding like a personal insult. Analyze the language and see if you can find actual communication in that.

Political correctness should not interfere with honest dialogue, but we inevitably end up with our double E's in our collective mouths. Yes, I know we can't stop trying to improve our understanding of each other. It would be a mistake to blindly embrace or accept cultural ignorance. But we have to start thinking before we speak. It only takes a second or two for intelligent people to decide which words are hurtful or helpful before we make the utterance. 

There I go, potentially hurting the feelings of someone who may think I am putting them down because they think I think they may not be as smart as me. Confused yet? Well, don't worry about whether I think you are as smart as I am. I don't think I'm so smart. I work hard as a writer, editing what I allow people to see. I have adopted the same practice in conversations. I speak like a carpenter--measure twice and cut once. Still, sometimes, the cut is improperly measured and the wood has to be replaced and cut again. Untrue with words. Once spoken, words cannot be unsaid, whether spoken or written if the words happen to have been published, a little bit like un-ringing a bell.

Join Sunny Nash 

When I wrote my book, Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's, there was no FaceBook, which requires precautions against political correctness. because communications one key stroke away from insulting someone.

Follow Sunny Nash

Communications have changed and are light years ahead of the tools I used writing my book and columns on a personal computer. I had no idea how easy it would become to inflict  political incorrectness.

In 1984, I bought my first IBM PC, which cost three grand. The technological and Internet revolution had not yet happened and we were still paying for advances in the technology of the day. Before that I composed articles on an IBM Selectric typewriter. Today, I am still reeling from what is being hurled at me daily by an industry that has taken us over, not only us as professionals, but us as people,  citizens of the world.

Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King were civil rights leaders who fought Jim Crow laws

 

Born in 1890 just before Jim Crow laws were enacted in 1896 (Plessy  v Ferguson), Bigmama, my part-Comanche grandmother, who died in 1972, did not live long enough to see her first computer or have to wrestle with political correctness. No one had to wrestle with political correctness. 

Everyone was free to insult anyone they wanted. I am sure if Bigmama had lived, she would have owned a computer, but I don't know about the political correctness taken to the extremes it has been taken. Bigmama didn't mind telling people what was on her mind, but she taught me to hold my tongue when I was feeling something hurtful to say to or about someone, especially about the way they looked, the way they dressed or where they lived because these things were sometimes a result of economic conditions, over which people have no control.

Bigmama told me to always think first before I spoke, but to be as honest as I could be to myself, to the person with whom I was speaking and to the issue I was addressing. "There are good ways to tell people things," Bigmama would say. "And there are bad ways that offend." When I was growing up in the 1950s and '60s, saying exactly what was on one's mind could get one hanged from the nearest tree in the South, depending upon who one's family happened to be  or what one's last name was.

1954 U.S. Supreme Court
Outlawed Jim Crow Laws

Seriously, there are times for honesty and there are times for common sense and this was particularly true in pre-civil rights United States, where lynching still occurred frequently before Jim Crow laws were erased. In the United States, lynching was associated with mobs killing people without legal backing. Happening from the late 18th century through the 1960s, lynching was murder, most often described as hanging, also included burning and torturing people in various ways. Mobs that participated in these practices were rarely arrested, prosecuted or punished for their crimes. These crimes peaked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when southern states passed Jim Crow laws to support claims of white supremacy.

Rosa Parks Montgomery Bus Boycott

After Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka was decided by the Supreme Court in favor of school and other facilities to be desegregated, Rosa Parks sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott in December 1955. This move was responsible for initiating other demonstrations nationwide that led to the explosive racial events of the 1960s. Along with Martin Luther King's leadership, Rosa Parks and her refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man, laid a foundation of equal equality in America. But these events to destroy Jim Crow in the United States did not occur without bloodshed.

Watts Fire Los Angeles

In 1960s Mississippi, lynching of civil rights workers turned public support toward civil rights efforts and helped to get civil rights legislation through Congress after the United States Supreme Court 1954 decision on the case that was intended to dismantle Jim Crow laws in the nation, Brown v The Board of Education of Topeka Kansas.

Many years of bloody civil rights struggle into the 1960s still lay ahead as citizens of the United States--black and white--braced themselves to fight and die for what they believed to be their rights. In 1960, college students led the Woolworth's sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, a result of events in the recent history of race relations in America.

In 1966 Huey Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party to monitor police violence against African Americans. Gaining momentum by the late 1960s, especially after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in 1968, the movement that became the black power movement completely replaced what had been known as the civil rights movement.

Cities all over America went up in smoke during those violent times as the civil rights movement rapidly evolved into the black power movement and young angry impatient youth nationwide took to the streets and burned their own neighborhoods. Unlike the civil rights movement, the black power movement was not sympathetic to its predecessor's non-violent tactics or leaders, although without those early civil rights tactics to get the attention of the American people, there would have been no black power or equality in laws regarding housing, employment, accommodations and other areas of life in this country.

Johnson Signs Civil Rights Act

The groups that had formerly supported the civil rights movement found it more and more difficult to influence and to communicate with the youth in American culture and society. As time passed, protests that had been devoted to racial equality were diluted with protests against America's involvement in the war in Vietnam and other issues. However, antiquated American leaders and their issues may have seemed to American youth, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act on April 11, 1968, and became known as America's civil rights president.

Martin Luther King, Jr. 
& Lyndon B. Johnson
Ponder the Most Serious
National Issues
Since the Civil War
(Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

I enjoyed reliving life with my grandmother, Bigmama. I didn't enjoy so much reliving the times of the pre-civil rights movement. However, I was able to rethink the whole situation and put myself in the shoes of people, black and white, who were too afraid to try to change things. Good thing there were those who were courageous enough to get us out of the corner we had painted ourselves into as a nation and to help us limp our way to this day without having to fight another Civil War. My feelings on this subject have inspired me to write a series of articles about race relations in the United States. My book, Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's (Texas A&M University Press), was selected by the American Association of University Presses as an essential tool for understanding race relations in the United States.

When I was writing the columns for some Hearst and Knight-Ridder newspapers, I had no idea I was writing a book until the publisher contacted me. And I had no idea that I was writing a book that would have such historical significance.

 Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's by Sunny Nash

Sunny Nash, Author
Bigmama Didn't Shop
At Woolworth's

After all the work we have done in the area of race relations and the conquering of so many of those old racial fears, I am afraid we have painted ourselves into a different kind of corner, a politically incorrect corner or is a politically correct corner? Whatever! I'm sick of it. I want to be able to have an intelligent conversation about relevant issues without feeling that I am going to step on some one's double E's or have my double E's in my mouth.

Bigmama Didn't Shop
At Woolworth's
by Sunny Nash

Sunny Nash, author of Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's, is an award-winning writer, photographer, producer and public speaker.

Sunny Nash's work appears in the African American National Biography by Harvard and Oxford; African American West, A Century of Short Stories; Reflections in Black, A History of Black Photography 1840 - Present; Ancestry Magazine; Companion to Southern Literature; Black Genesis: A Resource Book for African-American Genealogy; African American Foodways; Southwestern American Literature Journal and other anthologies. Nash is listed in references: The Source: a guidebook to American genealogy; Bibliographic Guide to Black Studies; Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics; Ebony Magazine; Southern Exposure; Hidden Sources: Family History in Unlikely Places; and others.

Buy  Bigmama Didn't Shop at Woolworth's by Sunny Nash

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