IT WAS NEVER ABOUT A HOT DOG AND A COKE delivers the expected, and the unexpected, about one incident of many staged sit-ins across America, back when the vast majority of America's black citizens lived marginalized lives at the hands of racial hatred and Jim Crow laws.

With boldness and forthrightness, Rodney L. Hurst Sr. tells the story of his own active involvement in the business at hand of tearing down America's racial barriers, even if it meant only one eatery at a time. Along with present company, he knew that fighting, threatening, harassing, and demanding would never work. It was the way white America got what they wanted, and black America had to show that it was better than that. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s message was one of passive resistance, and it was followed like clockwork throughout the nation.

One of those acts came by the town of Jacksonville, Florida, and directly involved Mr. Hurst himself. He begins the book by talking about his early days of growing up in racially segregated schools and neatly brings us into the fold of the Civil Rights Movement itself and how he came to be involved in it. He also talks about the one "news item of the year" that, though it should have made headlines, was relegated to the Black Star Edition of The Florida Times-Union.

In a place called Hemming Park were several white men wearing Confederate uniforms and carrying ax handles with Confederate flags taped to them. A sign taped to a truck said "Free Ax Handles" as well as ax handles that were laid out in the open in bundles against the park's bushes and shrubbery. As the black youth gathered and prepared to do their usual sit-in work, they were warned of ongoing activities at Hemming Park and told that they could expect elevated trouble that day.

Instead of going to Woolworth's, however, the youth group took a detour to W. T. Grants, about three blocks away from Hemming. After Grant's was closed down, they walked down the street only to see an angry mob swinging ax handles and baseball bats, charging directly at them. A news reporter filming the mob scene was knocked off his car by a wielder of one of the weapons.

The mob attacked every Black person within their reach, even those who had not participated in the sit-ins or demonstrations. The September 12 issue of Life magazine showed the world what The Florida Times-Union would not – a young man, a high school football star by the name of Charlie Griffin, in a blood-drenched shirt, beaten by the terrorists who surrounded him – simply for trying to defend himself.

In the end, IT WAS NEVER ABOUT A HOT DOG AND A COKE embodies the lackadaisical mentalities of the New Millennium youth who easily forget the push for civil rights from which they now benefit. Hurst emphatically drives home the point that it is not the "past" more than it is a part of why we are where we are today. It was not about eating and drinking, the freedom fighters were not on the streets starving to death. It was about what we would call today, "the principle of the thing." In summary, the author reminds us that "Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it."

The stories must be embraced so there will never again be a repetition of a history that was one of the darkest hours that America has never known. Though Jacksonville's Ax Handle Saturday was Hurst's most vivid memory of a near-brush with death, the non-physical fight that Hurst and many others faced made yet one more dent in an America where they were free, but not experiencing true freedom.

Hurst repeats the lesson "Freedom is not free" throughout the theme of the book, a very well-written, well-edited story that help us to understand the ongoing struggles of racism that must still be attacked in this hour, 40 years after the death of Dr. King. The idea, per the author, is not to be racially divisive or to live in the past, but to make certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that America knows and understands that its black citizens will never again be subjected to legalized abuse.

The book ends with a fitting tribute to Rutledge Henry Pearson, the author's mentor and inspiration, and an American History teacher whose influence on Hurst would span the length of his own life. It was from the lessons Hurst learned that his reading public receives the message to "Keep the Faith and Never Forget the Struggle." He encourages those with similar and same stories to tell and to re-tell them while they still can. Those who deal with nouveau racism must remember that at one time, the struggle came with an unwritten death warrant.

It's all downhill from here.

Reviewed by **Guest Reviewer Marjani
of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers