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Nonfiction

WHO SPEAKS FOR THE NEGRO?  By Robert Penn Warren.  Random. 

444 pp.  $5.95. 

N.Y. Post  5/30/65

          Robert Penn Warren, with literary grace, devotion, intelligence and finesse, may have written the most important book on integration yet to appear.  Actually, it is a compilation of tape recordings of conversations with hundreds of Negro leaders as varying in view as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.  Lightly edited, these dialogues are folded into a superb narrative that explains essential background and event, elaborates upon points raised, and occasionally includes Warren’s views.

          The fact that there is no single Negro viewpoint soon becomes clear.  But the fact that however Negro leaders might disagree as to ways and means, their objectives toward political, economic and social integration are identical, also is made clear.  Coherent, sincere, sophisticated and dedicated, the Negro speaks for himself.

          A major project, an indispensable book.

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(Handwritten notes in italics)