Frank Sikora – författare

This is a spellbinding story of a shocking crime that fuelled the civil rights movement, including new data and recent convictions. It was a time when Martin Luther King Jr and other leaders rallied black youth and adults to march for their civil rights, a time when the Ku Klux Klan was active in cities and throughout the countryside of the Deep South, employing 19th-century tactics to intimidate blacks to stay ""in their place."" It was also the year that the worst act of terrorism in the entire civil rights movement occurred just as Birmingham, Alabama, was coming under close national scrutiny. This book tells the story of one grim Sunday in September 1963 when an intentionally planted cache of dynamite ripped through the walls of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and ended the dreams and the lives of four young black girls. Their deaths spurred the Kennedy administration to send an army of FBI agents to Alabama and led directly to the passage of the Civil Rights Act. When the Justice Department was unable to bring anyone to trial for this heinous crime, a young Alabama attorney general named Bill Baxley began his own investigation to find the perpetrators. In 1977, 14 years after the bombing, Baxley brought one Klansman to trial and, in a courtroom only blocks from the bombed church (now a memorial to the victims), persuaded a jury to return a guilty verdict. More than 20 years later two other perpetrators were tried for the bombing, found guilty, and remanded to prison. Frank Sikora has used the court records, FBI reports, oral interviews, and newspaper accounts to weave a story of spellbinding proportions. A reporter by profession, Sikora tells this story compellingly, explaining why the civil rights movement had to be successful and how Birmingham had to change.

Sheyann Webb was eight years old and Rachel West was nine when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. arrived in Selma, Alabama, on January 2, 1965. He came to organize non-violent demonstrations against discriminatory voting laws. Selma, Lord, Selma is their firsthand account of the events from that turbulent winter of 1965--events that changed not only the lives of these two little girls but the lives of all Alabamians and all Americans. From 1975 to 1979, award-winning journalist Frank Sikora conducted interviews with Webb and West, weaving their recollections into this luminous story of fear and courage, struggle and redemption that readers will discover is Selma, Lord, Selma.

An affectionate, humorous account of small town Alabama during the civil rights era.

When Frank Sikora''s six-year-old daughter contracted pneumonia in 1962, his wife Millie vowed that would be the last winter she would spend in Ohio. Despite their misgivings about the racial tensions erupting there, they moved their family of six south, where Frank hoped to fulfill his dream of becoming a newspaper reporter. But when those dreams didn''t materialize immediately, mounting bills, repossession, and eviction forced them to move in with Millie''s parents, Dan and Minnie Belle Helms, in rural Wellington, Alabama.

With even slimmer prospects for employment in impoverished Calhoun County, the Sikoras came to depend heavily upon the Helmses and extended family members and all their lives became closely intertwined. The Helmses were uneducated, unpolished people, but Sikora''s narration of his life with them—often humorous but never condescending—provides a compelling portrait of the attitudes and lifestyle of poor whites in Alabama during the second half of the 20th century, just as James Agee''s monumental work, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, illuminated the Depression years in Hale County, Alabama. Sikora illustrates how resourceful, southern women, in particular, held their families together through trying times.

Interwoven with this commentary on rural white culture in the Deep South is the story of Sikora''s developing career as a newsman. Determined to succeed, he finally lands a job with the Gadsden Times reporting the news of black citizens. From that introduction to journalism, Sikora becomes one of Alabama''s most acclaimed chroniclers of the civil rights movement, eventually writing some of the acknowledged masterpieces about the subject. Like his landmark book, Selma, Lord, Selma, Sikora''s newest work tells the stories of ordinary Alabamians and their perspectives on extraordinary times.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., led the black drive for civil rights, but the changes he sought came largely in legal opinions issued by federal judges. Foremost of these was Frank Minis Johnson, Jr., of Montgomery, Alabama, who presided over some of the most emotional hearings and trials of the rights movement—hearings brimming with dramatic and poignant testimony from the black people who cried out for the freedoms that are the legacy of all Americans. Beginning with Judge Johnson’s coming-of-age in the hill country of Winston County, Alabama, this book covers many of his notable cases: the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Rides, school desegregation, the Selma-to-Montgomery march, and the night-rider slaying of Viola Liuzzo, as well as Johnson’s work for prisoners, women, and the mentally ill. Much of the book is comprised of interviews and direct quotes from Johnson himself, making this recounting of Judge Johnson’s life dynamically autobiographical. Includes a new introduction and afterword by the author, Frank Sikora.

Das neue Standardwerk zur Jazz-Harmonielehre!Harmonielehre hat nur ihre Berechtigung, wenn sie der Gehörbildung dient, denn die analytische Beschäftigung mit Klängen sollte stets die praktische Anwendung zum Ziel haben. Um nicht in abstrakter Theorie stecken zu bleiben, stellt diese neue Jazz-Harmonielehre eine enge Beziehung zwischen Theorie, Gehör und Instrument her. Musikern fällt es oft schwer, ein Gleichgewicht zwischen diesen drei Bereichen herzustellen: Allzu häufig trifft man auf den Virtuosen ohne persönliche Ausstrahlung, den Intellektuellen ohne spielerische Intuition, den Leidenschaftlichen ohne instrumentales Handwerk. Diese Harmonielehre wendet sich deshalb nicht einseitig an den "Kopf", sondern bezieht ebenso das Gefühl und die Aktion in ihre Überlegungen mit ein.Lösungen zu vielen Aufgaben liegen zum kostenlosen Download bereit. Aus didaktischen Gründen sind jedoch zu fortgeschrittenen Übungen bzw. Aufgaben mit konkretem Bezug zur Spielpraxis keine Lösungen vorgegeben.

How do we bridge the gap between theory and the music we love? This book aims to establish as close a relationship as possible between theory, the ear and our instrument. ''Jazz Theory - Think Listen Play'' is a comprehensive approach to improvisation, translating knowledge into sound, developing out musical imagination and finding our ''inner voice'', which then guides us on our instrument. It will be a rewarding journey for any aspiring musician, music teacher and Jazz player.Always remember - there is no truth in theory, only in music. Enjoy!