Deep Vellum to Re-publish Long Out-of-Print History of Dallas Race and Racism: "The Accommodation: The Politics of Race in an American City" by Jim Schutze

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

For media inquiries, contact Marketing & Sales Director Sara Balabanlilar (sara [at] deepvellum [dot] org) or Executive Director Will Evans (will [at] deepvellum [dot] org)

Deep Vellum will release a new edition of Dallas political cult classic The Accommodation: The Politics of Race in an American City by Jim Schutze in September 2021. This will be the book’s first time in print in more than thirty years, and will feature a new foreword by Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price.

Written by longtime Dallas political journalist Jim Schutze, formerly of the Dallas Times Herald and Dallas Observer, and currently columnist at D Magazine, The Accommodation details the violent and suppressed history of race and racism in Dallas from slavery through the Civil Rights Movement, and the city’s desegregation efforts in the 1950s and ‘60s.

Known for being an uninhibited and honest account of the city’s institutional and structural racism, Schutze’s book argues that Dallas’ desegregation period came at a great cost to Black leaders in the city. Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price comments on the book’s relevance today: “The real Jim Schutze laid it all bare here. The Accommodation is an essential gift, delivered almost four decades before Dallas was ready to receive it.”

Deep Vellum Publisher and Executive Director Will Evans comments, “We at Deep Vellum are honored to publish The Accommodation to expand the conversation about historical structural racism in Dallas. This vital work is just one history among many that deserve to be published for a wide audience to come to learn more about the history of Dallas, in the hopes that we can build a more inclusive, equitable city together by understanding the tragic history of how our city has gotten to where it is today.”

“The Accommodation is one of the first major works about the history of race and racism in Dallas, and its importance to the counter narrative of ‘Dallas as a great city for all’ can’t be understated,” shares Jerry Hawkins, Executive Director of Dallas Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation, who also serves on the Deep Vellum board of directors. “The telling of a Black story by a white author deserves continued critique and interrogation, however with The Accommodation, Jim Schutze delivered a must-read treatise about racism in Dallas that was both eye-opening and prophetic.”

The Accommodation was originally set to be published by Taylor Publishing Company of Dallas in 1986 before being dropped from publication. It was then published by Citadel Press of New Jersey in 1987 before rights were purchased by Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price.

While long out of print, this title has seen repeated waves of interest among Dallas residents since its original publication. Most recently, it has been called “The Most Dangerous Book in Dallas” by Peter Simek of D Magazine and “essential reading to understand Dallas” (Tim Diovanni, Dallas Morning News)and has been distributed digitally and in samizdat printouts among Dallasites interested in learning more about what makes Dallas the city it is, and how to address that history to build a better, more inclusive city together.

This title will release as a hardcover, ebook, and audiobook under Deep Vellum’s La Reunion imprint in September 2021, retailing for $30. Pre-order is available on the Deep Vellum website at http://deepvellum.org/product/accommodation/.

Deep Vellum is an independent nonprofit publishing house and literary arts center founded in Dallas in 2013 with the mission to bring the world into conversation through literature. Deep Vellum builds community around the literary arts by hosting conversation-driven events and fosters inclusion by publishing great works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by writers from around the world. La Reunion was founded in 2019 as Deep Vellum’s nonfiction imprint to critically engage with the myths, histories, and untold stories of Texas.