An Old Book For Young African American Men

I've just finished reading a book that's 30+ years old that and deserves a place on every list of books for African American men. I thought I had read this book a longtime ago, but nothing seemed familiar about this edition or this book other than the title.

Black men that haven't read the fourth or any edition of "From Slavery To Freedom" by John Hope Franklin, will remain unaware of some of the important facts about Black history. Franklin reveals some of the crucial threads to the backstory of the modern civil right movement, that's not found in most other books.

He candidly writes about the incredible number of Blacks lynched in America, "more than 100 " in the first year of the new century" 1900. That's a staggering number of murders when you consider that most of them occured in Dixie, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana.

The Black Press At The Turn Of The Century

African American men who read this classic by Dr.Franklin will get a true sense of the collective and individual struggles, challenges and victories that it took to build this nation.

Franklin uses the collective experiences of the Black Press at the turn of the century to tell the story of the tumultuous time period in the 20th century when the American press was often bedfellows with racist elements and complicit in creating racial unrest. One Atlanta newspaper editor went so far as to "offer a reward for a lynching bee" .

"From Slavery To Freedom" yields another old, yet still present part of the American patchwork, where a white woman in Springfield, Illinois, claimed she was assaulted by an Black man. An ensuing riot grips the entire country, leaving in its wake several injured and dead African American men.

Later, when she was questioned by a grand jury, she admitted that the assailant was white and the Black man she had named, had "no connection with the incident".

African American men who read this classic by Dr.Franklin will get a true sense of the collective and individual struggles, challenges and victories that it took to build this nation.

The History of African Dispora in America

Franklin weaves 350 years of the African diaspora into the American fabric. He categorizes the "history of Negro Americans", into 25 neat chapters. Each closely represent the various political and social battles Black men have constantly fought while trying to expel the unfair, negative and demoralizing treatment, images and portrayals of African Americans in society.

The Illusion of Equality

The book is only the fourth of the eight editions of this American classic. It does not sugar coat or deny that to achieve equitable progress in the struggle for social justice, it requires a continuous battle against the illusion of equality.

Dr Franklin ends the book with an uplifting and positive outlook on the 1970's. His treatise documents the fact that African Americans have been and must always be, "active and passive participants in the valiant warfare to destroy bigotry, repression and subjugation" as long as they are residents of the Western and known world.