Monday, January 18, 2010 is Martin Luther King, Jr. National Day of Service as designated by Congress in 1994. Dr. King was a believer in education and one of its best tools, reading. Seven books published recently cover African American topics of beauty, music, history, artists, seminal moments, and folklore. The best service that people can provide is to be educated about American History, which includes African American history. Knowledge of what came before to set context, continue Dr. King’s goals, and ensure that history does not repeat, is well served by this outstanding group of nonfiction tomes. As Dr. King said, “We are not makers of history. We are made by history.”
The 35th Anniversary edition of The Black Book by Middleton A. Harris with the assistance of Morris Levitt, Roger Furman and Ernest Smith was first published in 1974. Toni Morrison was the original editor and has penned the foreword in this new edition. Ms. Morrison’s stunning preface from the original book and Bill
Cosby’s original introduction are included and relevant to contemporary times. “It’s new life is more than a welcome gift; it is a requirement for our national health,” states Morrison in her foreword.
The Black Book’s 35th edition is an updated chronicle of African American culture in the United States and this book should be savored slowly. Photography, facts, illustrations, recipes, art, sports heroes, music, writers, military, and archival articles and documents bring the reader from the moment the first African arrived in the colonies through the Civil Rights Movement. One of the most fascinating sections illuminates the little understood Voodoo religion brought from Africa to the United States. Spells for swaying a jury, contraception, love, and death are catalogued alongside hexes, potions, voodoo dolls, and good luck charms.
Deborah Willis’ glorious book, Posing Beauty, is a compendium of photographic images of African Americans from the 1890s to the present day. A photography student, Ms. Willis began exploring visual representations of “black beauty” in the 1970s, which resulted in her first book, Reflections in Black, a history of African American photographers. Posing Beauty includes 200 images in duotone and full color. “Posing Beauty explores the ways in which our contemporary understanding of beauty has been informed by photographers and artists working from 1890 to the present,” writes Willis. Documentary photographs, Studio Portraits alongside images of debutantes, freedom marchers, and dandies are capped with images from beauty salons and barbershops showcasing hairstyles throughout the years.
A Desert Queen by Edward S. Curtis taken in black & white in 1900 extols the glory of black royalty. This elegant portrait reminds one of fertility sculptures in its regal sensuality and sexuality. Robert H. McNeill captured the seriousness in the African American male’s grooming rituals in his 1941 image, Barbershop in Washington, D.C. A meditative image of Louis Armstrong in his dressing room moments before a performance is blend of shadow and light plunging the viewer deep into the subject’s psyche. Dennis Stock created this black & white image in 1958. Aretha Franklin never looked smokier than in Lee Friedlander’s 1968 portrait. Each turn of the page brings the reader into a specific cultural era, the images so iconic that text is unnecessary after Willis’ lyrical, educational introduction.
Raymond Arsenault’s biography of Marian Anderson, Sound of Freedom, shines a light the size of a klieg on the career of this contralto opera singer born in 1897. Before starting page one, readers should turn to the inset of photographs following page 120 – having faces coupled with names brings life to the story of Ms. Anderson’s struggles and successes closer. The image of Anderson leaving the stage to a standing ovation at Carnegie Hall in 1965 during her farewell tour brings the reader full circle in this extraordinary life. Arsenault writes with tender force of the woman who changed the face of opera literally and figuratively. Ms. Anderson is symbolic of the fight for equality on so many levels – race, gender, classical music as an elitist art form. Through her voice, perserverance and very being, Anderson introduced the everyman to opera.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.” The following four books demonstrate that education is not boring and well-worth reading about.
Rage at the Gate City (revised edition) by Rebecca Burns brings the reader up to speed on a seminal moment in Atlanta’s history. If it is Gone With the Wind one is looking for this is not the book. Burns’ prose is clear and advances the story forward – not a dull textbook description. Excerpts from publications of the day are coupled with tidbits highlighting residents from all ends of the spectrum. In chapter 8 a meeting of “the best citizens to present the Ku Klux,” is paired with a slice of the city’s social life. Burns writes, “In their home at 75 Chestnut Street, Mr. and Mrs. Alonzo Alexander hosted an engagement party for Laura Brown and James Black.”
The racial divide plays the leading role in Rage at The Gate City, jury trials, crime, culture, politics, and social standing round out book. The author’s epilogue brings the reader to the end of the first decade of the 21st century. “What happened during those days in September 1906 marks a shameful chapter in white Atlanta’s history, and a painful one for black Atlanta. Its impact is etched into the city’s streets and into Atlantans’ collective experience.” Ms. Burns is the editor of Atlanta Magazine and blogs there about Atlanta’s history and present day issues.
Reading correspondence whether personal or business unfolds the deep personality of the writer and his/her perception of the recipient. Letters From Black America, according to editor Pamela Newkirk, “is an attempt to help fill the literary and historical void by presenting a multidimensional portrait of African American life from the eighteenth to the 21st century through illuminating letters of ordinary and exceptional African Americans.”
Letters From Black America covers public and private lives of African Americans in seven sections, Family, Courtship and Romance, Politics and Social Justice, Education and the Art of Scholarship, War, Art and Culture ending with Across the Diaspora. A letter dated July 18, 1952 from Martin Luther King, Jr. to his wife Coretta Scott King opens with, “Darling, I miss you so much. In fact, much to much for my own good.” The sign off reads, “Eternally yours, Martin.” The world knows the man who fought for civil rights and gave his life in the service thereof. His letters in this book show King’s romantic side, which is just as fervent, compelling, and unforgettable as his well-known public persona.
Marcus Garvey writes from the Atlanta Prison in February 1925 to “Fellow Men of the Negro Race.” This missive assures Garvey’s followers that he is well and committed to “suffer and even die,” for the cause. He writes of power misused by those who are public proponents of the cause but are really, the “greatest enemies of the black people have in the world,” referring to the NAACP, which he refers to as that, “vicious Negro-hating organization.” A sampling of these incredible letter writers includes: Zora Neale Hurston to Langston Hughes; W.E.B. Du Bois to Yolande Du Bois; Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. to Eleanor Roosevelt; Bayard Rustin to New York City’s Mayor Edward I. Koch; Alice Walker to President-Elect Barack Obama. In an interview with Barbara Spindel, Newkirk says, “the letters of African Americans, like so much in African American life, have long been devalued. The primary purpose of this collection is to raise awareness of the need to collect and preserve these irreplaceable historical relics.” The reader will disagree with the term relic as these letters are fresh, thought provoking and inspiring in this age of email to pick up a real pen and compose something loving, important and lasting.
In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander has written a powerful exploration of the crisis caused by mass incarceration of young men of “color” in the United States. The author rightly views this as a modern day method of racial control employed by the U.S. criminal justice system. The author informs the reader right up front that, “This book is not for everyone. I have a specific audience in mind – people who care deeply about racial justice.”
Wake up readers, this is the 21st century, its time for everyone to be on board with this concept and thus the audience for this book is wide and deep. The Encyclopedia Britannica defines Jim Crow as, “a term that came to be a derogatory epithet for blacks and a designation for their segregated life.” How many people know where the term emanated from? The answer, Jim Crow was the title of a minstrel routine written by Thomas Dartmouth Rice that debuted in 1877. Alexander’s The New Jim Crow provides the context in strong, clear language hypothesizing and concluding that segregation survives putting a chokehold on society 50 years after the Jim Crow laws were abolished. The reader is left with the thought that lip service has been and continues to be paid to racial equality. Alexander has penned a call to action that cannot be ignored.
Marcus Garvey, as noted previously, vehemently disliked the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (“NAACP”) but for many this organization, founded in 1909, broke barriers advocating for a “more just America.” Historian Patricia Sullivan’s Lift Every Voice debunks myths that have surrounded the NAACP from its inception. Sullivan has sifted through extensive research to document the contributions and immense changes that the NAACP has wrought along with the people who led the charge. Sullivan steers clear of pedantic and academic language. She has written in a style accessible to all of issues, many still active today that affect all, or at least deserve to be considered by all.
These books are more than just static information, each is a call to action, and every person can make a difference by sharing the books, starting discussions and through service to their communities. The Corporation for National and Community Service is spearheading a program assisting citizens, students, religious and secular organizations and educators with the planning of a “King Day Project.” A dedicated government website provides sample projects, marketing tools, tips for partnership building, guides for schools and organizations and assistance and encouragement for service projects that extend beyond January 18, 2010.
The Black Book 35th Anniversary Edition
By Middleton A. Harris with the assistance of Morris Levitt, Roger Furman and Ernest Smith
Random House
ISBN # 978-1-4000-6848-7
Posing Beauty
By Deborah Willis
W.W. Norton
ISBN # 978-0-393-06696-8
Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert that Awakened America
By Raymond Arsenault
Bloomsbury
ISBN 1-59691-578-1
Rage at the Gate City
By Rebecca Burns
The University of Georgia Press
ISBN 978-8203-3307-6
Letters from Black America
Edited by Pamela Newkirk
Farrar Straus Giroux
ISBN 978-0-374-10109-1
The New Jim Crow
By Michelle Alexander
The New Press
ISBN 978-1-59558-103-7
Life Every Voice
By Patricia Sullivan
The New Press
ISBN 978-1-59558-446-5
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