3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
What Black History is and is not, February 10, 2011
This book teaches, in cartoon like fashion, what black history is and what it is not. Black history and African history are seen here as different things. African history is about the kingdoms of Kush, Keita dynasty, Songhay, Timbuktu and the like. It is about Solomon and Sheba. Black history, on the other hand, is about the odyssey of Africans beyond the continent of Africa, the black diaspora, as it were. In particular it is about the part of American history that was left out of the white American history texts; the part that deals with the contributions and struggles of African Americans.
There are people of African descent throughout the world, from Indonesia to the Soviet Union. Aesop, St. Augustine and Pushkin were all of African heritage. Jean Baptiste Point du Sable the founder of Chicago was also black. Blacks were in the New World long before Columbus arrived. They participated in the first explorations such as those of Cortez in Mexico Pizarro in Peru; and Alvarado in Quito. When Alarcon and Coronado conquered New Mexico, blacks were there too. The best known of the black conquistadors was Estivanico who initiated the opening of New Mexico and Arizona for Spain.
But those who still have the most enduring struggle for their rights are blacks in America, the nation that was founded on civil liberties, freedom and equality - the U.S. The black quest in the U.S. has been the litmus test on which the proclaimed ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution have been tested and found wanting. The results indicate that "liberty and justice for all" has been more fiction and fancy than fact.
The American version of black history begins with slavery. Slavery served as the centerpiece of the world economy for nearly four centuries. It involved capturing, transporting and conditioning slaves in the New World. Its brutality and inhumanity was rationalized as civilizing and Christianizing, heathens. But it was in fact based mostly on greed and profit only. More than 15 million slaves were transported to the New World where Europeans turned the Caribbean into a slave-making factory in which the slaves outnumbered whites by two to one. The fear that rebellions might occur and that the tables might be turned led to laws to regulate the slave activities beginning with the Black code laws, the slave codes, home rule, fugitive slave act, Jim Crow laws, and both legal and illegal segregation and discrimination.
The superpowers of the day engaged in a global struggle to see who would take precedence over the slave dependent world economy. Portugal, even though an early leader, soon gave in to the primacy of Spain, Holland, Britain and France. The North American continent, with the fledging American colonies breaking away from Britain became the battle ground for most of the 17th century.
In 1619, 20 slaves were pirated from a Spanish ship by Dutch pirates and arrived in Jamestown Virginia where they were sold. From this point on, agricultural production in the U.S., especially in the South began increasingly to depend on maintaining slavery. Although the new Americans claimed to be religiously pious, their religion made the necessary accommodations to the new extremely profitable enterprise in human suffering.
In fact, it was religion that help foster the ideologies of racism, white superiority and white supremacy that still remains an enduring fixture in American society. However, at the instigation of the Quakers, a small sect centered in Pennsylvania, abolitionist movements began to agitate against slavery as being "un-Christian." In due course, the abolitionist cause became an issue on the national agenda and agitated the conscious of the nation.
And while there is a great deal of accurate history here, unfortunately, the book jumbles and stretches history in an effort to highlight and celebration African American achievements, some of which are of limited value. Despite this, it does cover the events leading up to the Civil War and the period of "black rule" in the South during Reconstruction, a period, which has been all but "written out" of American history.
Altogether it is good, fact-packed summary of black existence in the U.S. as well as relevant achievements and events of the African Diaspora. Three stars
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5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Learning about Black History!, September 6, 2000
I purchased this book because I was not taught about black history in school. I know that there is a lot to know about black history, which is why I wanted a beginner's book. I looked through the book before I purchased it and noticed the illustrations and thought this book would be easy to read, and give me the basics of black history. This book gives some VERY BASIC facts about black history, but it didn't teach me much. As a matter of fact, you would already have to know a great deal about black history to even understand what the author is talking about, but it was not basic enough and did not go into enough detail. I guess black history is a subject that cannot be summed up in a small book like this, containing mostly illustrations. I gave this book 3 stars because it gives me a starting point to do more research on black history. If you do decide to buy this book, do not expect to learning anything from this book itself, but it will give you a starting point to do more research on such a broad topic.
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