Customer Reviews

There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America

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Vincent Harding has introduced to us a well researched and well presented picture of the opposing forces to America's economic system based on slave and cheap labor. He chronicles the parallel between the systems of oppression and the systems of resistance against oppression. The River of resistance will forever run through a society where opportunity is squelched by the formation of inequality.

He removes the fictionalized view of the plantation and the relationship between master and slave and replaces it with documented reality.

Where there is oppression there is resistance to that oppression. This reality has been lost in the Hollywood depictions of slave uprisings, and the "run away slave". It is made clear that Harriet Tubman did not "run away" she was part of a well thought out and masterful organized effort to abolish slavery. There are many well researched and documented instances of organized resistance as well as individual acts of rebellion. These make up the river of resistance that flowed and continues to flow in the presence of human bigotry and oppression. This is a must read for individuals and groups of all races, cultures and nationalities who want to understand their own motives and actions against economic and social tyranny in America and abroad. Mr. Harding makes it quite clear that there are well thought out schemes and timing which are present with both the oppressor and those resisting and overturning oppression.

This is not a novel, but a text book well worth studying. He does not sensationalize nor create images of heroism. I have three copies of this book and refer to it often. Mr. Harding is a gifted researcher and scholar.

I purchased my first copy of There Is a River over two decades ago. I read, underlined, and wrote notes along the margins of almost every page, and purchased other books from Mr. Harding's extensive resource list. I couldn't get enough of this phenomenal text, so I read it several more times. Over the years, I purchased copies for my sons, and most recently, for one of my former students. This book truly is a must-read and it should be owned by every Black family in America. There is indeed a river! Thank you Vincent Harding.

This is truly an extraordinary book, worth reading again and again. I recommend it for white people, to help remove our blinders to the existence of the river of resistance to oppression and the opportunity to be part of it.
Do not skip the introduction. The paragraph about the reaction Martin Luther King's desire to "redeem the soul of America" is worth the price of the book.

Unless you are into slave history this is a very boring rerpeptive book. I read it as required reading but wouldn't recommend it.