To Make Our World Anew: The History of African Americans

Since nearly any history of African Americans is bound to be compared to John Hope Franklins masterwork From Slavery to Freedom perhaps its best to state straightaway that To Make Our World Anew does indeed measure up to and on some levels surpass Franklins epochal work. In this impressive multidisciplinary book professors Robin D.G. Kelley and Earl Lewis bring together nine scholars including Colin Palmer Vincent Harding Peter Wood and Barbara Blair to outline the 500-year African American experience from the Middle Passage to the Million Man March. "The history of African Americans is nothing less than the dramatic saga of a people attempting to remake the world " Kelley and Lewis write. "Even when they did not succeed the actions thoughts and dreams of Africans are responsible for some of the most profound economic political and cultural developments in the modern west." Every aspect of the African American experience is slavery slave rebellions emancipation segregation lynchings civil rights and the post civil rights era. Major figures like Frederick Douglass W.E.B. Du Bois and Harriet Tubman are highlighted as are the lesser-known exploits of Esteban the Afro-Moorish slave who "discovered" New Mexico and Arizona and Henry "Box" Brown the Virginia slave who escaped to freedom by putting himself in a coffin-like box that was shipped to Philadelphia. The book is particularly strong on late-20th-century social issues with insightful coverage of the attack on affirmative action and the impact of immigration crack cocaine and AIDS on the black community. To Make Our World Anew is essential reading for anyone interested in the black American experience. --Eugene Holley Jr.