Hartford Courant (Connecticut), February 20, 2005, Sunday

Copyright 2005 The Hartford Courant Company
Hartford Courant (Connecticut)

February 20, 2005 Sunday
STATEWIDE EDITION


SECTION: ARTS; Pg. G1


HEADLINE: THE BLACK EXPERIENCE, IN ALL ITS DARKNESS AND LIGHT

BYLINE: CAROLE GOLDBERG; Courant Staff Writer

BODY:
February is Black History Month, a time when publishers release or promote books exploring an important part of American life, and one that has been filled with tragedy and triumphs. From wrenching stories of slavery to inspiring accounts of the civil rights movement, from biographies of exceptional people to examinations of cultural influences, here are some books that expand our understanding of the experience of being black in America:
Reaching far back in time, a nearly forgotten slave narrative is reconstructed in The Blind African Slave: Or Memories of Boyrereau Brinch, Nicknamed Jeffrey Bruce (University of Wisconsin Press, paperback $19.95). Edited by Kari J. Winter, it is the life story of a West African man born around 1742 and captured by slave traders when he was 16. After two years as an enslaved sailor during the Seven Years War, he was sold in New Haven. To win his freedom, he enlisted in the Continental Army and later moved to Vermont a free man, where he married and had a farm. Because of his blindness, he dictated his story to an anti-slavery lawyer, who published it in 1810. By the time of his death in 1827, Bruce had become a respected abolitionist. Winter offers a historical introduction, notes and original documents that flesh out this moving personal story in its first new edition since 1810.
Another Colonial-Era tale of a freed slave, this one in the form of a novel about Rhode Island in the 1770s, is `My Story Being This: Details of the Life of Mary Williams Magahee, Lady of Colour'' (University Press of New England, $25.95). Author Pamala-Suzette Deane draws on the historical record to create a five-year diary of an unmarried, middle-aged African woman who is a mainstay of her free black community as the Revolutionary War approaches. Mary tells her own story and that of her community in ``a place that wishes to call itself the land of Liberty, but which in Truth be a place where Freedom be afforded to selected elements only, and not to all.''
More recent history inspired several new books:
`Fighting For America: Black Soldiers -- the Unsung Heroes of World War II'' (Ballantine, $27.95) is by Christopher Paul Moore, the curator and research historian for the Schomburg Center for Research of the New York Public Library. Using letters, photos, oral histories and documents of the period, Moore, both of whose parents served, shows the integral role that black servicemen and women played in winning World War II. From the heroic Tuskegee Airmen to the 1,800 black soldiers who helped storm Normandy Beach on D-Day to those who helped liberate concentration camps, this is a historically rich and movingly personal tribute.
`Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood'' (Ballantine, $26.95), offers a look at 60 years of entertainment history, a time during which black actors, talent scouts, media figures and others, including black servants to white stars, formed a community with its own rules and power structure and created a parallel industry to the mainstream studio system. Written by Donald Bogle, whom Spike Lee calls ``our most noted black-cinema historian,'' and also the author of a much-praised biography of Dorothy Dandridge, this book is a lively account augmented by interviews and the recollections of many who were part of the scene.
Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, an associate professor of history at the University of Connecticut, offers a penetrating assessment of one of the most controversial movements in recent American political history in ``Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity'' (Johns Hopkins University Press, $45). The book explores the Nation of Islam and the Black Panthers, who were disparaged during the 1960s as extremist groups, yet were important forces for change and prime motivators of the Black Power movement. Ogbar contends these groups influenced African Americans and others more than the civil rights movement did and helped shape their politics, culture and religious life for the next 30 years. He argues that black nationalism was a stronger factor in African American life than has previously been acknowledged.

Some notable books focus on particular lives:

In ``Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, The Black Church and The Transformation of America'' (Little, Brown & Co., $27.95), prize-winning author and historian Nick Salvatore tells the fascinating story of the civil rights activist and prominent preacher whose intense personal style and use of music had a huge impact on the way worship is conducted in black churches. And yes, C.L. Franklin also is famous for being the father of Aretha Franklin. Salvatore's book is a thorough biography of Franklin and an exploration of how music rooted in the church -- gospel, blues and soul -- changed American popular music.
A controversial figure in contemporary history is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Ken Foskett, an investigative reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has written a probing biography, ``Judging Thomas: The Life and Times of Clarence Thomas'' (Morrow, $24.95). Thomas is an enigmatic figure, reviled by many liberals and civil rights activists and adored by many conservatives. Through extensive research and interviews with Thomas and other Supreme Court justices, friends and family members, Foskett seeks to explain Thomas's politics and style on the bench by examining his unusual background and the events that shaped him into a man who has defied expectations by becoming a conservative jurist.
The life of a formerly unknown African American, Robert A. Gilbert, became the subject of a book almost by accident. Author John Hanson Mitchell, a longtime writer on the environment, was looking into the history of more than 2,000 glass-plate negatives believed to be the work of a 19th century ornithologist and conservationist. But research led him to the man's servant, Gilbert, who may be the earliest known black landscape photographer. ``Looking for Mr. Gilbert: The Reimagined Life of An African American'' (Shoemaker & Hoard, $26) takes readers from Harvard to Virginia to Paris to Boston in the late 1800s, all the while illuminating the forgotten Gilbert as a talented artist who persevered despite social pressures and racism.
Sometimes the story of a man's life can be better told in a novel. ``The Moon in Our Hands'' (Carroll & Graf, $25) is a fictionalized version of the real life of Walter White, the blond, blue-eyed but ``legally'' black man who was head of the NAACP for 20 years. Based on an actual event -- White took advantage of his looks to pass for white in the South to investigate the brutal murder of a black man -- this book by novelist Thomas Dyja reconstructs White's life and influence on the civil rights movement in the form of a literary thriller.
Sometimes a story is enhanced by the way a book is illustrated:
A large-format, illustrated book for the adult reader that explores the ethnic and cultural diversity of black people in America is ``In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience'' (National Geographic, $35). Written by Howard Dodson, director of the Schomberg Center, and Sylvanie A. Diouf, a researcher with the center, this book traces the movement of population waves of black people from Africa, the Caribbean and South America and from South to North and back again in the United States, from the earliest days of slavery to the present. Archival photos, maps and reproduced illustrations, along with a perceptive text, tell the story of migrations that changed the lives of African Americans and changed America, too.
`Let America Be America Again'' was a slogan used by the Kerry campaign for president. It came from the title of a poem written in 1936 by the great African American writer Langston Hughes. A new rendering of the poem, with an introduction by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and woodcuts by Antonio Frasconi will be published March 30 by George Braziller, Inc. ($29.95) Although presented in the format of a picture book, this is a serious and beautifully illustrated version of a classic and thought-provoking poem that contrasts the dream of America with the realities of social injustice.
And sometimes the history of a people can be eloquently told in the form of a book for children:
Connecticut's Poet Laureate and prize-winning Marilyn Nelson does this is in ``Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem'' (Front Street, $16.95). The book, a series of illustrated poems, takes as its inspiration a more than 200-year-old skeleton of a slave named Fortune who died in 1798 at about the age of 60. The poems follow the general form of a funeral Mass, yet also evoke the style of a New Orleans jazz funeral. ``What was a dirge for the dead becomes a celebration of life,'' Nelson writes in an author's note. A requiem honors the dead. Manumission means the freeing of a slave. Nelson's book combines the two.
`The Power of One: Daisy Bates and the Little Rock Nine'' (Clarion, $19) was written by Judith Bloom Fradin and Dennis Brindell Fradin for readers ages 10 to 14, but this photo-illustrated account of the court-ordered integration of Little Rock, Ark.'s Central High School, a pivotal event in the civil rights movement, could profitably be read by adults as well. The Blooms tell the story of civil rights leader Daisy Bates, who became the mentor to the nine students who faced protests by thousands of whites angry at the school desegregation ruling. Bates, who grew up in a segregated society, as an adult fought for integration as a journalist, activist and organizer and persevered despite cross-burnings on her lawn and threats to her life.
Julius Lester, the award-winning author, musician, talk-show host, photographer and professor takes up the task of explaining a very difficult subject to readers ages 6 to 10 in ``Let's Talk About Race'' (Amistad/HarperCollins, $15.00). Illustrated in bold colors by Karen Barbour, this lively free-verse story is a way to get children thinking about diversity and tolerance.