Richmond Times Dispatch (Virginia), February 27, 2005, Sunday

Copyright 2005 Richmond Newspapers, Inc.
Richmond Times Dispatch (Virginia)

February 27, 2005 Sunday
CITY EDITION


SECTION: COMMENTARY; Pg. E-5


HEADLINE: BETWEEN THE BOOKENDS

BYLINE: By Ann Lloyd Merriman Editor, Commentary/Books

BODY:
The downside of any "special" week or month is that it intensely concentrates attention for a brief period and then moves on. Thus it is with Black History Month, as with celebrations of poetry and women and other topics: In the publishing world there is a surge of books pertaining to the cause and then only a smattering of titles during the rest of the year.
This February's Black History Month brought the usual uptick in books of African-American interest. Here are a few of the more outstanding ones:
*Smithsonian Books' imprimatur always is a guarantee of a well-researched addition to American history, whether scholarly, popular, or cultural. Passages to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in History and Memory, edited by David W. Blight ($39.95), scores on all three counts. Timed to coincide with the advent of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Passages separates fact from fiction in telling the story of the railroad. Numerous drawings, photographs, and other illustrations break up the text, which begins with an examination of slavery itself and progresses to a summation of the National Park Service's preservation of the Network to Freedom. This would have to be considered a primary source on the topic, with essays by several distinguished historians, a bibliography, extensive notes, and an index.
*On a similar note, National Geographic Books covers five centuries of black migrations for In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience, by Howard Dodson and Sylviane A. Diouf of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture ($35). The narrative is divided into four sections: Migrations of the Enslaved, Migrations of Free People, The War Migrations, and Contemporary Migrations -- wherein the authors describe 13 major migrations during the periods covered. Included is the migration to Liberia, which took about 1,000 American blacks to that nation between 1890 and 1910, aided by the International Migration Society. (It is noteworthy that Joseph Jenkins Roberts, who migrated from Virginia, became Liberia's first elected president in 1848.) Color illustrations alternate with black-and-white ones to illustrate the text. Beyond the book itself, the Schomburg Center expands on the migrations on its Website, www.schomburgcenter.org, where 16,500 pages of text and 8,300 illutrations have been posted.
*THE NAME of C.L. Franklin perhaps is not so well known as those of Martin Luther King, Jr., and his father in the provenance of the black church, but Franklin is widely credited with developing the style of preaching that now dominates the African-American pulpit. Nick Salvatore, a Bancroft Prize-winner, tells Franklin's story in Singing in a Strange Land: C.L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America (Little Brown, $27.95). Salvatore begins in the Mississippi Delta, where Franklin was born in 1915, and takes his subject ultimately north to Detroit to answer a call to New Bethel Church and thence to national fame. He found an eager following among the Southern blacks who had migrated to Detroit for jobs; a radio show expanded his influence into a young civil rights movement and gospel music. The luminaries whose voices sang the old familiar gospel hymns became friends and associates, and Franklin's daughter Aretha soon made her own national mark in music. B.B. King, Mahalia Jackson, and other notables are familiar faces in this book. Anyone seeking a brief history or an understanding of today's African-American church can start by reading Singing in a Strange Land.
*Running Press has published two soft-cover titles in its Africana series that provide good African-American references for the bookshelf. The first is Civil Rights: An A-Z Reference of the Movement That Changed America; the second is Arts and Letters: An A-Z Reference of Writers, Musicians, and Artists of the African-American Experience ($16.95 each). Both are edited by Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and both present their information in easy-to-find and easy-to-read formats. Black-and-white illustrations appear in each.
*Finallly, anyone seeking to build a library of African-American titles will find an excellent guidebook in How to Create Your Own African-American Library: A Selection of Books That Belong in Every Home From Classic Novels to Children's Stories to History and Biography, by Dorothy L. Ferebee (Ballantine, paperback, $13.95). This is not a new book; it's been around for a couple of years. It's the best summation of African-American titles to cross this desk, and so it rates a mention every Black History Month as a guide to books to acquire and read year-round.
Telephone: 804-649-6403; E-mail amerriman@timesdispatch.com