To Make Our World Anew: Volume II: A History of African Americans Since 1880

Since nearly any history of African Americans is bound to be compared to John Hope Franklin's masterwork From Slavery to Freedom, perhaps it's best to state straightaway that To Make Our World Anew does indeed measure up to, and on some levels surpass, Franklin's 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 explored: 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.