Divine Will, Restless Heart: The Life and Works of Dr. John Jefferson Smallwood

Divine Will, Restless Heart: The Life and Works of Dr. John Jefferson Smallwood follows Dr. Smallwood from his birth into slavery, through his childhood and emancipation in rural North Carolina, his struggle to earn an education, his unyielding determination to find his mother and family, his establishment of the Temperance, Industrial and Collegiate Institute, and his untimely death at the age of forty-nine. The account is enhanced by anecdotes and original correspondence taken from the archival collection of Dr. Smallwood's own papers, as well as written and oral records passed down through the Smallwood famly and shared with the author, Dr. Smallwood's great, great niece. Divine Will, Restless Heart tells the story of one man's commitment to better his race of people and give them equal standing in America by educating and providing them with the same types of opportunities available to whites. In doing so, the book not only illuminates his struggle to turn his fellow freedmen into "intelligent men and women," his role as an early civil rights advocate through the creation of his Institute and his dream of "one common country, for one common people" but provides an in-depth look into the life and work of one man's triumph to success during a period in American history of extreme racial strife and upheaval and how he overcame insurmountable odds - yet to succumb to a tragic ending on the eve of his successes.