Life Changing!!!!!!!!!!!

As an African American, I found this book not only very educational but also an interesting read. I expect that anyone interested in black history would enjoy it too.

4.5 stars. It amazing sad when one ingests such great revealing literature about historical truths of the past, which declares how much in our current time how much further we still need to travel. Remember when God would deliver the children of Israel their circumstances. And afterwards there would be a tabernacle set up for them for remembrance? This book is a token of remembrance. Recommended

I boughtat the library book sale along with "The English Patient." If this is half as good as TEP, I'm in for a treat.

Eloquent and informative.

Aside from its rather odd title, this is a dramatic retelling of Black history in America. Highly recommended even though the most recent edition was published back in the Nineties.

A fascinating read, for me after 1619.

The portrayal of Booker T. Washington was very interesting.

And the passing note of Tulsa 1921.

I read a copy of the 5th edition, 1982, borrowed from Dr. Gregory Jones.

An excellent overview of black history from Africa to the arrival in the Americas. This book goes into the nuances of events such as the slave trade, reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, and more. Bennett also introduces the average reader to many unrecognized figures in African-American history and dispels the myth that blacks had little involvement in the events of U.S. history. One interesting story that comes to mind is that of Crispus Attucks. I had never heard of this man before, yet he is credited as being the first casualty of the revolutionary war.

It has always been hard to find works on black history that don't have an agenda of one kind or another. I was expecting this book to be biased towards Afro-centrism (though to be honest, some claims Bennett makes in this work, especially regarding the Africans of antiquity, are quite dubious- it is without much evidence that Sakanouye No Tamuramaro was a black Shogun, for example), however I was pleasantly surprised that Bennett mostly seems to "tell it like it is." It is a long book but the writing is easy to follow. I recommend.

This a great introduction, if not then the best introduction, to African American History. If you are wanting to know more about the story of African Americans this book is very readable and accurate. When I taught our school African American History class this was my text. My students liked it so much most of them went out and bought their own copies.

A classic account of African American history that I am so happy I finally got around to reading! Despite being written in the early 1960s, Bennett's perspective and approach is never dated. He offers an always insightful synthesis that draws on a wide range of sources. His writing is especially accessible and often reminds me of the sweep and style of two other great 'journalist historians'- WJ Cash and Bernard DeVoto.

This is the history that was never taught in my public school. It is a well written book. This is American History!

I rarely write reviews, but this book deserves one.

Given it has been more than half a century since it's writing, it is amazing to me how timeless ideas are. Also, as unfortunate as it is, how long a gap there is between ideas and progress. The book also highlights the sheer number of individuals who contribute to progress versus the simplistic hero-worship that is conventional history.

It is absolutely impossible to summarize this tome, so I will share some anecdotes that particularly resonated with me (in no particular order), and the timeless ideas that stuck with me.

- This line from the author - “Historians and history books are historical….. They bind time and express time and their times… “
- I thought the passing of batons and the "binding of time" across historians from different times was a very cool concept
- A timeless idea that unfortunately persists. Slavery existed before European slave trade. Africans enslaved Africans and they just happened to now sell them to the Europeans.
- While that did happen, it was far from the norm, and actively discouraged. Quote from a letter the King of the Congo state sent to European royalty - “we need priests and people to teach in schools, and wine and flour for the holy sacrament…. beg of you to help stop the trade in slaves or markets for slave”
- The idea of connections across powerless groups
- Whether it was Frederick Douglas and his connections between womens’ suffrage and Black rights or MLK and his connections across Poor people irrespective of race, the concept of allyship is a timeless one
- Harriet Tubman - everything about her is incredible
- Tons of data about lack of social mobility existed in 1963 and the Civil Rights argument was incredibly data-backed. It is amazing to me, that these ideas which have been proven for so long, still need to be re-proven
- While there has been tremendous progress in Black contributions to Sports, Politics, Entertainment, Religion, I learned a lot about how Black America has been blocked out of business
- Black-owned banks and how they have reduced over the years
- In 1900, there were 200 Black-owned hospitals, in 2000, there were 3
- In 1900, 15M acres of farmland was controlled by African Americans, in 2000 that was down to 3M acres
- The broad number of intellectuals who built the scaffolding that Martin Luther King helped erect.
This book really talked about the broader intellectual history versus talking about one individual