UB Black History Spotlight: ‘Freedom: A Photographic History Of The African American Struggle’

UB continues to celebrate Black History Month with a new Spotlight on the book, “Freedom: A Photographic History Of The African American Struggle.”

Authored by Manning Marable and Leith Mullings, with Photographs by Sophie Spencer-Wood, the book was released in 2002.

From the bonds of slavery to the Civil Rights Movement, from the Deep South to the northern metropolises, from the Harlem Renaissance to the riots of South Central Los Angeles, Freedom tells of the African American struggle for equality from the first photographic records in nineteenth century to present. It is organized chronologically in five sections with introductory essays and narrative captions by noted scholars Manning Marable and Leith Mullings.

The array and selection of photographs, many never seen before this book, reveal the journey in all its complexity and nuance, covering the struggle in its many different aspects – political, social, economic, and cultural. Highly relevant today, the photographs tell of the tremendous courage, determination, and power of a people fighting for a common goal.

This momentous volume chronicles a photographic history of the African American struggle for freedom, combining a unique assimilation of rare images with thought-provoking scholarly analysis. Although the civil rights movement in America is conventionally identified with the period between 1954 and 1968 (from May 17, 1954 when the Supreme Court outlawed segregation in public schools, through to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr on April 4, 1968), the struggle actually began long before that.

Protests against slavery in American colonies were as far back as the seventeenth century, though it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that the resistance built momentum. This photographic journey of the African American struggle for equality begins with abolitionists like Harriet Tubman, who after escaping slavery in 1849 helped others to freedom, and continues to the twenty-first century.

“Freedom” chronicles, with profound sensitivity and acute attention to detail, the battle to eradicate slavery throughout the Civil War (1815). Accordingly, it traces the evolution of the dual legacy of slavery – segregation and racism – after its official prohibition. The struggle for equal rights involved countless small acts of personal bravery and sweeping proclamations of legal and moral import. Its history is the stuff of of hope and despair, vigilance and violence – realized in an arena of economics, politics and war. It engages black and white, the heroes and the unheard, public acts of protest and private moments of introspection in a world that is unforeseeably challenging.

This book comprises a passionate and poignant celebration of this historical struggle as a gradual phenomenon, substantiating incisive academic discourse with previously unpublished photographs of iconic status.

Every black household, should have this book!

UB Black History Spotlight: Jada Pinkett Smith Talks ‘African Queens: Njinga’