Freedom A Photographic History of the African American Struggle

by Marable and Leith Mullings, Manning; Spencer-Wood, Sophie

• ISBN13: 9780714845173
• ISBN10: 0714845175
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-04-01
• Publisher: Phaidon Press

Summary

While the civil rights movement in America is officially recognized as the period between 1954-1968 ("beginning" on May 17, 1954 when the United States Supreme Court ruled on Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, a decision that 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. The barbarity of slavery in the American colonies was protested against 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 escaped slavery in 1849 and went on to help others to freedom, and continues to the present. This book chronicles the battle to eradicate slavery through the Civil War (1861-1865) and, then once slavery was officially outlawed, it traces the evolution of its dual!legacy--segregation and racism. The struggle for freedom and equal rights involves small acts of personal bravery and sweeping proclamations of legal and moral import; it is the stuff of economics, war, tradition, despair, politics, hope, activism, vigilance and violence. It engages black and white, heroes and the unheralded, public acts of protest and private moments of introspection.

Author Biography

Manning Marable is the Founding Director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University in New York City and the author of more than 15 books on the subject, including the highly acclaimed Black Leadership (1998).

Leith Mullings is Presidential Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the author of several books on race, class and gender in African American communities.

Sophie Spencer-Wood is a picture editor and researcher. She has worked with, among others, Colin Jacobson on Reportage magazine and been an assistant to Bruce Bernard on Phaidon's award-winning book, Century. Her other books include Gandhi and Family, both also published by Phaidon.