Black America: A Photographic Journey: Past to Present

Smith's book contains a comprehensive history of slavery and what happened to America's enslaved population after the Civil War. There are some heart-stopping pictures of a sharecropper's harsh life in the Deep South. The book has thoughtful pictures of Black Union soldiers standing in front of a building where slaves were sold, along with crisp black and white pictures of an enslaved man's back before and after his master whipped him for running away. Did you know Sojourner Truth was born a slave in upstate New York? I didn't. I thought she was a southern woman born and raised in the Deep South, where she saw the cruelties of the peculiar system first hand. This is just one of the facts I discovered while reading this book. Photos in the book tell the story of Black migration to southwest. Other pictures show the hardships of sharecropping; an unnnamed Black men as co-owners of a butcher shop; sailors, cowboys, convicts, Buffalo soldiers and maritime dockworkers. I found one page that listed the salary of track workers and freight handlers in 1912. They made $2.40 & $3.00 per day respectively. This is a great book for learning about interesting facts from the past in photo essays.

This book powerfully depicts the African American's struggle to become citizens in a country that had no original intention of allowing them to do so. The photograph's in the book are captivating and show the joy, sadness fears and pain of a race of people during the most visable times of the struggle. This a great book for reference, coffee tables as well as pleasure reading.