Freedom: A Photographic History of the African American Struggle - Hardcover

Marable And Leith Mullings, Manning

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0714842702 ISBN 13: 9780714842707

Publisher: Phaidon Press, 2002

Synopsis

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 17 May 17 1954 when the Supreme Court outlawed segregation in public schools, through to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr on 4 April, 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of this historical struggle as a gradual phenomenon, substantiating incisive academic discourse with previously unpublished photographs of iconic status.

About this title

Review:

'Freedom is a wonderful resource thanks to the sheer depth of information ... leaving readers with a sense of how far the country has come as well as how far it might go in matters of civil rights, race relations and mutual understanding.' (USA Today)

'An epic undertaking that pulls together imagery from the few extant daguerreotypes of African American abolitionists and slaves through the shattering images made during the civil rights movement.' (American Photo)

Synopsis:

In the famous Brown v Board of Education of Topeka case of 1954, the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools violated the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. This decision marked a critical turning point in the American judicial system, which, since the Jim Crow Laws of the 1880s, had previously upheld the practice of segregation. The outcome of the Supreme Court case encouraged a growing challenge to segregation on all levels, thus creating a momentum that would, within a decade, lead to the Civil Rights and Voting Acts that definitively guaranteed African Americans equal protection under the law. The Civil Rights Movement itself, from 1954 to 1968, marked a climactic era in the struggle for political equal rights for African Americans. After World War II, the economic boom and America's advocacy of individual self-determination on the international scene made segregation in the United States more obsolete and even more unjustifiable.

Through a combination of charismatic leadership and grass-root support, the period saw the revocation of the segregationist laws that had pervaded American society for two hundred years. However, this famous era marks neither the beginning nor the end of the African-American fight for equality, and this book tells, through photographs, the story of the struggle in its widest scope for the first time. From the bonds of slavery to Civil Rights, from the Deep South to the northern metropolis, from the Harlem Renaissance to the riots in South Central LA, this book reveals the African-American struggle for equality from the first photographic records in the 19th century all the way to the present. The photographs reveal the journey in all its complexity and nuance. They cover the struggle in its many different aspects: political, social, economic, and cultural, showing the incredible courage and determination of people fighting for a common goal, as well as the internal conflicts and contradictions. It is a story that has sometimes been in the front lights, but more often in the shadows, and which has changed American society and touched the lives of millions.

The selection of photographs presents milestone events, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr, through famous as well as rarely-seen images; it shows iconic figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Malcolm X in an unusual light; but it also includes a wide range of images of the everyday struggle and lives of the people, from the rural Deep South to the urban agglomerations of Chicago and Detroit, and to the very heart of modern African-American culture, Harlem. Renowned experts on the subject of African-American history Manning Marable and Leith Mullings give this book and its still highly controversial subject matter thoughtful scholarship and authority.

About this edition

• Publisher: Phaidon Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0714842702
• ISBN 13: 9780714842707
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 512