Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsNecessary Scholarship for the 21st Century
Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2020
Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson has done Black people a service that is brave, erudite, and long overdue. She has corrected the projected visual, scholarly, assumption that abolitionists were White males who led Black males to agitation during the enslavement era. Instead of that often repeated trope, Jackson has not only centrally placed the heroic efforts of Black men and women to end the enslavement of their brethren and themselves. She has also illustrated convincingly how Black men INFLUENCED the changes in White abolitionists’ thinking and tactics as they pertain to freeing their people. This is a necessary book for African-Americans because it shows the rise from moral persuasion during the enslavement era to downright self-defense against White terrorism. Black men and women fought back with rhetoric and weapons against White vicious enslavers and this understanding is one that has been lacking in scholarship concerning Black people. The docile Black has always been more preferable than the Black who cocked his pistol and fired it against attackers. Jackson’s work is a must read that should be included in every Black person’s library, and the libraries of other interested folk.
