This week I read Leonard Pitts‘ column in the Janesville Gazette “You can’t understand world unless you know how it was,” in which he laments that many people do not know basic history, and thus cannot put our world today into proper context and fully understand where we are as a society.
The impetus for his column was the passing of historian Dr. John Hope Franklin, who wrote many books on the history of African Americans, including From slavery to freedom, which is “regarded as the seminal text in African-American studies.” The Library has copies of From slavery to freedom, including the original 1947 edition and the 6th (1988) edition (3rd-floor Main Collection, E185 .F825 1988).
Pitts goes on to suggest additional reading, all of which are titles available in the Library’s 3rd-floor Main Collection:
- Mirror to America: The autobiography of John Hope Franklin (E175.5.F73 A3 2005)
- Before the Mayflower: A history of black America (E185 .B4 1988)
- Slavery by another name: The re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (E185.2 .B545 2008)
- This was Harlem: A cultural portrait, 1900-1950 (F128.68 .H3 A65 1982)
- Been in the storm so long: The aftermath of slavery (E185.2 .L57 1980)
- Trouble in mind: Black southerners in the age of Jim Crow (E185.6 .L58 1998)
