BLACK IN AMERICA: A Fight For Freedom

Landau and Jackson (who is the author of The Fourteenth Cadillac and not the Chicago civil rights leader) view the experiences of American blacks from the broadest possible perspective -- beginning with a four page review of West African culture and a history of the slave trade and continuing right on through the civil rights movement. Though the text is aimed at younger readers, this is virtually the same territory covered by Goldston's Negro Revolution and Sterling's Tear Down the Walls, and the summary of the post-war era, which treats leaders from Martin Luther King and Elijah Muhammed to the Black Panthers with equal caution and approval (and follows a photo of a Panther headquarters office with one of an apparently cheery meeting between the Congressional Black Caucus and President Nixon). A new volume on Black history might be expected to devote more than two pages to events subsequent to King's assassination in 1968, and to at least attempt some sort of summary of the current socio-economic situation or political tenor of the black community; Jackson and Landau seem content to recap the highlights of the Black experience without adding any new material, style or viewpoint of their own. Redundant.