Category: Adult
Publisher: DK
Pages: 304
Publication Date: October 2005
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The Coming Free
The Struggle for African-American Equality
By David Rubel
with a foreword by Rep. John Lewis
Publisher’s Description
In 1863, Pres. Abraham Lincoln delivered his Emancipation Proclamation, essentially granting black slaves their freedom. Yet a century later, African Americans still struggled to obtain equality. The Coming Free, a beautifully illustrated chronicle, focuses on the African-American struggle during one of the most important eras in U.S. history, the dramatic period from 1954 to 1968. This time span covers all the momentous events that propelled America’s civil rights revolution, from the Supreme Court’s decision in the Brown case to the March on Washington to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
The Coming Free’s authoritative narrative is complemented by sidebars that profile historical figures such as Rosa Parks and panels that detail fascinating subtopics like the founding of the Ku Klux Klan—as well as 750 accompanying photographs and illustrations. Its first two chapters summarize the history of African Americans and their civil rights efforts leading up to 1954. Each of the thirteen chapters that follow focuses on an important event (or sequence of events) such as the murder of Emmett Till, the Montgomery bus boycott, the sit-in movement, and Freedom Summer. The book’s epilogue touches on important developments since 1968 that have impacted the lives of African Americans in the United States.
The Coming Free: The Struggle for African-American Equality, by David Rubel, is a magnificent accounting of the civil rights activism of blacks from Reconstruction to the Million Man March of 1995. Rubel’s book assists the reader in truly understanding the struggles, not just of the most well-known activists, who are often cited as part of black history, but of everyday citizens who participated in marches and protests, were part of civil rights organizations, or were involved in the numerous legal challenges to blatant discrimination. In each one of the 15 chapters and more than 500 images, he provides a complete and complex understanding of the challenges blacks faced. The visual presentation is stunning and memorable.