Review by Choice Review
Accompanying the 2016 opening of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, this visually stunning book offers images of the museum's fascinating artifacts and collections. Besides such artifacts as Ida B. Wells's tea set, Harriet Tubman's shawl and hymnal, and Muhammad Ali's boxing gloves, the book features scholarly narratives on a wide range of historical topics. Leading historians such as Peniel Joseph, Farah Jasmine Griffin, David Blight, and Lonnie Bunch transport readers from 15th-century West Africa to the 21st-century US, covering the transatlantic slave trade, slavery and Reconstruction, the Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance, the civil rights and black power movements, and African American cultural expressions through art, dance, theater, and literature. The combination of scholarly narratives and powerful images demonstrates the importance of African American history and reveals the complexity of African American history and culture. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic and public libraries. --LaShawn Denise Harris, Michigan State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
History will be made and embraced when the National Museum of African American History and Culture, a long-in-the-works and crucial addition to the Smithsonian Institution, opens on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in September 2016. This richly researched, clarion, and visually exciting volume introduces the museum's encompassing approach to the depth and complexity of the African American experience. With 275 color illustrations and essays brief and extended by two dozen scholars and curators, this welcoming overview covers a broad spectrum of subjects from slavery, emancipation, and desegregation to African Americans in the military, African American churches and educational institutions, the black press, black meccas, black entrepreneurs, and African American artists and athletes. As valuable as the cultural perspectives are, the numerous portraits of individuals stand out, such as enslaved Bridget Biddy Mason, who successfully sued for her freedom and became a millionaire, and once-enslaved Robert Smalls, who became a Civil War Hero and a five-term U.S. congressman. Helping the public discover a meaningful past in order to understand the present is the museum's mission, and it is splendidly launched by this magnetic, many-faceted book.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
An image-rich coffee-table book that celebrates the opening of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, highlighting key objects from the collection and profiles of influential figures. (LJ 9/1/16) © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A literary companion to the Smithsonians soon-to-open National Museum of African American History and Culture.Jumping from history to culture in an earnest attempt to be inclusive, this lavishly illustrated work by the museums staff and editor Conwill highlights the museums collection, which has been steadily gathered since 2005 and will open to the public in September 2016 in its imposing new space on the Washington Mall. The contributors to this excellent resource are stellare.g., sage adviser John Hope Franklin (now deceased)and they move beyond the stereotypes embedded in scholarship throughout the eras to bring a fresh sense of how African-Americans contributed mightily to the overall great American dream and changed it for the better. The enslavement of Africans and their importation to the New World in the 17th century mark the beginning of this tortuous journey, and the editors take readers up to the Civil War in handsome layouts featuring photographs of the collection, such as items owned by slaves and short bios of notable figures like abolitionist publisher William Lloyd Garrison and crusader Sojourner Truth. Eloquent poems help break up the brisk historical tone, and the superb scholarship continues in chapters dealing with Reconstruction and black migration, as well as Making a Way Out of No Way, which concerns the building of institutions that allowed African-Americans to get educated (e.g., Howard University, Tuskegee Institute) and succeed in life (churches, businesses, newspapers). Interim chapters on military participation and sporting heroes (male and female) make an awkward juxtaposition against the chronology, while the last chapter on African American Influence on American Culture is dazzling. Some of the contributors include Yale historian David Blight, museum supervisory curator Elaine Nichols, renowned scholar Peniel Joseph, and author Tonya Bolden, among others. An enticing guide to the museums extensive exhibits. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
