Review: They Showed the Way: Forty American Negro Leaders

They Showed the Way: Forty American Negro Leaders by Charlemae Hill Rollins
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I think this Top 40 of "American Negro Leaders" is aimed at high school students, hence its brevity and embrace of the exclamation point. The order is alphabetical to imply no ranking, but Du Bois does get more pages than, say, sculptor Edmona Lewis. I would like a pic of Lewis' work and maybe the "Shoe-lasting machine" of Jan Ernest Matzeliger, but there are no images in this compendium. Perhaps an update edition would be nice. Some representatives post-WWII like Paul Robeson and Flip Wilson, maybe even something as edgy as Pryor would liven things up. Still, in a work that seems to celebrate the post-Slavery black American, list forty pioneers and leave out Sojourner Truth?

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