Editorial Review

Each book in the attractive new Journey to Freedom – The African American Library series presents a brief biography of a famous African American, planted firmly within the context of the struggle for freedom and civil rights. The texts are somewhat formal in tone (rather like expanded encyclopedia articles), and the clean, uncluttered book design features framed photographs meant to look like snapshots, with handsomely boxed captions. Heartbreaking, difficult subjects such as segregation, lynching (including photographs), the Ku Klux Klan, and assassination are lucidly explained. In the volume on Booker T. Washington, Troy gives both points of view regarding a controversial speech Washington made in which he refused to condemn segregation. In the book on King, Klingel touches on personal choices King made, among them her decision to marry Martin Luther King Jr. and give up her singing career.