ISBN: 9780679758716

This monumental history traces the rise of a resolute African American family (the author's own) from privation to the middle class. Beginning with John Robert Bond, who emigrated from En… Plus…

This monumental history traces the rise of a resolute African American family (the author's own) from privation to the middle class. Beginning with John Robert Bond, who emigrated from England to fight in the Union Army during the Civil War and married a recently freed slave, Alexander shows three generations of Bonds as they take chances and break new ground, exploding the stereotypes that have shaped and distorted our thinking about African Americans -- both as slaves and in freedom.From Victorian England to antebellum Virginia, from Herman Melville's New England to the Jim Crow South, from urban race riots to the battlefields of World War I, this fascinating chronicle sheds new light on eighty crucial years in our nation's troubled history. The Bond family's rise from slavery, their interaction with prominent figures such as W. E. B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington, and their eventual, uneasy realization of the American dream add up to a story that is both engrossing and uniquely revealing. Media > Book, [PU: Random House; Alfred A. Knopf]<