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On the surface, Strider’s work is simply a cumulative survey of African American history, from the coast of West Africa to the Civil War era. Upon digging deeper, however, the author gives individuals a look at the African American from a more nuanced vantage point, showcasing the less heralded and discussed names in its past who themselves had an immense ripple effect in the course of history, and whose names should not be forgotten. In that sense, this comprehensive work serves to fill the gaps in the timeline with the experiences of the ordinary African American that made him extraordinary.
Rather than disseminate information in a knowledge-based encyclopedia structure, Strider focuses on ease of understanding, explaining to the reader how the generations of African Americans prior paved the way for today’s generation, but more importantly, how, even amidst the atrocities enacted upon them, they played a key role in the development of US history. In fact, US history and African American history are intertwined, and one cannot have one without the other. Throughout the chronology, Strider highlights key events that became monumental in bringing societal issues to a head, particularly the quest for equality and civil rights.
In whichever way one measures resilience, Strider demonstrates that this quality is central to the survival and prosperity of African Americans. Even imagining that states would pass laws where slave owners had the right to kill is harrowing. Yet, Strider takes audiences through the chronological evolution of slavery laws and even the futile attempts to end slavery well before Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation. Here, the author starts the journey back in 800 BCE, noting how the ancient Olmec people of Mexico made stone carvings of those with African ancestry. While the early Europeans struggled early on, calling the west coast of Africa “the white man’s grave,” the African sailors, or canoe-men, thrived, and the land was ruled by West Africans. Interestingly, the tide began to turn with Columbus and then subsequently in the late seventeenth century when each state enforced harsh slave laws that stripped them of most of their humanity.
Where there are the known stories of the New World and Jamestown, there are also lesser-known facts, such as the Virginia Colony defining enslavement as one that lasts for a lifetime and is passed down from the mother’s side. Further, history would read quite differently if the attempts of the Pennsylvania Colony in 1711 to end slavery weren’t rebuffed by Queen Anne of England, a royal investor in the slave trade. While Strider’s efforts are just a snapshot, they do an incredible job of sharing historical moments from a perspective that may have been overlooked. For instance, an African American named York, William Clark’s slave, saved Clark from drowning in the Missouri. Similarly, in the War of 1812, a hardly heralded name, Major Joseph Savary, is called upon in the Battle of New Orleans to fight with Andrew Jackson and the US Army against the British.
From beginning the Underground Railroad and building the first Black church in America to the first African American woman earning a medical degree in the midst of war and the composition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” Strider deviates from discourse on the established contributors of African American history and zeroes in on an entire culture and community of resilience and collaboration. At its core, Strider’s work is a celebration of the African American spirit of culture and oneness, an invitation for the layman to understand the immense contributions made by African Americans that one may not necessarily find in the history books and to commemorate those contributions.