Black History Part 2

The second part of the Lakeview bibliography for Black History Month is entitled Pre-Twentieth Century. It started out as a Civil War era list but grew beyond the war period itself to include slavery, the underground railroad and blacks of any country up to the twentieth century. Books in this section range from the story of a seventeenth century Spanish slave painter to Jean duSable, the black explorer who is a founder of Chicago to the autobiography of Booker T. Washington.

A couple of the most interesting new nonfiction books in this section are Up Before Daybreak, an overview of the history of the cotton industry in the United States, and The Underground Railroad in Illinois, which traces the abolitionist movement in Illinois and the passengers, stationmasters and conductors in our state.


A fascinating new fiction book is Show Way, by Jacqueline Woodson. In this book Woodson shares her family's tradition of a quilt called Show Way because it was a secret map that "showed the way" for slaves escaping from the South. Woodson brings the quilt up-to-date by showing her daughters their part in the quilt as a continuing family history.