Freedom Road

I found this thrilling reading - and almost wholly new material. It might be characterized as the other side of The Birth of a Nation, and perhaps deserving that name more than did the famous picture-story. For here is the period of Reconstruction through the eight years when the Negroes were given a chance, and before the southern whites organised underground to end the peril to white supremacy. Today, this subject has a timeliness that adds poignancy and challenge to the story of Gideon Jackson, field hand, former slave, symbolic of those leaders of his people who saw in freedom a chance to pull their race above the level at which they'd been held. Gideon was elected from the hands of the Carwell plantation to go to the South Carolinian Constitutional Convention. This is the story of the growth of a statesman from a fine but simple and untutored field hand to a member of the Congress of the United States; it is a story of the recognition of the opportunity, of self-education, of nobility and courage against fearful odds; it is a story of Gideon's son, who went to New England and then to Scotland, and who came back to serve his people as a doctor. It is a story too of mounting fear and resentment as a way of life is threatened - and the Klan takes hold - and a reign of terror destroys the tortuous building of eight years' experiment in democracy, made impotent by the aftermath of the Nayes??-Tilden?? deal. It is a story of the tragic end of "freedom road", told in almost Biblical prose that is at first a hindrance, and later an integral part of the whole. An important book which will find opposition and antagonism, particularly in the South. (Kirkus Reviews)