Author Description

Franklin's assessment of a widening socio-economic chasm between blacks and whites and his sweeping surveys of racism from the American Revolution to the Civil War and beyond, are hard-hitting. In one essay he links blacks' civil rights struggles to the campaigns of Amerindians, Puerto Ricans and Mexican-Americans for full equality. There are sharp profiles of James Ayers, white Civil War recruiter of black soldiers, and of Mississippi freedman John Lynch, who became a Republican Congressman and paymaster of the U.S. Army. Franklin insists that historians can play an active role in shaping public policy. He writes movingly of his first encounter with racism at age 16, and its searing effects. ISBN 0-8071-1547-9: $29.95.