Why read Before the Mayflower?

Book cover of Before the Mayflower

Book description

Traces black history from its origins in western Africa, through the transatlantic journey and slavery, the Reconstruction period, the Jim Crow era, and the civil rights movement, to life in the 1990s. Reprint. 35,000 first printing. $20,000 ad/promo.

Explore

Topics

Genres

Literary fiction

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked Before the Mayflower as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Leonard Pitts, Jr.

Author

There are other books on African-American history, some arguably even more authoritative. But this was the only one that felt to me as if the writer had dipped his pen in fire.

Lerone Bennett, Jr., traces African-American passages from the great kingdoms of early Africa through the 1619 encounter with Jamestown settlers that changed everything, up until (depending on which edition you read) about the middle 1980s and does so with a fierce moral urgency and poetic passion that drew me into the story and, more to the point, that implanted the story into me.

From Leonard's list on The best books to read if you plan on being Black (or want to understand those who do).