Why read Trouble in Mind?

Book cover of Trouble in Mind

Book description

A searing history of life under Jim Crow that recalls the bloodiest and most repressive period in the history of race relations in the United States—and the painful record of discrimination that haunts us to this day. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Been in the Storm So Long.

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American history

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Why read it?

1 author picked Trouble in Mind as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Leonard Pitts, Jr.

Author

This book breaks my heart. It covers the African-American experience in the postbellum years and into the early 20th Century. This was a time when the country might have chosen–and fleetingly seemed as if it would choose–to finally live up to its founding ideals.

Instead, the country chose another path, and Leon F. Litwack chronicles that path–mob violence, electoral intimidation, and official government indifference–in brutal color and unsparing detail. This is one of those books that makes me think of what might have been.

From Leonard's list on being Black or want to understand those who are.