The Black residents of Boston suffered from prejudice, for sure, but some of the bad luck that they experienced would make you cry. The odds were not in their favor. Characters from other historically significant stories, like John Brown and William Craft, make appearances to fight against these injustices and show why they happen to otherwise good people.
A fun game here in Maryland is to debate what caused the Civil War, and Jones demonstrates why it was such a dramatic debate. Abe Lincoln made it seem like the slavery question was over after the Emancipation Proclamation, but the struggle had just begun. As usual, the Black community in Boston tried to immerse themselves in more culture but found that it did not matter to most whites.
The three parts (pre-Civil War, Civil War, and Reconstruction) have three different stories to tell, and they are all engaging and relevant. The only advantage to the last section is that people start finding a wider range of job opportunities and education; thankfully, teaching is one of the more popular.
Jones illustrates how political mumbo jumbo and odd prejudice impeded progress. She does exhaustive research to do so. Historians, more than most, indicate why nonfiction qualifies as the hardest genre to write well. She takes something that few of us knew about and shows how it connects to modern society and the xenophobia that still exists today. It deserved the Pulitzer.
