Memory books
`One day this boy meet the king of France," the midwife prophesied on Christmas Day, 1739, as she ushered Joseph Bologne into the world on the island of Guadeloupe. Though his father was a French nobleman, there was little reason to expect this child of a black slave to rise to the highest strata of European society. Yet Bologne became a composer who counted only Mozart and Haydn as his peers and led a legion of 1,000 volunteers of color during the French Revolution. His fascinating tale, told in Monsieur De Saint-George by Alain Guede (Picador, $26), is among the highlights of this year's Black History Month offerings.
In the summer of 1864, Elizabeth Keckley, seamstress to Mary Todd Lincoln, made a bet of sorts with her employer: Should President Lincoln be re-elected, Keckley would keep the right-hand glove the president would wear to the second inaugural reception. Mrs. Lincoln was baffled; the black woman explained, "He has been a Jehovah to my people--has lifted them out of bondage, and directed their footsteps from darkness into light." The exchange, detailed in Freedom's Journey: African American Voices of the Civil War edited by Donald Yacovone (Lawrence Hill Books, $22 paperback, $40 hardcover), is one of many capturing the intensity blacks felt about the struggle that surrounded them.
How has photography shaped our ideas of race? That's the question posed in Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self edited by Coco Fusco and Brian Wallis (Abrams, $40), the catalog for a national touring exhibit prepared by the International Center of Photography (in New York through February 29, with stops in cities like Seattle, San Diego, and Columbus, Ohio). From an 1897 print of black babies labeled "alligator bait" to Roz Payne's 1968 "Yellow Peril Supports Black Power," in which Asian men hold protest signs in support of black activist Huey Newton, the book captures the visual ironies of race in America.
This story appears in the February 23, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.