– The United States has come a long way since the days when twelve of her former presidents owned slaves; eight of them while in office. The paradigm shifted irrevocably, however, when an African-American, Barack Hussein Obama, was elected the country’s 44th President. –
Book Cover
Nationwide (BlackNews.com – Press Release) — With Barack Obama’s landmark second-term well underway, Sonia Grant’s polemical book Before Barack is an unvarnished look at other black presidential candidates, designed to put his achievement into historical perspective.
But, she argues, more significant than the nuts-and-bolts of the individual campaigns of Blanche Kelso Bruce; George Edwin Taylor; James W. Ford; Charlotta Bass; Clennon W. King; Dick Gregory; Eldridge Cleaver; Angela Davis; Reverend Jesse Jackson; and Reverend Al Sharpton, outlined in her book, were the conditions which gave rise to their candidacies. Indeed, it was America’s unprecedented social upheaval – spanning slavery, reconstruction, domestic terrorism, race riots and Segregation – which paved the way for Obama’s ascendancy.
However, in terms of race, Grant contends that America still seemed conflicted. Despite hard-fought gains borne out in the Civil Rights Movement, for instance, centuries of systematic and deep-seated racism still haunted; and, on occasions, the nation was schismatic and betrayed signs of polarization.
Nonetheless, she observes that many optimistically hung on to the notion that the election of the country’s first black president was transformative; indeed, it was, but Grant suggests it also proved to be as revelatory as it was historic. To that extent, Before Barack is a lens through which the confluence of race and power is examined in the context of America’s eventful social and political history.
An accessible narrative, the book charts the trials and triumphs of the black presidential candidate: beginning speculatively in the nineteenth century; approached earnestly in the twentieth; but only destined to be realized – or not – in the twenty-first, with the election of Barack Obama.
About the Author:
Sonia Grant is a British freelance journalist, publicist and author; this is her first book. For more details, visit www.sonia-grant.com
About the Book:
Before Barack: They Said This Day Would Never Come
By Sonia Grant
Available on Amazon: Kindle [file size 2123KB]; and Paperback [408pp]
www.amazon.com/Sonia-Grant/e/B00BGTFGLM/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0
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CONTACT: Ellie Schlam, (212)726-5343, ellies@kidney.org
