And Be Free offers a fresh insight into American history from the perspective of POCs (Person of colour). Barry Roy Nager examines the ways in which history has often overlooked the experiences of POCs and how their contributions to significant events are often minimized and treated as an afterthought. Nager takes this opportunity to give a comprehensive history of the experience of POCs in America and to give individuals a voice when, for so long, their stories have gone unheard.

Nager creates a timeline of American history from the perspective of POCs giving an overview of the experiences lived. The book covers various sections of American history giving instances of various events and how they effected the lives of POCs. The book covers for example the role of Abraham Lincoln, Brown v. Board of education, and the role of black soldiers in the Vietnam war. The book brings the reader right up to the present day and looks ahead to the future of civil rights and the lives of POCs in the modern day.

One particularly notable point is that the book reflects on the brutality of the slave trade and, unlike most accounts, it successfully humanizes the numbers. Often the personal histories of these events are reduced to a numeric digit which means the raw experience is often lost. However, Nager successfully depicts the reality for these individuals in graphic detail and pays respect to the people that were treated in such horrendous ways.
Nager gives the reader a haunting insight and delves into the fake assertions made about various races. These assertions, that were based on unscientific principles, were a factor that lead to the divisions created within society. The ways in which people were treated and the justifications for such treatment appear Orwellian; Nager does not hold back and confronts the reader with the harsh reality.

The book looks at the broad history of POCs in America, using the past as a warning for the future and investigating contemporary problems that may be a result of the past. I give this book a five out of five as it gives an overview of the challenges faced, the progress made, and the hopes, and sadly, fears for the future. I think that this book is essential for anyone looking to begin their journey into the history of POCs in America and American history as a whole. More importantly the book emphasizes that the histories are united insofar as history does not occur in a vacuum.

Pages: 160 | ISBN: 1450089615