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It is with great pleasure that I review my latest read on African Diaspora entitled Becoming American: The African-American Journey by Howard Dodson. This world’s view of the African American journey offers a unique chronological approach that affords readers an opportunity to begin discovering the active, generative role blacks have played in the making of America as we know it today. It also reveals the ways in which blacks’ attempts to make America live up to its founding creed have kept them on the path to “Becoming American.”

Becoming American:
The African-American Journey

I must admit that when first hearing about this book, I was not expecting a chronological timeline. However, after reading the introduction I quickly understood what Dodson had set out to capture. The importance of an African-American timeline is so fundamental to our history and its value is often underestimated. I think that those of us who have taken an interest to African-American history have looked so deep into one aspect of it or another that we sometimes take the bigger picture for granted. One of the first entries of the African-American timeline in Becoming American is:

1526 First enslaved Africans in continental North America arrive in South Carolina/Georgia region; within a few months they run away

And I’m sure you can all guess what the last entry in the timeline is:

2008 Barack Obama wins over Senator John McCain of Arizona to become 44th US president, and first African-American president.

I’m sure you can imagine how many accomplishments are documented over that 400+ year timeline, although Dobson admits that his brief survey is not an exhaustive list. I like to look at is as a starting point to encourage readers to each event in greater depth on their own.

The second part of the book presents selections from major documents, charters, speeches, songs, and poetry that have shaped the African-American experience, including an excerpt from Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the lyrics to “Life Ev’ry Voice and Sing.” These literary works coupled with the timeline of African and African-American history create a dynamic resource for any individual aspiring to learn more about the African-American journey. If anyone were to ask me how to begin their quest of learning about black history, I would definitely encourage them to start by reading Becoming American.