David W. Zang's "Fleet Walker's Divided Heart" is a detailed biography of a talented, tormented, late 19th century catcher: Moses Fleetwood Walker--America's first black major league baseball player. "Fleet" Walker was born in Mt Pleasant, Ohio on Wednesday, October 7, 1857. This simple fact is mentioned on the first page of "Divided Heart." It is from this unassuming birthday that Zang begins his interesting, but confusing, discussion fo Fleet Walker. After mentioning Walker's birth, Zang tries to explain how Walker's life follows the lines of the nursery rhyme: "Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace, Wednesday's child is full of woe, Thursday's child has far to go......" According to Zang, "it might have appeared that [Walker's mother], a midwife, used the nativity as a practicum and elected to give birth across the first four days of the week."(2) Following this, Zang attempts to connect the sixty-nine years of Walker's life to the nursery rhyme by saying " For as sure as he carried a full measure of woe, Fleet Walker was unquestionably fair of face, full of grace, and possessed of an ambition that would banish his dreams to distant places....Walker had overwhelmed the simplistic prophecies of the nursery thyme to such an extent that the possibility of a four-day birthing could not be dismissed out of hand(2)." This is only one of many, needless, airy speculations (as another reviewer called them) that wander from the solid facts of Walker's life. Because of these, the true essence of the man, Fleet Walker, is lost in "Divided Heart." The facts of Walker's life are intereting enough without Zang's meandering commentaries. Throughout the book, Zang points to several beliefs he has about Fleetwood Walker. He believes that Walker had a "divided heart," as he puts it; but he never pointedly explains what he believes this divided heart to be. The reader is left to wonder if the divided heart existed because Walker was considered a mulatto (mixed race of black and white), or if the divided heart existed because Walker wanted to belong to the white race and to the black race, but never fully belonged to either. Sometimes, the "divided heart" seems to belong to the author, who never fully explains why the story of Walker's life should be important to a reader today. After reading, it might be difficult for the reader to understand the importance, too. Walker was, indeed, the first black man to play major league baseball. He played collegiate baseball for Oberlin College in 1881, and for Michigan University in 1882. He also played professionally for the minor league New Castle, Pennsylvania, Neshannocks. When Walker began playing for the Toledo ball club of the Northwester League in 1883, the state was set for him to become the first black major league baseball player. How was this possible? In 1884, the Toledo club joined the American Association. At the time, the American Association was considered a major league. In a brief, but unusually clear way, Zang explains the process: "The American Association had been formed in the winter of 1881 with the avowed intent to become a major league rival to the National League, a status it won with an 1882 agreement meant to keep them from raiding National League rosters(40)." Because of the agreement, Walker became the first black major league baseball player. Due to injuries, Walker lasted only one season with Toledo. He never again played major league baseball, nor did any other black man until Jackie Robinson on April 15, 1947. After the first two chapters, which explain Walker's rise and fall from major league baseball, Zang shows how Walker's life turned into an aimless, but somewhat successful life of entrepreneurship, invention, race theory, and jail time. He played more baseball for some minor league teams, ending his career with the Syracuse Stars in 1889. Afterward, according to Zang, Walker did "temporarily lose the attention that had been his... he would reclaim it in dramatic and unhappy ways." Walker became a mail clerk, a murder defendant, a convicted mail thief, an inventor, an author on the subject of repatriation of blacks to Africa, and an opera house owner. Generally, the state of Ohio is shown to be a hospitable home to a black man in the late 1800's. Zang excels in showing the history of Ohio's Quaker population's rejection of racism, and in showing how Walker thrived in several businesses in different towns in Ohio. The last two chapters show how much affection Zang has for Walker. Zang's details in the end give some needed energy to Walker's story. Zang even explains the cost of the lid for Walker's casket. Unfortunately, Zang's writing does not follow a chronological timeline closely enough to be easily read. For clarity's sake, the reader will turn pages back and forth to put events in some order--a job usually fulfilled by an author. "Fleet Walker's Divided Heart" is a complicated, detailed biography of a complicated, historical figure. Too bad Zang never explains "WHY?"

To properly understand the Twentieth Century American civil rights movement, one must understand how and why a similar movement failed during the Reconstruction years following the Civil War. Likewise with baseball history--to properly appreciate Jackie Robinson breaking the major league color line in 1947, one must understand the less salutary 1884 experience of Moses Fleetwood "Fleet" Walker.

Walker, born of middle class mixed-race parents in Ohio in 1857, attended and played baseball at integrated colleges in the early 1880's. In 1883 he left school to pursue a professional career with the minor league Toledo Blue Stockings. Baseball teams of the era determined whether to employ African Americans on a team-by-team basis, and Walker's presence on Toledo drew only occasional attention from fans and opponents.

In 1884 the major league American Association absorbed Toledo as an expansion team. Walker, by then an excellent defensive catcher, followed his team into the Association to become the first black major leaguer. Injuries hobbled Walker, however, and eventually cut his season short. The Toledo club folded after the season.

Walker returned to the minor leagues in 1885, but faced hardening racial prejudice which blocked his return to the majors. In 1889 the minor International League, in which Walker then played, joined the majors in adopting an unwritten, unofficial color line. By then Walker's career was winding down anyway.

Walker's subsequent life defies easy characterization. He patented four inventions, published a book, and owned a successful opera house--but also struggled with alcohol, served jail time for stealing from the U.S. mails, and stood trial (but won acquittal) for his role in a knife fight.

Author Zang integrates Walker's varying experiences into the larger mosaic of declining race relations in the America of his era. Indeed, Zang often ventures too far from the facts of Walker's life--interesting enough in their own right--into airy sociological speculation. He perhaps over-emphasizes Walker's mixed-race parentage as bringing about the "divided heart" of his title. His book nonetheless serves as a valuable testimonial to a fascinating and forgotten life.

Strike those last three sentences, I am very tired and finishing a 20 page paper. I have no idea why I decided to up and review this book in this state. I must be suffing from starbucks poisoning or something. the editors do incorporate a variety of opinions of both genders and do an excellent post modern job of it to boot. Sorry there.
I would also like to review this frapachino I got for free a few hours ago. It was cold and caffinated, but did not have enough "mocha" for my taste.

A diverse variety of essays on black women in slavery that covers America's perculiar institution from its inception to shortly after the Civil War. The book is seeking to create a fuller picture of the lives of African American women during this time but is constantly fighting within itself over exactly what picture is. It has a difficult time simultaneously representing black women as empowered individuals with their own culture and as victims of a vicious system that presses unwanted physical and cultural contact on them. Some of the essays are poorly written and obviously missing key elements in their focused attempt to prove their argument, others are superbly written and try to account for as many aspects of culture as is possible. One particularly enlightening essay is "Africa to the Americas?" by Claire Robertson, in which she debunks a number of widely spouted partial truths about African culture that Americanists often use to justify gender relations among slaves. Another essay, Wilma King's "Suffer With Them Till Death" is absolutely awful. Its thesis seems to be that slave mothers loved their children and it begins with the well-duh line, "Slave parents had unusually heavy responsibilities."
Despite the fact that the essays argue among themselves and are sometimes hit and miss, the attempt to display a wide variety of opinion of behalf of the editors is a valiant one that only fails by the fact that all the essays are by women. In one sense, this is quite understandable as most of the scholarship on the subject has been done by women. In another sense, I would have liked to see more diverse authors and since several pieces were written precisely for the book, it would have been easy it seems to request on for the sake of diversity.
Not a light read, but the opinions are diverse enough that it is an excellent source to prove your thesis no matter what your argument on gender during slavery might be.

A Good Book to explore the culture and history of the pain that they went through. The struggle which we don't see or realize.

Being a lover of all things ancient Roman, from the Latin language to the classical culture and also being a longtime student of Latin and Mandarin, I was very much looking forward to this book.

However, from the viewpoint of the anticipated content of this book, and its actual contents, I was disappointed. I was expecting a 'blow by blow' description of the search for the ancient Roman heritage of Li-Jien (the Roman influenced towns of ancient China) and its discovery; but instead it was more of a 'how to survive in China on $10 a day' book combined with social commentary and an insight into the author's lovelife. As an Australian myself (the author is Australian), I was hoping for more.

However, disregarding the above, it was still an enjoyable read; but not what I wanted when I purchased the book.

This in mind, would I buy it again: yes; hence the 3 stars.

Barbara Reynolds caught hell when she published this book. It was the first to expose several "facts" about the Jesse Jackson myth as false. The assasination story, the growing up in a shack story, the curious finances of Operation Breadbasket and Jackson's personal life were all exposed. Reynolds eventually had to leave Chicago and the book although widely read was rarely mentioned in public. Today Keith Timmerman's book Shakedown is on the bestseller lists. It turns out that Barbara was right all along.

Robinson's book is truly a memoir, and I find this to be both a strength and a weakness. It gives the book strength because it is a complete personal account. Every piece of information is direct from not only a first hand observer, but moreover a participant. However it weakens the book because at points too much information was detailed. Especially information about already well documented events.

This Bio was written with an honest look at Roy Porter's Life as one of the many orginators of this truly American Art Form "Be-Bop". It is a must read! He was just as honest in person...His canor was quite refreshing, He's my daughter's grandpa...We will miss him dearly, He recently departed this place..To the Greatest Jam Session Ever in the Heavens! We'll miss you G'pa Roy!

Frost's retrospection of an old Black man with sharp memory, good eyes and true words, drags you down an Alabama road kicking. You don't want to believe that your ancestors suffered or inflicted these horrors yet you are living proof it happened. Frost's southern road gives hurtful, ugly, vivid images that set the norm in life for Blacks & Whites in old Eufaula. Recollections are frightening and ironic in a mood typical of southern storytellers. Hate in Frost's world is ignorance and...yes, eventually, time heals all that compassion neglects. WITNESS TO JUSTICE serves as a strange valentine from antebellum to the new, stronger south.

The facts are available for any who want facts. The general impression of the greatness of Egypt has never been spoken against in my lifetime in any scholarly way. The value of speculation presented as fact is no greater in this venue than any other. I prefer to believe civilization in the Americas is older than traditionally portrayed by orthodox views, but making up my own version of history in the Americas and presenting it as fact that has been conspired against (using Spaniards burning our writings as de facto "proof") would be damaging to my own peoples, our place in history and the greatness of our true achievements....it would be disgraceful for me to attempt such a shill in the name of hate.

It is indeed sad that people can be made to hate invisible conspirators and so easily believe that there is a secret plot working against them.

Inventing history that is favorable to oneself is no more valid than inventing history for any other reason.

I am Creek and Crow. My people were wiped out. They were not enslaved or treated poorly, they were massacred, that gives me no right to try to vengefully make up lies about it. What really happened, happened, no more, no less. Individuals are responsible for hate, not conspirators. It is easy to place blame on others as a group because it makes one feel more empowered against bad things that occur without real reason in life (if the terrible things in life have a cause and a source it is better than the maddening truth that everyone, regardless of the tone of their skin, has to deal with the unpredictable hardships of life with no more success than anyone else).

There is no genetic evidence that my people are descended from Africans; whether they were or not they developed their civilization independantly. Are we then "white people"?

Archaic notions of group-hate are bigtime cashcows, even more so than firsthand hate (reactionary hate is much easier to sell). This is another example of just such a ploy. There is much legitimate history to be proud of and to explore, with wonderful new horizons awaiting every shovel; sadly, it is much easier to get a reaction from a reader with hate than beauty.

-true__ibnFrey

Black Athena

There are a lot of hysterical reviews on this forum, by people who clearly have
not read, let alone understood the book, Black Athena.

This book is not about whether the Ancient Egyptians were Black, or whether
Greek civilization as it exists today and became known to the Romans was a
wholesale copy of Egyptian civilization, as it obviously wasn't.

So, what is Black Athena about?

This book carefully sets out Martin Bernal's hypothesis, that ancient history
can be seen as having been molded into specific narratives, depending on
the age when that narrative was created and found it's uses.
He defines three different Models or narratives, namely the Ancient Model,
The Aryan Model, and his own Revised Ancient Model. He includes some
suggested timelines, but basically, the Ancient Model of Greeks like
Herodotus, suggested that in 15th century BC, Egyptians and
Phoenicians had set up colonies in Greece and the Aegean, creating Greek
civilization. The Aryan Model suggests that civilization started with the
indigenous creation of a civilization in Greece, and that there were
Nordic invasions of Indo-European speakers who mixed in with
the non-Indo-European speaking indigenous population
Bernal's Revised Ancient Model places the Egyptian and Phoenician
invasions in the 21st-19th century, pushes back the introduction of the
alphabet to the 17th century (from the 9th century), but maintains
that there were Nordic invasions and that the indigenous population
spoke a related Indo-Hittite language.

All ten chapters in this book are documented to a different period and
the changing perspectives and emphasis that is put on a particular origin
of history or culture (from the Ancient Model In Antiquity (I), through
this model's transmission during the dark ages and the renaissance (II),
The Triumph of Egypt in the 17th and 18th Centuries (III) and
the beginning Hostilities To Egypt In The 18th Century (IV) (long _before_
Champollion's decypherment of Egyptian in the first quarter of the19th century).
These hostilities had no small part of their origins in the existing race based slavery,
colonialism and the challenges from within Europe to the transatlantic slave trade
as a catalist of the need for a defense of the first two institutions.

Chapters V through IX deal with the Romantic Linguistics (V) the discovery of
Sanskrit as a related, Indo-European language and the rise of the Indian-Aryan model.
Hellenomania (VI) deals with the rise of Greece as a fount of European
civilization and ideals, under the German school of von Humboldt and Wolf.
Hellenomania 2 (VII) deals with the takeup of this school of thought in England
and the growing pre-eminence of the Aryan model in the middle of the 19th century.
The Rise And Fall Of The Phoenicians (VIII) deals with the recognitions of
the Phoenicians and the influence of antisemitism, as does chapter (IX).

The book concludes with The Post-War Situation (X) and discussion
of the influences of Gordon and Astour and their reclaming of the legacy
of the Phoenicians.

In the end we have to ask: is it really so difficult to believe that Ancient Egypt
at the height of it's power, it's age of expansion, created small Egyptian colonies
in the Peleponnese and around the Aegean (20th century BC), that these colonies
helped to transfer some of it's culture and civilization, and that the Greeks had myths
that said so? No linguist today disputes the Phoenician origin of the Greek alphabet.
A small step pyramid has been found in Thebes, Greece. Most ancient Greek
philosophers paid homage to Ancient Egypt and studied there, in the 5th century.

A classic book and a must read for anyone interested in the topic, especially
of Aegean relations and the history of history itself.

What is all the controversy around Bernal's work about? It only takes a student of history to learn without a doubt that Egypt was indeed the cradle of modern human civilization. Only look at the historical evidence to confirm this if you have any doubts. Bernal's work was not a mind shocker with his conclusion about the fundamental influence of Egypt as teacher to a student to the Greeks, but I do commend Bernal for introducing the historical evidence to Western readers who do not know about it up till this day.

My only surprise in the whole matter is that this simple idea of Past preceding its Inheritors does not want to be acknowledged by so many people in the "west" today, in the year 2002 AD. This in its self is the biggest testimony to the validity of Bernal's simple thesis.

To those who still doubt, just learn Egyptian history and archaeology; it is written in papyrus, inscribed on stone and closer to you, by the ancient Greek students of Egypt who later became known as the fathers of Greek and, to you, "Western Civilization".

I do hope the sensible among you will ignore the two reviews posted before mine. These people are, simply put, missing just about everything important about the book. I truly doubt they did more than skim the chapter headings. Shields is, as literate people know, an astute and frequently brilliant excavator of the American psyche, and Black Planet is his most mature and unrelentingly provocative book yet. If you have courage, and appreciate a writer who can combine great wit, personal revelation, probing sociological analysis -- all while telling a strangely thrilling story of an NBA season, in diary form -- then please read this book. It is a truly important book. Shy of the work of Stanley Crouch, this is perhaps the most raw and honest work about race in America published in the last ten years.

If you want a book that goes beyond the every day box scores and cliche quotes, and actually gets you to think about important issues such as race, this is the book for you. Shields dives into the NBA season and comes out with a perspective on how he and other white people view blacks, black athletes and the world both races live in. It had me thinking more about race than I ever have. In an arena composed of rich, white fans watching former poor black athletes rise to the top of the sporting world, Shields breaks it all down for us, and candidly reveals his own shortcomings and faults regarding this issue. It takes guts for a writer to take on himself. An excellent book on an excellent topic: race. Basketball is the sub-topic. If you want to THINK about race and have perhaps some of your own perceptions changed, get this book.

David Shield's account of the Seattle SuperSonics' 94-95 season is one of the most honest accounts of the relationship between White men as spectator and Black men as players - predomominately. So many accounts of sports - written by White and Black men - do not even acknowledge this relationship. It is honest, thought-provoking, and entertaining! Kudos to Mr. Shield for his candid and humorous examination of this subject.