America's First Black Socialist: The Radical Life of Peter H. Clark

308 pp., ISBN: 978-0-8131-4077-3), reviewed by Eric R. Jackson (jacksoner@nku.edu), Associate Professor of History, Department of History and Geography; Director - Black Studies Program; Northern Kentucky University. [...]Taylor concludes that "Clark's life proves that nineteenth-century African Americans were astute political players who believed politics and racial uplift- broadly defined - to be a panacea for racial inequality and unfreedom" [and] that African Americans saw political power before and after Emancipation and Reconstruction as central to their definition of freedom (p. 15). [...]the author describes how Clark gradually developed his Radical Black Nationalist perspective, why he supported a national campaign for African American emigration, and what led to his emergence as one of the preeminent African American leaders in the "Queen City" and beyond during the middle of the antebellum period.