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Of Blood and Sweat: Black Lives and the Making of White Power and Wealth
Top of the pile
84
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
80/100Critics
88/100Scholars
Author:
Clyde W. Ford
Publisher:
Amistad
Date:
April 5, 2022
The story of how Black lives and labor created White power and wealth in agriculture, politics, jurisprudence, law enforcement, culture, medicine, financial services, and other fields. Through the lives of individual Black men and women a deeper understanding unravels of the role Blacks played, directly and indirectly, in creating American institutions of power and wealth-while never allowed full participation. Trace the history of almost any major American institution of power and wealth and you'll find it was created by Black Americans, or created to control them.
What The Reviewers Say
Ford wants readers to realize the lasting and severe harm that slavery has done to our country on both an intellectual level and a visceral, emotional one. There is no lack of evidence to support his argument, and his book is very well researched and documented. But unlike histories that are so loaded with documents, statistics and official accounts of proceedings that they numb the reader, transforming the tragedy of the past into mere abstraction, Of Blood and Sweat adroitly avoids these pitfalls. Instead, Ford weaves the stories of real people who lived through these times into his narrative, making the information feel immediate and alive.
A powerful and personal argument about the myriad ways Black labor created white wealth in the United States over the centuries. Ford uses the lives of specific Black men and women at pivotal moments...to reveal the ongoing dynamics and interplay of freedom and unfreedom (especially slavery).
[A] fascinating history.
The book teems with ideas, sometimes in an onrushing embarrassment of riches, and often repeats the inarguable idea that as makers of much of the modern world’s wealth, Black people continue to deserve a share.
