While I learned a lot reading this book, I do not think it was organized and structured as well as it could have been. Robertson introduces the topic with his personal history, including his family history with a Black town, Promise Land, in a southern state - Tennessee, I think but do not remember specifically - as well as his complicated relationship with his father, a man who spent a decade in prison for a

violent crime (again, I do not remember the specific crime and do not want to misspeak). Letters from his father also alternate with the historical text describing men and institutions who attempted to carve out a place in a country that for centuries has hated them. This bouncing between different types of text (the letters and the historical narrative) forms my main issue with the text. It's nearly impossible to determine whether this book is a memoir or if it is historical nonfiction, especially since the more personal portions have little to no connection with most of the historical portion. By the end of the narrative, the threads nearly come together and I understand Robertson's overall goal with this narrative. However, he did not quite bring everything together. Thus, this is a fascinating aspect of history with stories that need to be told, I just wish it had been done better.

Very much enjoyed this well written book, authentic and with clear, engaging, and insightful text.
I learned many things about this aspect of Black history and realize that these types of communities played an outsize role in local organizations, with results that were felt across the nation. I was especially gratified to learn the actual history behind the National school lunch program. I will definitely look for other titles by this author.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a reading copy in exchange for this honest review.

Black communities started springing up in the South after slavery ended. At one time there may had been close to two thousand settlements. One community, Promise Land, was founded in 1870, in Tennessee. Among the founding fathers were Aaron Robertson’s ancestors. When Robertson was a child, growing up in Michigan, he spent summers in Promise Land. While a child, his father was imprisoned. During his incarceration, he wrote letters to his son. Robertson uses the letters from his father to preface each chapter of this book, reflecting on desired forms of freedom for Black people in the USA.

Central to Robertson’s book, is the growth of Black Nationalism after the urban race riots, touching on the destruction and reconstruction of Black spaces by redlining and government sanctioned police intervention, evidenced later against the MOVE commune in Philadelphia.

Of the Black Nationalist movements that came into fruition during the late 1960s and early 1970s, most prominent at the time, in Detroit, was a Black theology, established by Reverend Albert Cleage, Jr, in a house of worship known as the Shrine of the Black Madonna. Today the name Cleage is more recognized associated with the playwright, Pearl Cleage, one of the reverend’s two daughters.

Sharing a memoir of his father, Robertson delves into the history of Cleage’s Black Christian Nationalism and the rise of a Black community, an eco-village up to the present day as an example of what he means by Black utopia. As megachurches grow and embrace social justice and outreach programs, while creating communities for their congregations, more histories, like Cleage’s Shrine, are important in showing how religions in the United States are being reshaped in order to survive.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux