In Search Of The Promised Land Analysis

In Search of the Promised Land: Book Review

Franklin, John Hope, and Loren Schweninger. In Search of the Promised Land: A Slave Family in the Old South. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

The narrative In Search of the Promised Land: A Slave Family in the Old South, by John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, was a real page-turner and a pleasure to read. The narrative chronicles the fascinating life of Sally Thomas and her three sons John Rapier, Sr., Henry Thomas, and James Thomas who were fathered by white men. Sally’s owner’s brother John L. Thomas most likely fathered two of her sons (13) and James Thomas’s father was the Tennessee Supreme Court Justice John Catron (18). The narrative also includes the adventures of several of

Two of his sons went to California during the gold rush and one eventually became a barber and farmer (Richard) and the other became a scoundrel (Henry). The other two of his boy actually made something of themselves. John Rapier, Jr. had many adventures during his life traveling the world going to places such as Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti, and Canada. He had originally had racist views of black people when he lived on the islands (183). Eventually he moved back to the states and went to medical school and served as a surgeon in the Army during the Civil War and his views changed. By the wars end, he dedicated himself to assisting blacks as they made their transition from slavery to freedom (219). Sadly, one year after the Civil war ended, he passed away from a fever at the age of thirty. His final son, James Thomas Rapier was a hellion in his younger years, but he found God and became a teacher in Canada while living with his uncle Henry Thomas. After the war he returned to Nashville and became politically active on the behalf of freedmen and women (222) and also equal rights for all men without regard to color (232). He was the key actor in pushing through the Civil Rights Act of 1875. He also purchased land in Kansas to be used for former slaves to settle on during reconstruction. Sadly, in 1883, he passed away from tuberculosis at the age of forty-five