Betrayal of the Negro, The

[from Amazon] "First issued in 1954, this seminal work of black history was one of the first books to reinterpret the Reconstruction and to show how the freedmen's hopes were cruelly thwarted by cynical politicians. It documents "in devastating detail the political, economic, and cultural story of the retreat from equality." And, as prize-winning historian Eric Foner notes in his introduction, The Betrayal of the Negro provided "an overall framework that still helps to guide interpretations of the era." Also worth noting is the book's middle section, in which Rayford Logan examines the images of blacks that appeared in popular media such as newspapers and magazines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries."