Description: "Of Blood and Sweat: Black Lives and the Genesis of White Power and Wealth tells 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. Today, activists have taken the struggle for racial equity and justice to the streets. Of Blood and Sweat depicts this struggle from pre-colonial Africa through post-Civil War America and a consistent theme emerges: 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. Painstakingly researched, and comprehensively documented, Of Blood and Sweat is a compelling look at the past with broad implications for present-day calls for racial equity, racial justice, and the abolishment of systemic racism"--
Brief description:
Clyde W. Ford is the author of fifteen works of fiction and nonfiction, and is a psychotherapist, an accomplished mythologist, and a sought-after public speaker. In 2006, Ford received the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award in African American fiction. In 2019, he was named a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award in African American nonfiction. In 2021, Clyde received the prestigious Washington Center for the Book Award, the Nautilus Book Award in Social Justice, and was a finalist for the Goddard-Russo Prize in Social Justice for Think Black. Clyde was honored as a "Literary Lion" by the King County Library System in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2019. He was voted "Best Writer of Bellingham, Washington" in 2006 and 2007 by readers of Cascadia Weekly and received the 2007 Bellingham Mayor's Arts Award in Literature. Ford is currently a speaker for Humanities Washington, an affiliate of the NEA, where he presents a program entitled, "Technology, Race and Social Justice," around the state. He is also the Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library Publishing Project at HarperCollins. Clyde has participated in hundreds of media interviews and has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, New Dimensions Radio, and NPR. He lives in Bellingham, Washington, where he founded the city's annual Martin Luther King Day commemoration in 1991, and enjoys walking the mountains and cruising the waters of the Pacific Northwest.
Review Quotes:
He calls Clyde Ford's "Of Blood and Sweat" an "accessible and timely read" that "goes all the way back to tell the story of how the institutions and structures of wealth were built on the literal backs of Black labor." Kapahua calls Ford a "Northwest staple of the literary community, and I feel like he should be a more recognizable name everywhere." - Kalani Kapahua, The Seattle Times
"an essential reckoning with the roots of the racial wealth gap in America." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A compelling argument for long-overdue reparations--though much more than that alone." - Kirkus Reviews
"Ford's forceful arguments and writing will compel readers to face the facts of the long history of exploitation and appropriation that have defined so much of America's struggle with itself to give substance and meaning to its promise of 'freedom' for all."
- Library Journal
(starred review) "Ford makes a clear case that the past is never over. The wounds inflicted by slavery have never healed, and he argues that they will continue to harm our country until we deal with them honestly. For many Americans, reading Of Blood and Sweat will be an excellent first step in that process."
- BookPage