The Black 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential African-Americans, Past and Present

A useful collection of mini-profiles of black American leaders in the struggle for equality, this book is marred by the author's admittedly unscientific attempt to rank his subjects by importance. Salley ( What Color Is Your God? Black Consciousness and the Christian Faith ) places Martin Luther King Jr. first and Frederick Douglass second, but overemphasizes certain leaders of the colonial period: the founders of the Free African Society and the Negro Masonic Order are rated well ahead of Thurgood Marshall and Malcolm X. The profiles are usually fair-minded, but Salley sanitizes a few, ignoring James Baldwin's homosexuality and Louis Farrakhan's alleged anti-Semitism. While Salley includes Bill Cosby, Toni Morrison and Colin Powell, he sometimes lacks a contemporary edge, listing filmmaker Oscar Micheaux but not Spike Lee, playwright Lorraine Hansberry but not August Wilson and academic Kenneth Clark but not Henry Louis Gates Jr. Photos not seen by PW. (Jan.)