My Dad: The Man: Black Daughters In Praise of Their Fathers

At a time when the narrative around Black fatherhood too often focuses on absence, My Dad: The Man tells a different and long overdue story.Edited by Dr. Carol L. Adams — applied sociologist, cultural architect, and one of Chicago's most distinguished civic leaders — this powerful anthology brings together twenty-five accomplished Black women in tribute to the twenty-six fathers who shaped them. Their essays are funny and heartbreaking, soaring and intimate, complicated and clear. Together they form a portrait of Black fatherhood that has never been assembled quite this way before.The fathers in these pages were sharecroppers and shareholders, preachers and professors, photographers and pianists, civil rights warriors and quiet protectors. Among them: the founder of Ebony Magazine, the co-founder of the nation's first community development bank, a Trinidadian carpenter who built his life on Chicago's West Side, a Louisville portrait photographer who taught his daughter to see, a wrongfully imprisoned political activist who spent 42 years fighting for justice, and a Mississippi-born entrepreneur who celebrates his 100th birthday this year.The daughters they raised are equally remarkable — a TIME 100 honoree, the first Black woman to lead the American Library Association, the CEO of Johnson Publishing Company, a Cornell PhD working on Broadway, the chairman of WVON radio, and a Northwestern University professor, among many others.One daughter was blessed with two fathers who loved her completely. Two sisters write together about one extraordinary father in a single, powerful voice. And the editor herself is both the architect of this anthology and one of its twenty-five contributors — her own essay a tribute to her father, William Clarence Adams, known to all as "The Chief."Inspired by Leon Thomas's lyricization of Horace Silver's iconic "Song for My Father" — to be devoted to, and always stand by me, so I'd be unafraid and free — the anthology is organized thematically: Southern Gentlemen, Movin' On Up, Activists and Game Changers, Generation North, Diaspora Stories, and Gen X Dads.These fathers were not exceptions. They were the rule.WE WILL SPEAK THEIR NAMES, FOREVER! Read more