Sid Ahmed ZIANE

This book is outstanding, recounting the story and the career of Lerone Bennett Jr. and his tenure at the JPC as an editor and a popular historian. In his manuscript, West argues how Bennett played a crucial role in popularizing and complementing professional historical research and how he endorsed, popularized, and recovered the history of Black America through the lens of Ebony magazine. Whilst not covering the whole story, West’s work is revealing as Bennett has never been made the focus of any previous study. His manuscript seems very significant as West reveals and insists that Bennett should stand as a nationally recognized expert in Black history rather than just “a subservient to professionally trained historians”.