Emancipation Proclamation, Forever Free
by Kevin McGruder and Velma Maia Thomas

Through historic documents and pictures, the full color coffee table book is both celebration and history. It chronicles efforts to free the enslaved starting before the Declaration of Independence, to the Civil War and the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, and continuing through ratification of the 13th Amendment. Emancipation Proclamation Forever Free culminates in the reelection of Barrack Obama as President of the United States, which took place almost exactly 150 years after emancipation. While other volumes view the Emancipation Proclamation as a document by a great emancipator (President Abraham Lincoln) or as a triumph of military struggle (The Civil War), Emancipation Proclamation Forever Free chronicles the people black and white, in bondage and free who created the conditions for emancipation. It is the story of those who resisted the evil of humans as property and ultimately triumphed.