Black Moses by Caleb Gayle

This was recommended by Jacqueline Woodson, author of Brown Girl Dreaming, and of course also by the National Book Award as well. It is about Edward Preston McCabe, who was born free to free parents, and who appears to be a classic success story of the Reconstruction period. In 1878, after stints as a clerk in New York and Chicago, he arrived at the forlorn town of Nicodemus, Kansas, and took over the local government. He enticed more settlers and helped to foster the town’s increasing prosperity. After two terms as state auditor, McCabe then lit out for the Oklahoma Territory, where he co-founded the town of Langston, played a prominent role in the founding of Langston University and served as the territory’s assistant auditor. In 1890, he met President Benjamin Harrison in the White House, where he angled for an appointment as territorial governor. But McCabe was a Black man in Jim Crow America, and while he appeared to have a lot of things going for him, the reach of his dreams of a place for black Americans to be in charge, to command their own fate, became too great a liability for white Americans. Racism shaped the contours of his ambition, and then it crushed him. The retelling of his life is one way for him to live on, which makes it extra important to read and know about.