One More River to Cross: The Stories of Twelve Black Americans

Scholastic Biography

by Jim Haskins

From Dr. Charles Drew, the man who invented a technique for storing blood plasma, to Madam C.J. Walker, the first woman to start her own business and earn a million dollars, award-winning author Jim Haskins tells the stories of twelve black Americans who had the courage to follow their dreams.

Crispus Attucks
Madame C.J. Walker
Matthew Henson
Marian Anderson
Ralph Bunche
Charles R. Drew
Romare Bearden
Fannie Lou Hamer
Eddie Robinson
Shirley Chisolm
Malcolm X
Ronald McNair

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[B. P. Rinehart · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a very neat and well put together biography of twelve different famous African-Americans. This book is a good introduction to some of these greats featuring some of the more commonly known names like Malcolm X, Matthew Henson, and Madame C.J. Walker as well as lesser known names like Ambassador Ralph Bunche, Romare Bearden, Crispus Attucks-the first man to die in the American Revolution, and Astronaut Ron McNair one of NASA's first Black Astronaut's who perished in the Challenger explosion.

I would recommend this with any one wanting an introduction to some of the famous African-Americans all time.

[Savannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

One More River To Cross, by James Haskins, is a book of twelve stories from twelve different African Americans and their stories of unlikely success. Each chapter goes through each person's life and how they succeed in life. The book goes through and thoroughly explains the lives of twelve African Americans, how they were trailblazers for the African Americans community, and how their perseverance brought them their unlikely success.
James Haskins doesn’t gloss over any imperfections as he tells the stories of Crispus Attucks, Madam C.J Walker, Matthew Henson, Charles Drew, Ron McNair, Ralph Bunche, Fannie Lou Hammer, Shirley Chisholm, Malcolm X, Romare Bearden, Eddie Robinson, and Marian Anderson. The writing style in this book of small biographies can be challenging because of the constant switching to each story every chapter, but this writing style kept my attention throughout the entire book. It also might be a harder book to read because the reader has to understand how oppressed we are here in America. Of course, all this varies on the person reading it. This book is a great jumping off point to acquire more information about African American culture. If the reader has prior knowledge regarding African American culture than it won’t be that difficult, but if the reader does not then it can be more difficult to recognize the oppression/racial prejudice that they (we) have to overcome, and how emphatically amazing these people were.
One biography listed is Madam C.J Walker. Madam C.J Walker was born in 1867 to newly freed slaves. Walker escaped poverty and beatings through marrying her husband at fourteen. When Walker could not find a hair product that caters to black women she decided to make her own. By doing this and staying persistent she created a net worth of over $1 million. Madam C.J Walker became the first American women to be a self-made millionaire. Another example is Malcolm X. Malcolm X was a human rights activist as well as a figure in the Islam community. He is well known for advocating the separation of black and white people, but he also completely rejected the civil rights movement because of the integration between the two races. Malcolm X went from being in prison to accepting Islam and then becoming a well-known figure in the human rights movement. Each one of these people was all oppressed because of the color of their skin, but being oppressed did not stop them from reaching their goals and dreams in life.
In my opinion, people should also know the successes of African American culture, not just the unfortunate times. If all we talk about is our unfortunate times who will we look up to? How will other ethnicities view us? I think that James Haskins was attempting to educate people on the African American communities successes and to contradict what society thinks of us. When reading this book I was inspired by how these people overcame their difficulties and succeeded due to the perseverance they had throughout their journey. Haskins tackles a lot of big questions in a simplistic way, by just writing about people's lives.

[Jayson · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I began to read One More River To Cross by Jim Haskins, it seemed a little daunting and tough to comprehend. This is because of all the people incorporated inside the book. I assumed the book would be about a single person's perspective of life; however, I was incorrect.

One More River To Cross is about twelve black Americans who helped strive to make the American life better. Each chapter informs people about the life story of one of them. Madam C.J. Walker was the first woman to start her own business and make one million dollars. Dr. Charles Drew created a way to store blood plasma.

The plot was interesting and having pictures of each person helped to visualize them better when reading each chapter. However, the specific thing that made this book so tough to understand is the dates. There are so many dates and people to remember, causing them to get mingled around inside of the brain. For these reasons, I wouldn’t recommend reading this book or using it for a school project.

[Jasmine · Rating 5 out of 5]

One More River to Cross is a good book if you want to learn about American history. Before I read this book I had no idea who any of these people were, but now I learned what they did for our country. I would recommend this book to anyone who is trying to learn about history or more specifically African American history. This book really addresses how bad slavery was back in America and how hard it was for any African family to make a living. Without this book I wouldn't have learned about many important people that shaped America to what it is for example Malcolm X and Ron McNair. The only complaint for me about this book is that it is hard to do a project on one person because it covers 12 different people's lives in 200 pages, so there is not a lot of information on each person. Other than that, this book a good book or anyone who wants to learn a little.

[Alicia Cunningham]

Don’t think I can give this a fair rating, because I am not in the target audience. I felt the writing too juvenile (my fault for not realizing) and kind of just choppy facts - “like reading Wikipedia bios” as my friend described it. Good content though and I did enjoy learning all these peoples stories.

[Cameron Bentrott · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick yet informative read of several influential African Americans, some you’ve heard of and some most likely you haven’t. This is an easy yet powerful book that is prevalent to today’s issue of systemic racism in the U.S.

[Liam Binfield · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s good

[Shone · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the perfect book to share with 3rd and 4th graders doing black history month.

[emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75

before reading this book, i only recognized one of the
people on the cover, but now i know who all of them are and i’m glad i read it. this book doesn’t go super in depth into all of these people but it’s a good introduction and i learned a lot despite it being a pretty small book. i don’t usually read nonfiction so this took me a while to get through, but i think the writing made it a lot easier to do so. it was simple and straightforward.

[Maya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just realized I incidentally picked this book during Black History Month, but every day is a great day to learn more about influential African American figures in our culture and history. While this book didn't go into as much detail as it should have, it is a book marketed toward young adults. I read it because it was on our bookshelf, I presume it's my boyfriend's, and I enjoyed it as a quick read. I also learned much more than I expected (White Americans refused life saving blood transfusions from African Americans?? The African American man in the first party to reach the North Pole had to struggle to be recognized for this achievement as the white men in his party were??)

[Mattie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked how everything that was written was direct but I would like if everything flowed together a bit more, and if it had subtitles in each chapter so that it didn't just say some information and then move on to the next chapter. Overall I thought it was good and I learned a lot in a lot of different areas

[Brittany · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is on famous africain americans my friend and i had to do a report on the one in the top right corner