Black Was the Ink, by Michelle Coles, for Timeslip Tuesday

A sub-genre of time travel books that I quite like (becuase I like learning things) uses the time travelling to frame a history lesson.  Black Was the Ink, by Michelle Coles (November 2nd 2021 by Lee & Low Books) is one of these; it is a brilliant lesson on the Reconstruction-- the years immediately after the Civil War when black men were elected to congress, the first Civil Rights Act was signed into law, and KKK murderers were brought to trial and found guilty.  Not much talked about in school history class, and  tremendously well presented here.  

Malcolm, a black teenager, was almost shot playing basketball with his friends in Washington D.C. in 2015, and then almost arrested by the police who came to investigate.  His mother, scared for him, sends him down to Mississippi to stay with his dad's family for the summer (his dad was killed by the police a while before this story begins).  There he finds the diary of his ancestor, Cedric, who worked for many of the black representatives to Congress, recording the triumphs they achieved, the horrors being inflicted on black people in the south by the KKK, and the ultimate failure of Reconstruction to establish lasting equality.  

But Malcom isn't just reading words on the pages.  Cedric brings him literally back in time, and Malcom lives bits of Cedric's life.  He sees horrible tragedies, that amplify the ongoing horrors of the present day.  And Malcom emerges from the experience galvanized to take up the fight that Cedric had been part of, starting by trying to save the family farm, Cedric's farm, from being lost to a highway expansion project (which turns out to be the main reason Cedric is manifesting himself...) 

The heavy weight of the past is lightened somewhat by time with family and by Malcom's nascent relationship with a neighbor girl, but it is a past that is much too heavy for lifting to be possible.  It is not a fast easy read, but it sure is an important one.  The author doesn't do much in the way of condensing the history, which is makes it thorough and very real, but it does make for hard going at times. I can't help but feel it could have been just as powerful without quite so many long speeches from the politicians, while being appreciative of those speeches as important parts of history. 

That being said, Malcolm is an engaging character, and his believable teen self does a pretty good job carrying the narrative along. It takes him a while to get used to being Cedric, and it requires some suspension of disbelief that he carries that role off as well as he does when back in the past (although this was one of my favorite aspects of the book, time travel fan that I am).  And there are joyous moments of family and friendship, and lots of good food, that cheer the reader on.

Still, as a whole, it's a pretty devastating read (though the ending is hopeful), but so important and timely....

side note: speaking as someone who works for a state historic preservation office-- sadly, even if a property is listed in the National Register of Historic Places (which is a lot more time-consuming and tricky than is the case even for the conditional determination of eligibility which Malcolm achieves through a single afternoon's work) it can be bulldozed.  So I ended the story less optimistically than Malcolm does...there's going to be a struggle ahead.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher