Boss of Black Brooklyn: The Life and Times of Bertram L. Baker

Boss of Black Brooklyn is above all an interesting readable story about an immigrant’s struggles and achievements in the century of American greatness. It’s about the external and internal struggles of the man who in 1948 became the first black elected official in Brooklyn, New York. It’s a story about a person, place and time that have been forgotten, cast into the dustbin of history. This is true even as Brooklyn today is one of the most popular destinations in the world. The population of Brooklyn is changing rapidly as newcomers from Europe, Australia and around the United States flock there to begin new lives. Curiously, the newcomers will embrace this book even as much as the old-timers who identify with the viewpoint of the author and the principal subject of the book. That’s because so many of the newcomers, even as they displace the old-time residents, are educated, progressive and curious about the past. This story is therefore for them as well as for those who carry a love for the old black Brooklyn that is fading in their hearts. Beginning, as it does, at the end of the nineteenth century, Boss of Black Brooklyn, carries in its innards the character of a place that for many is the heart of the America that emerged on the world scene in the mid twentieth century, the place of dreams. Boss of Brooklyn, in its final chapters, also tells us of the era when the earlier dream began to fade and central Brooklyn was called a ghetto, with all the disparagement implied in the term. Now, once again, things are shifting demographically. And the dreaminess of the transformations is felt in the book’s main character, its subject, Bertram L. Baker. There is a satisfaction in the reading of the story, because we see the empowering nature of family.