SOURCE: "The Black Common Man," in The Nation, New York, Vol. 162, No. 7, February 16, 1946, pp. 201-02.

An American educator and nonfiction writer, Frazier was a noted expert on race. In addition to studying conditions in Harlem after the race riots of 1935, he served as president of the International Society for the Scientific Study of Race Relations as well as chairman of UNESCO's Committee of Experts on Race. In the following mixed review of Marching Blacks, he considers Powell's work to be "an effective piece" of motivational writing, but asserts that it is personally indulgent and contains numerous errors.

In Marching Blacks Representative Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., presents what he calls "an interpretative history of the rise of the black common man." The rise of the "black common man" is traced through three periods: Africa to Chicago, covering the period 1526–1920; the period of "the boom and the crash," 1920–40; and the...