Wade In the Water gives the reader a front-row seat at some of the most dramatic events in American history. Starting with the founding of Black America at the first Black convention, the book re-creates the drama and the human dimensions of Nat Turner's slave revolt and Harriet Tubman's slave raids and makes the reader a witness and a participant in key events of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Freedom Movement of the twentieth century. There is also a pioneering chapter on sports as history, Jack Johnson and the Great White Hope, which was the basis of the national television.