[Freedom Road, previously titled Freedom's Blood,] is a "fictional reconstruction of the first weekend of that Freedom Summer" in 1964, during which three young civil rights workers were murdered by the Klan and its police allies. Because the occasion is still so vivid to anti-racists over thirty-five …, it is difficult to consider this as any sort of fiction. Michael Schwerner, the principal white character, is fleshed out by the author. James Chaney, the Black in the trio, is somewhat less clearly depicted. Andrew Goodman, the other white who arrived in the South one day before he was murdered, remains a shadowy, peripheral character. The story unfolds with chilling suspense—even for this reader who knew what was going to happen.

Children's books about the civil rights struggles of the sixties are indeed welcome and needed. Young people can benefit from understanding the kind of sustained efforts required to effect change. Therefore, this book is recommended, although a few points are troubling. (p. 21)

In this book, as in most others, the author's race is telegraphed without need of a jacket portrait. For instance, Forman's Introduction uses the word "Negro" interchangeably with "black," although "Negro" is not used by most Blacks today. Forman describes "Mobs, black and white … in a spectacle of racial violence which had been simmering for centuries." He then continues, "The black had good cause ever since he [sic] had been kidnapped from Africa and sold into bondage, the southern white since he had lost the Civil War." This equation of centuries of vicious oppression with the loss of a four-year war would hardly be a comparison offered by an Afro American writer.

At the end of this book Forman, writing about the changes which have occurred since 1964, says: "For the young of the television generation there are wider identifications. They do not want to be seen as rednecks in the space age." A Black author would not leave out the word "white" before "young," because the next sentence does not apply to Black youths. In addition, given today's headlines about the resurgence of the Klan in the South and its popularity with young whites in the North, Forman's conclusions seem unduly optimistic. (pp. 21-2)

Nevertheless, this is a good book, written to oppose racism. (p. 22)