Overview
What, to the American slave is the 4th of July?
I answer, a day that reveals to him, more than
all other days in the year, the gross injustice
cruelty to which he is a constant victim,
—Frederick Douglass
Warren Clay Coleman’s beginning, like so many others, was and continues to be an American story.
A son of Concord, N.C., Coleman was born a slave. Like so many former slaves born in the South, he was destined to do nothing but survive and/or limit his contribution to society only as a chattel slave.
Warren Clay Coleman: The Leader of the First Black Textile Mill In America reviews the life of Warren C. Coleman as a young man from a black person’s perspective. Many people have written about Coleman, but none has written an entire book about him exclusively from the perspective of the Zion community and the viewpoint of the African-American experience. From this perspective, the book, highlighting the lives of his “white” family hopefully can be a celebration of the life and times of a man (Coleman) before his time.
This book examines the life and times of Coleman who was not only a great African-American, but was also a great American who worked to service his community — both white and black.
