Jefferson's Pillow: The Founding Fathers and the Dilemma of Black Patriotism is a distillation by Roger Wilkins (an African American lawyer, civil rights activist, journalist, and professor) of his efforts to come to an understanding "of the founding [of the U.S.] and at the characters and achievements of four of the Virginians --- George Mason, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison --- who were both massive contributors to the founding of the new nation and owners of slaves." This points to one of the great contradictions inherent in our democracy and culture. That is, the marked ambivalence and overt/covert racism among the Founding Fathers, future powerbrokers and policy makers, and the majority white society towards their African American brothers and sisters that have been perpetuated in subtle and not so subtle ways (e.g. slavery and the Jim Crow segregation laws and practices) for generations.

Wilkins provides readers with a concise and useful history of events that led to the American Revolution, the rationale that was created and promoted by the Founders for independence from Britain, the early postwar attempts (via the Articles of Confederation) to create a United States of America that led to a weakened central government vis-a-vis the state governments which gave rise to general instability in the country through most of the 1780s, and the meeting of a convention in Philadelphia between May and September of 1787, to address the deficiencies of the Articles of Confederation which led to the creation and eventual ratification of the U.S. Constitution by all the states, followed by the establishment of a Bill of Rights (something that George Mason was insistent be included with the Constitution).

In making this study of these 4 men, the lives they led and their contributions to the development of the U.S. democratic system, Wilkins, upon reflection of the misery heaped on millions of African Americans because of the imposition of slavery on them, admits to feeling "a rising rage that men so distinguished and so powerful could have been so timid about using that power in the cause of freedom for [African Americans] and justice for America. I want to take those four lives --- as emblems of millions of others like them --- and push them in the faces of those four founders and say, 'Look at the pain you might have avoided and the potential you might have liberated had you had the capacity to care for human beings like these as deeply as you cared for yourselves and people like you.' But that's the rub, of course. They couldn't because they were morally crippled by their culture and politically shackled by the grating chain that snaked through the new republic and diminished every life it touched."

And yet, through all the toil, pain, challenges, and crises the country has faced, it has endured - and in the process, made significant progress in terms of extending constitutional and human rights to African Americans and other Americans who had been overlooked or marginalized by the nation's power structure and majority society. This is what gives Wilkins hope for the nation's future and reaffirms his faith and pride in being an American. He ends the book by stressing that our democracy requires a well-informed, educated, and active citizenry to help defend, protect, maintain, and strengthen it against internal threats that could easily undermine and destroy our system of government.

Jefferson's Pillow is a book that anyone wanting to better understand how the U.S. came to be what it is today and the need to protect and improve our democracy should read - not just once but many times. It carries a valuable message that speaks to every generation that cherishes freedom and justice for all.