African-American history

What has come to be known as "Black history" (also known as African-American history) developed out of the same forces that shaped the Civil Rights Movement.

Colonial era

Africans first arrived in 1619, a Dutch ship sold 19 blacks as indentured servants to Englishmen at Jamestown, Virginia. About 10-12 million Africans were transported to Western Hemisphere, The vast majority of these people came from that stretch of the West African coast extending from present-day Senegal to Angola; a small percentage came from Madagascar and East Africa. Only 3% (about 300,000) went to the American colonies. The vast majority went to the West Indies, where they died quickly. Demographic conditions were highly favorable in the American colonies, with less disease, more food, good medical care, and lighter work loads. Coming as they did from such an extensive area in Africa, they were not of one physical or cultural type. Significant differences existed among them, but they shared a general set of characteristics. They were tall and had dark skin, tight woolly hair, full lips, broad noses, and limited facial and body hair.

At first the Africans in the South were outnumbered by white indentured servants, who came voluntarily from Britain. They avoided the plantations. With the vast amount of good land and the shortage of laborers, plantation owners turned to lifetime slaves who worked for their keep but were not paid wages and could not easily escape. Slaves had some legal rights (it was a crime to kill a slave, and whites were hung for it.) Generally the slaves developed their own family system, religion and customs in the slave quarters with little interference from owners, who were only interested in work outputs.

All the American colonies had slavery, but it was usually the form of personal servants in the North (where 2% of the people were slaves), and field hands in plantations in the South (where 25% were slaves.)

Historiography

While African-Americans and their African ancestors played a central role in creating and defining the United States, these Americans had few people to tell their stories. Some noted scholars, such as W.E.B. Dubois, shed light on the African-American experience. But that experience was often ignored by white historians.

By the end of the 19th century, African-Americans were commonly depicted in derogatory ways. The days of slavery were portrayed as a time when black people were happy and content. And many historians came to view the aftermath of the Civil War as a tragic time when blacks and carpet-baggers ran wild. In this history, it was the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) that came to save the day. This portrayal of African-Americans was popularized by filmmaker D.W. Griffith in the Birth of a Nation. The 1915 film glorified the KKK. But it was a view that dominated film and literature into the 1930s when Gone with the Wind offered a romantic story of the Old South full of blacks who appeared content to play inferior roles.

In the first half of the 20th century Carter G. Woodson devoted himself to the early black history movement, an essential component of the proto (pre-Black Power era) black studies movement. Woodson foreshadowed modern black studies scholars in stressing that the study of African descendants be scholarly sound, creative, restorative, and, most important, directly relevant to the black community. He popularized black history with a variety of innovative strategies and vehicles, including Association for the Study of Negro Life outreach activities, Negro History Week, and a popular black history magazine. This article explores how the multi-talented Woodson democratized, legitimized, and popularized black history.

Benjamin Quarles (1904-96) had a significant impact on the teaching of African-American history. Quarles and John Hope Franklin provided a bridge between the work of historians such as Carter G. Woodson and the black history found in late-20th-century universities. Quarles grew up in Boston, attended Shaw University as an undergraduate, and received a graduate degree at the University of Wisconsin. He began in 1953 teaching at Morgan State College in Baltimore, where he stayed, despite a lucrative offer from Johns Hopkins.

Black history attempted to reverse centuries of ignorance. While black historians were not alone in advocating a new examination of slavery and racism in the United States, the study of African-American history has often been a political and scholarly struggle to change assumptions.

One of the foremost assumptions was that slaves were passive and did not rebel. For decades, historians sought to find explanations for this alleged reality. Eventually, a series of historians transformed the image of African-Americans, revealing a much richer and complex experience. Historians, such as Leon Littwack, showed how former slaves fought to keep their families together and struggled against tremendous odds to define themselves as free people. Others wrote of rebellions small and large.

In the Twenty-First Century, black history is regarded as mainstream and, by proclamation of President Jimmy Carter, is celebrated every February in the United States during "Black History Month." Proponents of black history believe that it promotes diversity, develops self-esteem, and corrects myths and stereotypes. Opponents argue such curricula are dishonest, divisive, and lack academic credibility and rigor.

Knowledge of black history

Surveys of 11th and 12th grade students and adults in 2005 show that American schools have made them very well informed about black history. Both groups were asked to name ten famous Americans, excluding presidents. Of the students, the three highest names were blacks: 67% named Martin Luther King, 60% Rosa Parks, and 44% Harriet Tubman. Among adults, King was 2nd (at 36%) and Parks was tied for 4th with 30%, while Tubman tied for 10th place with Henry Ford, at 16%. When distiguished historians were asked in 2006 to name the most prominent Americans, Parks and Tubman did not make the top 100.

Bibliography

Surveys

• Earle, Jonathan, and Malcolm Swanston. The Routledge Atlas of African American History (2000) excerpt and text search
• Franklin, John Hope, and Alfred Moss, From Slavery to Freedom. A History of African Americans, (2001), standard textbook; first edition in 1947 excerpt and text search
• Hine, Darlene Clark, Rosalyn Terborg-Penn and Elsa Barkley Brown, eds. Black Women in America - An Historical Encyclopedia, (2005) excerpt and text search
• Hine, Darlene Clark, et al. The African-American Odyssey (2 vol, 4th ed. 2007) textbook excerpt and text search vol 1
• Holt, Thomas C. ed. Major Problems in African-American History: From Freedom to "Freedom Now," 1865-1990s (2000) reader in primary and secondary sources
• Lowery, Charles D. and John F. Marszalek, eds. Encyclopedia of African-American Civil Rights: From Emancipation to the Present (1992) online edition
• Mandle, Jay R. Not Slave, Not Free: The African American Economic Experience since the Civil War (1992) online edition
• Painter, Nell Irvin. Creating Black Americans: African American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present. (2006), 480 pp survey
• Smallwood, Arwin D The Atlas of African-American History and Politics: From the Slave Trade to Modern Times (1997)

Slave era pre 1860

• Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (2000) ACLS E-book* Genovese, Eugene. Roll Jordan Roll (1974), highly iunfluential study of slavery excerpt and text search
• Horton, James Oliver. In hope of liberty: culture, community, and protest among northern free Blacks, 1700-1860 (1998) ACLS E-book
• White, Deborah Gray. Ar'n't I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South, (2nd ed. 1999)
• Wood, Peter H. Black majority: Negroes in colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (1975) ACLS E-book

Emancipation and Reconstruction Era: 1860-1890

see the longer Bibliography at Reconstruction

• Butchart, Ronald E. Northern Schools, Southern Blacks, and Reconstruction: Freedmen's Education, 1862-1875 (1980) onlineedition
• Cimbala, Paul A. and Trefousse, Hans L. (eds.) The Freedmen's Bureau: Reconstructing the American South After the Civil War. 2005.
• Click, Patricia C. Time Full of Trial: The Roanoke Island Freedmen's Colony, 1862-1867 (2001) online edition
• Crouch, Barry. The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Texans (1992)
• Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt. "The Freedmen's Bureau" (1901)] by leading black scholar online edition
• Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt. Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 (1935)
• Durrill, Wayne K. "Political Legitimacy and Local Courts: 'Politicks at Such a Rage' in a Southern Community during Reconstruction" in Journal of Southern History, Vol. 70 #3, 2004 pp 577-617 online edition
• Foner Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (1988), the standard history of Reconstruction.
• Gutman, Herbert G. The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 (1977)
• Hahn, Steven. A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (2003), 1865-1950 ACLS E-book
• Jones, Jacqueline. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (1985)
• Kolchin, Peter. First Freedom: The Responses of Alabama's Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction 1972.
• Litwack, Leon F. Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery. 1979,
• Oubre, Claude F. Forty Acres and a Mule: The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Land Ownership 1978.
• Quarles, Benjamin. The Negro in the Civil War'. (1953) by leading African American historian
• Richardson, Joe M. Christian Reconstruction: The American Missionary Association and Southern Blacks, 1861-1890 (1986).
• Howard N. Rabinowitz, Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865-1890 (1978)
• Span, Christopher M. "'I Must Learn Now or Not at All': Social and Cultural Capital in the Educational Initiatives of Formerly Enslaved African Americans in Mississippi, 1862-1869," The Journal of African American History, 2002 pp 196-222 online edition
• Ransom, Roger L. Conflict and Compromise. (1989), econometric history
• Oubre, Claude F. Forty Acres and a Mule. (1978).
• Rodrigue, John C. "Labor Militancy and Black Grassroots Political Mobilization in the Louisiana Sugar Region, 1865-1868" in Journal of Southern History, Vol. 67 #1, 2001 pp 115-45; online edition also in JSTOR
• Schwalm, Leslie A. "'Sweet Dreams of Freedom': Freedwomen's Reconstruction of Life and Labor in Lowcountry South Carolina," Journal of Women's History, Vol. 9 #1, 1997 pp 9-32 online edition
• Williamson, Joel. After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina during Reconstruction, 1861-1877 1965.

Jim Crow Era: 1890-1954

• Anderson, James D. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (1988) online edition
• Bayor, Ronald H. Race and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century Atlanta (1996)
• Brundage, W. Fitzhugh, ed Booker T. Washington and Black Progress: Up from Slavery 100 Years Later (2003)
• Bullock, Henry Allen. A History of Negro Education in the South: From 1619 to the Present (1967) ACLS E-book
• Cartwright, Joseph H. The Triumph of Jim Crow: Tennessee Race Relations in the 1880s (1976)
• Gatewood, Jr., Willard B. Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880-1920 (2000)
• Gosnell, Harold F. Negro politicians: the rise of Negro politics in Chicago, (1935, 1967) ACLS E-book
• Hahn, Steven. A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (2003), 1865-1950 ACLS E-book; also excerpt and text search
• Jones, Jacqueline. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (1985)
• Harlan. Louis R. Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856-1900 (1972) the standard biography, vol 1
• Harlan. Louis R. Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee 1901-1915 (1983), the standard scholarly biography vol 2 online edition vol 2
• Harlan. Louis R. Booker T. Washington in Perspective: Essays of Louis R. Harlan (1988) online edition
• Harlan. Louis R. "The Secret Life of Booker T. Washington." Journal of Southern History 37#3 (1971). pp 393-416 Documents Booker T. Washington's secret financing and directing of litigation against segregation and disfranchisement. in JSTOR
• McMurry, Linda O. George Washington Carver, Scientist and Symbol (1982) online edition
• Jones, Jacqueline. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (1985) excerpt and text search
• Lewis, David Levering. W. E. B. DuBois, 1868-1919: Biography of a Race (2 vol 1993, 2000). excerpt and text search vol 1, winner of Pulitzer Prize; W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century 1919-1963 (2000) excerpt and text search vol 2
• Logan, Frenise A. The Negro in North Carolina, 1876-1894 (1964),
• Logan, Rayford. The Betrayal of the Negro: From Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson (Originally Published as: The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir: 1877-1901) (1970) excerpt and text search
• McMillen, Neil R. Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow (1989).
• Meier, August. Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915: Racial Ideologies in the Age of Booker T. Washington (1963),
• Meier, August. "Toward a Reinterpretation of Booker T. Washington." 23 Journal of Southern History 22#2 (1957) in JSTOR
• Sterner, Richard. The Negro's share: a study of income, consumption, housing, and public assistance (1943), statistical analysis of 1930s ACLS E-book
• Walker, Juliet E. K. Encyclopedia of African American Business History (1999) online edition
• Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow (3d ed., 1974), in ACLS E-books
• Woodward, C. Vann. Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (1951) ACLS E-book
• Wintz, Cary D. African American Political Thought, 1890-1930: Washington, Du Bois, Garvey, and Randolph (1996) online edition

=Historiography and teaching

• Arnesen, Eric. "Up From Exclusion: Black and White Workers, Race, and the State of Labor History," Reviews in American History 26#1 March 1998, pp. 146-174 in Project Muse
• Dagbovie, Pero. The Early Black History Movement, Carter G. Woodson, and Lorenzo Johnston Greene (2007) excerpt and text search
• Dagbovie, Pero Gaglo. "Exploring a Century of Historical Scholarship on Booker T. Washington." Journal of African American History 2007 92(2): 239-264. Issn: 1548-1867 Fulltext: Ebsco
• Dorsey, Allison. "Black History Is American History: Teaching African American History in the Twenty-first Century." Journal of American History 2007 93(4): 1171-1177. Issn: 0021-8723 Fulltext: History Cooperative
• Ernest, John. "Liberation Historiography: African-American Historians before the Civil War," American Literary History 14#3, Fall 2002, pp. 413-443 in Project Muse
• Eyerman, Ron. Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity (2002) argues that slavery emerged as a central element of the collective identity of African Americans in the post-Reconstruction era.
• Fields, Barbara J. "Ideology and Race in American History," in J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson , eds., Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward (1982),
• Franklin, John Hope. "Afro-American History: State of the Art," Journal of American History (June 1988): 163-173. in JSTOR
• Goggin, Jacqueline. Carter G. Woodson: A Life in Black History (1993)
• Hall, Stephen Gilroy. "'To Give a Faithful Account of the Race': History and Historical Consciousness in the African-American Community, 1827-1915." PhD disseratation, Ohio State U. 1999. 470 pp. DAI 2000 60(8): 3084-A. DA9941339 Fulltext: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Harris, Robert L., "Coming of Age: The Transformation of Afro-American Historiography," Journal of Negro History 57 (1982): 107-121. in JSTOR
• Harris, Robert L., Jr. "The Flowering of Afro-American History." American Historical Review 1987 92(5): 1150-1161. Issn: 0002-8762 in Jstor
• Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks, "African-American Women’s History and the Metalanguage of Race," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 17 (1992): 251-274.
• Hine, Darlene Clark, ed. Afro-American History: Past, Present, and Future. (1986).
• Hine, Darlene Clark. Hine Sight: Black Women and the Re-Construction of American History (1994) excerpt and text search
• Hornsby Jr., Alton, et al. eds. A Companion to African American History. (2005). 580 pp. 31 long essays by experts covering African and diasporic connections in the context of the transatlantic slave trade; colonial and antebellum African, European, and indigenous relations; processes of cultural exchange; war and emancipation; post-emancipation community and institution building; intersections of class and gender; migration; and struggles for civil rights. ISBN 0-631-23066-1
• McMillen, Neil R. "Up from Jim Crow: Black History Enters the Profession's Mainstream." Reviews in American History 1987 15(4): 543-549. Issn: 0048-7511 in Jstor
• Meier, August, and Elliott Rudwick. Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915-1980 (1986)
• Nelson, Hasker. Listening For Our Past: A Lay Guide To African American Oral History Interviewing (2000) excerpt and text search
• Quarles, Benjamin. Black Mosaic: Essays in Afro-American History and Historiography (1988).
• Rabinowitz, Howard N. "More Than the Woodward Thesis: Assessing The Strange Career of Jim Crow", Journal of American History 75 (Dec. 1988): 842-56. in JSTOR
• Reidy, Joseph P. "Slave Emancipation Through the Prism of Archives Records" (1997) online
• Roper, John Herbert. U. B. Phillips: A Southern Mind (1984), on the white historian of slavery
• Trotter, Joe W. "African-American History: Origins, Development, and Current State of the Field," OAH Magazine of History 7#4 Summer 1993 online edition
• Wright, William D. Black History and Black Identity: A Call for a New Historiography (2002), proposes new racial and ethnic terminology and classifications for the study of black people and history. excerpt and text search

Primary Sources

• Berlin, Ira, ed. Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War (1995)
• Finkenbine, Roy E. Sources of the African-American Past: Primary Sources in American History (2nd Edition) (2003)
• Rawick, George P. ed. The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (19 vols., (1972) oral histories with ex-slaves conducted in 1930s by WPA
• Sernett, Milton C. African American Religious History: A Documentary Witness (1999) excerpt and text search
• Wright, Kai, ed. The African-American Archive: The History of the Black Experience Through Documents (2001)

External links

• Library of Congress - African American History and Culture
• Encyclopedia Britannica - Guide to Black History
• Tennessee Technological University - African-American History and Studies