African-American history

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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.

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 Klu 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.[1]

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.[2]


Bibliography

Surveys

  • Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (2000)
  • Finkenbine, Roy E. Sources of the African-American Past: Primary Sources in American History (2nd Edition) (2003)
  • Franklin, John Hope, and Alfred Moss, From Slavery to Freedom. A History of African Americans, (2001), standard textbook; first edition in 1947
  • Hine, Darlene Clark, Rosalyn Terborg-Penn and Elsa Barkley Brown, eds. Black Women in America - An Historical Encyclopedia, (2005)
  • Hine, Darlene Clark, et al. The African-American Odyssey (2nd ed. 2002) textbook
  • 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
  • Arwin D Smallwood, The Atlas of African-American History and Politics: From the Slave Trade to Modern Times (1997)
  • Walker, Juliet E. K. Encyclopedia of African American Business History (1999) online edition

Emancipation and Reconstruction Era: 1860-1890

see the longer Bibliography at Reconstruction

  • Bentley George R. A History of the Freedmen's Bureau (1955)
  • Butchart, Ronald E. Northern Schools, Southern Blacks, and Reconstruction: Freedmen's Education, 1862-1875 (1980) onlineedition
  • Carpenter, John A. Sword and Olive Branch: Oliver Otis Howard (1999) online edition
  • 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.
  • Gerteis, Louis S. From Contraband to Freedmen: Federal Policy toward Southern Blacks, 1861-1865 (1973).
  • Hahn, Steven. A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (2003)
  • 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,
  • Morris, Robert C. Reading, 'Riting, and Reconstruction: The Education of Freedmen in the South, 1861-1870 1981.
  • 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
  • Slave Emancipation Through the Prism of Archives Records (1997) by Joseph P. Reidy
  • Richardson, Joe M. Christian Reconstruction: The American Missionary Association and Southern Blacks, 1861-1890 1986.
  • Richter, William L. Overreached on All Sides: The Freedmen's Bureau Administrators in Texas, 1865-1868 1991.
  • 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
  • Stampp, Kenneth M. The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877. (1965)
  • 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.
  • Freedmen's Bureau in Texas

Primary sources

Jim Crow: 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)
  • Cartwright, Joseph H. The Triumph of Jim Crow: Tennessee Race Relations in the 1880s (1976)
  • 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),
  • Fredrickson, George M. The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817-1914 (1971),
  • Gatewood, Jr., Willard B. Black Americans and the White Man's Burden, 1898-1903 (1975)
  • Gatewood, Jr., Willard B. Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880-1920 (2000)
  • Hahn, Steven. A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (2003)
  • 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
  • Linda O. Mcmurry. George Washington Carver, Scientist and Symbol (1982)
  • Jones, Jacqueline. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (1985)
  • Lewis, David Levering. W. E. B. DuBois, 1868-1919: Biography of a Race (1993). vol 1, winner of Pulitzer Prize; W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century 1919-1963 (2000) 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)
  • 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
  • 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)
  • Cary D. Wintz, African American Political Thought, 1890-1930: Washington, Du Bois, Garvey, and Randolph (1996)


=Historiography and teaching

  • 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
  • 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.
  • 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

  • Hine, Darlene Clark. Hine Sight: Black Women and the Re-Construction of American History (1994)
  • Meier, August, and Elliott Rudwick. Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915-1980 (1986)
  • 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
  • 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

  • Rawick, George P. ed. The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (19 vols., (1972) oral histories with ex-slaves conducted in 1930s by WPA
  • Wright, Kai, ed. The African-American Archive: The History of the Black Experience Through Documents (2001)

See also

External links


notes

  1. ↑ Pero Gaglo Dagbovie, "Making Black History Practical and Popular: Carter G. Woodson, the Proto Black Studies Movement, and the Struggle for Black Liberation." Western Journal of Black Studies 2004 28(2): 372-383. Issn: 0197-4327 Fulltext: Ebsco
  2. ↑ Abul Pitre and Ruth Ray, "The Controversy Around Black History." Western Journal of Black Studies 2002 26(3): 149-154. Issn: 0197-4327 Fulltext: Ebsco
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