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As Nathan Huggins once stated, altering American history to account fully for the nation's black voices would change the tone and meaning--the frame and the substance--of the entire story. Rather than a sort of Pilgrim's Progress tale of bold ascent and triumph, American history with the black parts told in full would be transmuted into an existential tragedy, closer, Huggins said, to Sartre's No Exit than to the vision of life in Bunyan. The relation between memory and history has received increasing attention both from historians and from literary critics. In this volume, a group of leading scholars has come together to examine the role of historical consciousness and imagination in African-American culture. The result is a complex picture of the dynamic ways in which African-American historical identity constantly invents and transmits itself in literature, art, oral documents, and performances. Each of the scholars represented has chosen a different "site of memory"--from a variety of historical and geographical points, and from different ideological, theoretical, and artistic perspectives. Yet the book is unified by a common concern with the construction of an emerging African-American cultural memory. The renowned group of contributors, including Hazel Carby, Werner Sollors, Vèvè Clark, Catherine Clinton, and Nellie McKay, among others, consists of participants of the five-year series of conferences at the DuBois Institute at Harvard University, from which this collection originated. Conducted under the leadership of Geneviève Fabre, Melvin Dixon, and the late Nathan Huggins, the conferences--and as a result, this book--represent something of a cultural moment themselves, and scholars and students of American and African-American literature and history will be richer as a result.
In the Jim Crow era, along with black churches, schools, and newspapers, African Americans also had their own history. Making Black History focuses on the engine behind the early black history movement, Carter G. Woodson and his Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH). Author Jeffrey Aaron Snyder shows how the study and celebration of black history became an increasingly important part of African American life over the course of the early to mid-twentieth century. It was the glue that held African Americans together as “a people,” a weapon to fight racism, and a roadmap to a brighter future. Making Black History takes an expansive view of the historical enterprise, covering not just the production of black history but also its circulation, reception, and performance. Woodson, the only professional historian whose parents had been born into slavery, attracted a strong network of devoted members to the ASNLH, including professional and lay historians, teachers, students, “race” leaders, journalists, and artists. They all grappled with a set of interrelated questions: Who and what is “Negro”? What is the relationship of black history to American history? And what are the purposes of history? Tracking the different answers to these questions, Snyder recovers a rich public discourse about black history that took shape in journals, monographs, and textbooks and sprang to life in the pages of the black press, the classrooms of black schools, and annual celebrations of Negro History Week. By lining up the Negro history movement’s trajectory with the wider arc of African American history, Snyder changes our understanding of such signal aspects of twentieth-century black life as segregated schools, the Harlem Renaissance, and the emerging modern civil rights movement.
In this landmark guide, nearly two dozen essays by scholars, educators, and museum leaders suggest the next steps in the interpretation of African American history and culture from the colonial period to the twentieth century at history museums and historic sites. This diverse anthology addresses both historical research and interpretive methodologies, including investigating church and legal records, using social media, navigating sensitive or difficult topics, preserving historic places, engaging students and communities, and strengthening connections between local and national history. Case studies of exhibitions, tours, and school programs from around the country provide practical inspiration, including photographs of projects and examples of exhibit label text. Highlights include: Amanda Seymour discusses the prevalence of "false nostalgia" at the homes of the first five presidents and offers practical solutions to create a more inclusive, nuanced history. Dr. Bernard Powers reveals that African American church records are a rich but often overlooked source for developing a more complete portrayal of individuals and communities. Dr. David Young, executive director of Cliveden, uses his experience in reinterpreting this National Historic Landmark to identify four ways that people respond to a history that has been too often untold, ignored, or appropriated—and how museums and historic sites can constructively respond. Dr. Matthew Pinsker explains that historic sites may be missing a huge opportunity in telling the story of freedom and emancipation by focusing on the underground railroad rather than its much bigger "upper-ground" counterpart. Martha Katz-Hyman tackles the challenges of interpreting the material culture of both enslaved and free African Americans in the years before the Civil War by discussing the furnishing of period rooms. Dr. Benjamin Filene describes three "micro-public history" projects that lead to new ways of understanding the past, handling source limitations, building partnerships, and reaching audiences. Andrea Jones shares her approach for engaging students through historical simulations based on the "Fight for Your Rights" school program at the Atlanta History Center. A exhibit on African American Vietnam War veterans at the Heinz History Center not only linked local and international events, but became an award-winning model of civic engagement. A collaboration between a university and museum that began as a local history project interpreting the Scottsboro Boys Trial as a website and brochure ended up changing Alabama law. A list of national organizations and an extensive bibliography on the interpretation of African American history provide convenient gateways to additional resources.
An introduction to the complex relationship between African Americans and the African continent What is an “African American” and how does this identity relate to the African continent? Rising immigration levels, globalization, and the United States’ first African American president have all sparked new dialogue around the question. This book provides an introduction to the relationship between African Americans and Africa from the era of slavery to the present, mapping several overlapping diasporas. The diversity of African American identities through relationships with region, ethnicity, slavery, and immigration are all examined to investigate questions fundamental to the study of African American history and culture.
Readers of American history and books on Abraham Lincoln will appreciate what Los Angeles Review of Books deems an "accessible book" that "puts a human face — many human faces — on the story of Lincoln’s attitudes toward and engagement with African Americans" and Publishers Weekly calls "a rich and comprehensive account." Widely praised and winner of the 2023 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, this book illuminates why Lincoln’s unprecedented welcoming of African American men and women to the White House transformed the trajectory of race relations in the United States. From his 1862 meetings with Black Christian ministers, Lincoln began inviting African Americans of every background into his home, from ex-slaves from the Deep South to champions of abolitionism such as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth. More than a good-will gesture, the president conferred with his guests about the essential issues of citizenship and voting rights. Drawing from an array of primary sources, White reveals how African Americans used the White House as a national stage to amplify their calls for equality. Even more than 160 years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln’s inclusion of African Americans remains a necessary example in a country still struggling from racial divisions today.
This souvenir book showcases some of the most influential and important treasures of the National Museum of African American History and Culture's collections. These include a hymn book owned by Harriet Tubman; ankle shackles used to restrain enslaved people on ships during the Middle Passage; a dress that Rosa Parks was making shortly before she was arrested; a vintage, open-cockpit Tuskegee Airmen trainer plane; Muhammad Ali's headgear; an 1835 Bill of Sale enslaving a young girl named Polly; and Chuck Berry's Cadillac. These objects tell us the full story of African American history, of triumphs and tragedies and highs and lows. This book, like the museum it represents, uses artifacts of African American history and culture as a lens into what it means to be an American.
Compiles information and interpretations on the past 500 years of African American history, containing essays on historical research aids, bibliographies, resources for womens' issues, and an accompanying CD-ROM providing bibliographical entries.
The companion volume to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture exhibit, opening in September 2021 With a Foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Eric Foner and a preface by veteran museum director and historian Spencer Crew An incisive and illuminating analysis of the enduring legacy of the post-Civil War period known as Reconstruction—a comprehensive story of Black Americans’ struggle for human rights and dignity and the failure of the nation to fulfill its promises of freedom, citizenship, and justice. In the aftermath of the Civil War, millions of free and newly freed African Americans were determined to define themselves as equal citizens in a country without slavery—to own land, build secure families, and educate themselves and their children. Seeking to secure safety and justice, they successfully campaigned for civil and political rights, including the right to vote. Across an expanding America, Black politicians were elected to all levels of government, from city halls to state capitals to Washington, DC. But those gains were short-lived. By the mid-1870s, the federal government stopped enforcing civil rights laws, allowing white supremacists to use suppression and violence to regain power in the Southern states. Black men, women, and children suffered racial terror, segregation, and discrimination that confined them to second-class citizenship, a system known as Jim Crow that endured for decades. More than a century has passed since the revolutionary political, social, and economic movement known as Reconstruction, yet its profound consequences reverberate in our lives today. Make Good the Promises explores five distinct yet intertwined legacies of Reconstruction—Liberation, Violence, Repair, Place, and Belief—to reveal their lasting impact on modern society. It is the story of Frederick Douglass, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Hiram Revels, Ida B. Wells, and scores of other Black men and women who reshaped a nation—and of the persistence of white supremacy and the perpetuation of the injustices of slavery continued by other means and codified in state and federal laws. With contributions by leading scholars, and illustrated with 80 images from the exhibition, Make Good the Promises shows how Black Lives Matter, #SayHerName, antiracism, and other current movements for repair find inspiration from the lessons of Reconstruction. It touches on questions critical then and now: What is the meaning of freedom and equality? What does it mean to be an American? Powerful and eye-opening, it is a reminder that history is far from past; it lives within each of us and shapes our world and who we are.
The African American influence on popular culture is among the most sweeping and lasting this country has seen. Despite a history of institutionalized racism, black artists, entertainers, and entrepreneurs have had enormous impact on American popular culture. Pioneers such as Oscar Michaeux, Paul Robeson, Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Langston Hughes, Bill Bojangles Robinson, and Bessie Smith paved the way for Jackie Robinson, Nina Simone, James Baldwin, Bill Russell, Muhammad Ali, Sidney Poitier, and Bill Cosby, who in turn opened the door for Spike Lee, Dave Chappelle, Dr. Dre, Jay-Z, Tiger Woods, and Michael Jordan. Today, hip hop is the most powerful element of youth culture; white teenagers outnumber blacks as purchasers of rap music; black-themed movies are regularly successful at the box office, and black writers have been anthologized and canonized right alongside white ones. Though there are still many more miles to travel and much to overcome, this three-volume set considers the multifaceted influence of African Americans on popular culture, and sheds new light on the ways in which African American culture has come to be a fundamental and lasting part of America itself. To articulate the momentous impact African American popular culture has had upon the fabric of American society, these three volumes provide analyses from academics and experts across the country. They provide the most reliable, accurate, up-to-date, and comprehensive treatment of key topics, works, and themes in African American popular culture for a new generation of readers. The scope of the project is vast, including: popular historical movements like the Harlem Renaissance; the legacy of African American comedy; African Americans and the Olympics; African Americans and rock 'n roll; more contemporary articulations such as hip hop culture and black urban cinema; and much more. One goal of the project is to recuperate histories that have been perhaps forgotten or obscured to mainstream audiences and to demonstrate how African Americans are not only integral to American culture, but how they have always been purveyors of popular culture.
Alphabetically-arranged entries from O to T that explores significant events, major persons, organizations, and political and social movements in African-American history from 1896 to the twenty-first-century.