Product Description
This book examines the social, economic, and cultural factors that have produced the current crisis in African American masculinity, tracing the development of concepts of manhood from pre-colonial West Africa through the Emancipation Proclamation in America. The study begins with an exploration of the cultural context of manhood and the social development of boys into men in West Africa which was based on the rites of passage and the mastery of such social skills as hunting and farming. Enslavement annihilated this unambiguous social status. Denied the possibility of fulfilling the necessary social roles of warrior, husband, father, and protector, African men were forced to redefine manhood, without the benefit of communal discussions. Hence, manhood to many enslaved African American men became an increasingly ambiguous and elusive concept, coupled with problematic notions of sexual performance, absolute patriarchal domination of the household, and the devaluation of commitments that impinge upon a man's independence. Narratives written between 1794 and 1863 reveal that by the end of slavery the concept had become a source of major conflict for African American men. This unique study focuses on the deterioration of the black male concept of manhood in 19th-century America and explores the dilemma of what it means to be black and male in America. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Everything as promised
Fast delivery. Great price. Item in EXCELLENT condition, as described. I am very pleased with my purchase and highly recommend this seller. ... Read more

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Wilma Dunaway contends that studies of the U.S. slave family are flawed by the neglect of small plantations and export zones and the exaggeration of slave agency. Using data on population trends and slave narratives, Dunaway identifies several profit-maximizing strategies that owners implemented to disrupt and endanger African-American families. These effective strategies include forced labor migrations, structural interference in marriages and childcare, sexual exploitation of women, shortfalls in provision of basic survival needs, and ecological risks. This book is unique in its examination of new threats to family persistence that emerged during the Civil War and Reconstruction. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The hell of slavery in the Appalachians
If you were a slave woman of past 12 in the Appalachians you had the shortest life expectancy of anyone in the United States.The malnutrition, overwork during and after pregnancy, the intensive breeding to sell your children, and the constant sexual terrorism by white masters, not to speak of the violence regularly rained down on slaves, the unsanitary living and food conditions, and the exposure to noxious industrial, mining, and agricultural biproducts you were subjected to would kill you quicker than any other category in the whole country!

Slavery in Appalachia was worse than slavery anywhere else in the United States, especially for women and children. Dunaway who has build an exhaustive database of information on the economic, social, and political history of Appalachia under slavery, shines her light not only on the family, but the general conditions that African Americans in the Mountain areas faced under slavery and during the years following emancipation.She shatters the myth that slavery was kinder, more gentler in these areas than it was on the big plantations of the cotton, rice, and sugar cane South.

Appalachia had higher concentrations of industrial slavery where slaves were owned or rented out to mines, mills, saltworks, railroads, canals, and other businesses that worked them almost to death, surrounded them with dangerous industrial pollutants and kept them in worse conditions than their mules and horses. Smaller Appalachian rural slave holders often had a lower margin and less resources than Southern plantations to house and feed their slaves, and often used more severe violence and torture to keep their slaves slaves. Moreover in the last three decades of slavery, Appalachian masters got more into the business of breeding slaves for the labor hungry market of the Deep South, forcing slave mothers to have children again and again and again regardless of their health, but sending them back into the fields and mills or to nurse white children when their own children needed their nuturing.

Dunaway makes an important contribution to the general study of slavery and African American history and health by describing the different nutritional needs Africans enslaved in American had as a result of how evolution had bred in biological resistance to tropical health hazards.She explains that these needs along with the harsh work Appalachian and all slaves faced means that their nutritional needs, especially for protein, were grader than average and that attempts to determine slave nutrition based on "average" nutritional needs for the US minimizes the degree of malnutrition among the slaves in general and Appalachian slaves in particular.

Nor did slavery end peacefully in Appalachia. Many areas in the mountains were exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation because they were in union-held territory or states that did not secede. Even after the war and after slavery was abolished nationally, Appalachian masters held Black folk in slavery sometimes as much as two years, after they were due their freedom.She also discusses the violence, starvation, and degredation African Americans faced in Appalachia in the immediate aftermath of Emancipation.

Dunaway is a meticulous researcher, a clear analyst, and a quiet good writer.She never tries to dumb down or popularize her work.Yet, she never engages into the obtuse and confused language some academics think is necessary to make a work sound more "theoretical" or scientific.

This book belongs in the homes of anyone concerned with Black, Appalachian, or slave history

The strength of slave women
Dunaway does a remarkable job of detailing the lives of Appalachian slaves.Full of facts and statistics this book is invaluable to the history student and captivating to the history buff.The author sheds light on the day to day lives of slaves, including marriage practices, truancy, chores and general resistance. Subtle resistance and coping strategies of slaves are included within each chapter. The reader should appreciate the information related specifically to women (and not merely the sexual exploitation aspect)since available information often refers to men or slaves in general. Dunaway's well organized information flows smoothly throught the book making it a good reference source while holding the readers interest as if a novel. As a college student I found this book to be very useful in writing history papers.As a historian it has become one of my favorite books.
... Read more

Product Description

The essays explore the loopholes and retreats employed and exploited by African American polemicists, poets, novelists, slave narrators, playwrights, short story writers, essayists, editors, educators, historians, clubwomen, and autobiographers during the nineteenth century. The contributions use comparative, transnational, literary historical, cultural studies, and Foucauldian perspectives to examine how apparent weakness was turned into strength, and the machinery of oppression into the keys to liberation.

John Cullen Gruesser teaches English and American studies at Kean University (U.S.A).

Hanna Wallinger teaches American studies at Salburg University (Austria).

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This calendar presents a historical and educational journey through the political past of the African American people, highlighting contributions made to social and economic change. ... Read more

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A historical calendar depicting great moments in history. ... Read more

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The groundbreaking book-and-audio set is available with MP3 audio cds: "powerful and intense" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) and "a minor miracle" (Ted Koppel, Nightline).

In 1998, The New Press published Remembering Slavery, a book-and-tape set that offered a startling first-person history of slavery. Using excerpts from the thousands of interviews conducted with ex-slaves in the 1930s by researchers working with the Federal Writers' Project, the astonishing audiotapes made available the only known recordings of people who actually experienced enslavement—recordings that had gathered dust in the Library of Congress until they were rendered audible for the first time specifically for this set.

Remembering Slavery received the kind of commercial attention seldom accorded projects of this nature—nationwide critical and review coverage as well as extensive coverage on prime-time television, including Good Morning America, Nightline, CBS Sunday Morning, and CNN. The tapes have been aired repeatedly on public radio stations across the country. Reviewers called the set "chilling . . . [and] riveting" (Publishers Weekly) and "something, truly, truly new" (The Village Voice). Now this groundbreaking set is available for a new generation of readers and listeners, offering remastered compact discs in MP3 format of the extensive original live recordings of interviews with former slaves.

The audio for this new edition is on MP3 compact discs. MP3 audio books on compact disc can be played on newer CD players that support MP3 technology and accept a standard-sized CD, and on any personal computer that has Apple's iTunes, Microsoft's Media Player or similar software. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Interested in having history come alive
Heard REMEMBERING SLAVERY. a series of actual
interviews from the 1920s and 1930s with 124 former slaves . . . they
have been remastered and the quality is remarkably good.

All touched me, though in particular, I doubt that I'll ever forget this one
quote: "If I had to do it again, I'd take a gun and shoot myself 'cause
you're nothing but a dog."

No matter how much you think you know about slavery , you'll
gain a greater appreciation of the wrongs that were perpetuated
by listening to this program . . . while the narration by actors such as
James Earl Jones, Debbie Allen and Louis Gossett, Jr. was
quite professional, I actually enjoyed hearing the actual
voices of many of the slaves much more.

If you are interested in having history come alive or you want
get a child or grandchild excited in the subject, get the
CD version of REMEMBERING SLAVERY . . . there's also
a book version, edited by Ira Berlin, Marc Davneau and Steve
F. Miller.

A Wealth of Knowledge
This book and CD are a wealth of knowledge.As a person of African descent, hearing how these persons were treated in a county supposedly for freedom and equality, not only was a horrified but very angry.
I will NEVER forgive this coutry for the ill treatment and hardship that racism and bigotry ahs and still is causing.

Must Have, Must Read, Must Listen
This is a must have, must read, must hear book. With the sixty-nine minute recording of the actual slave interviews from the 1930s, we have the only known recording of the actual voices of actual slaves telling their story. Hearing their voices is like being tele-ported back in time. The book itself also examines those same interviews, primarily through "Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex-Slaves."

Teachers and speakers will want their students and audiences to hear these voices. They give voice to the voiceless and bring alive these heroic survivors.

Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction , Spiritual Friends, and Soul Physicians.

Extremely Interesting but sometimes a Tearjerker!
For several years I've been reading powerful thought-provoking slave narratives.This is probably the most moving due to accompanying tapes of slaves discussing their thoughts and conditions when they were slaves.This book and tapes should be used in every high school American and World history classes. I recommend this book to everyone above the age of twelve.If you want to begin educating your children earlier about American history, specifically slavery have them read K.J. McWilliams books; The Journal of Darien Duff, an Emancipated Slave, The Diary of a Slave Girl, Ruby Jo, and The Journal of Leroy Jones, a Fugitive Slave. They are based on slave narratives such as this one and include many interesting photos as well as additional information.

Powerful and Enlightening
I am currently a high school student that read part of this for a Civil War class and let me say this is one powerful book.With people who were the slaves themselves tell you their stories, you learn alot about the antebellum period.I would recommend this book for any mature person due to the fact that some of these stories show the true horror of slavery. ... Read more

Product Description
There remain profound misconceptions about slavery still largely accepted by American historians: ú That there was no collective resistance to the enslavement system by captured Africans ú That self-liberated Africans mostly fled northward to freedom, rather than southward to the free territories of Georgia and Florida ú That the Seminole Wars were simply another set of Indian wars, rather than wars which marked the collective African resistance to the enslavement system ú That the records of the period (official documents, newspaper records, etc.) were accurate descriptions of fact, rather than censored materials produced in wartime, with a view to enhancing public support and calming public fears. Why has scholarship since this period failed to challenge the historical records, and shed the light of contemporary political science on their interpretation? It’s a truism that history is shaped by the victors, yet it is rare to find a situation of such near-erasure from contemporary awareness. Disguised as Indian wars, the Seminole Wars were the captured Africans? anti-colonial war of liberation waged from the free territories of the South. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Never Disappointed
As long as I've dealt with any of the vendors hosted by Amazon when purchasing books etc,I've always been satisfied. So this lastest purchase only validates my ongoing appreciation of/for Amazon and their vendors.

Great history regarding Resistance to Enslavement
I really like the content and conciseness of this book. It is not an in-depth volume on the subject but a comprehensive read to get a total picture of how enslaved Africans did not willing submit to the cruel and inhumane enterprise of the international slave trade. A wonderful addition to anyone's library and for those who are interested in how these atrocities were viewed by those who were oppressed.

Good collection - horrible editing!
I was thrilled to see that Peter Wood's valuable article, "'Twas a Negro Who Taught Them", was available in this collection.I bought the book solely for that reason.But the article has been so poorly edited that it is virtually unreadable in places.There are small typos in many places: 'in' is given as 'inn', and 'with' is presented as 'wiht', for example.But eight pages into the article, an entire line of text has been deleted.Two pages later, a line of text has been printed twice.For shame on the editor of this piece and the publisher of this volume! ... Read more

Product Description
In African American Visual Arts Celeste-Marie Bernier introduces readers to the sheer diversity, range, and experimental nature of African American art and artists and considers their relationship to key motifs within black culture and black experience in North America. The book traces the major developments in African American visual culture from its beginnings in the ceramics and textiles of slave artisans to later contributions in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to the fine arts and abstract expressionism, sculpture, installation art, video art, and computer graphics.

Bernier analyzes the work of twenty-one artists, including Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence, William Edmondson, Howardena Pindell, Charles Alston, Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, Betye Saar, Horace Pippin, and Kara Walker. She highlights key but frequently neglected and little-discussed black artists, situating their works within their specific historical and political contexts. Bernier provides a new understanding of their relationship to fundamental themes of the black experience such as black stereotyping and caricature in mainstream discourse, poverty in the inner city, and the division between the rural and the urban. ... Read more

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In this previously untold story of African American self-education, Heather Andrea Williams moves across time to examine African Americans' relationship to literacy during slavery, during the Civil War, and in the first decades of freedom. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Encouraging
Finally a book that acknowledges the grass efforts of the nameless folks who took up the grass roots call of "Each one, teach one" effort in the difficult post-Civil War era.As limiting as it was, there was nothing else in place to address the manmouth job of getting generations of now free African American literate.Interesting, provacative read.

Excellent descriptive work of African American education, but not powerfully interpretive
This research is a much needed contemporary history of the education of African Americans in the South from slavery through reconstruction and the beginnings of the common (public) school. It addresses the question from the local, 'grassroots' perspective--Williams explores how blacks sacrificed to build schools, pay for teachers, advocate for their own education, and how these individuals striving for freedom inspired a movement for education across the South. Poor whites, seeing blacks entering schools, were driven to anger, jealousy, violence, and imitation. Some whites enrolled in freedpeoples schools, as they believed them superior to the poor white schools in the neighborhood (if there were any).

Williams' work could definitely use an update and a broadening of perspective. Her research is education-centric--she does not consider broader social forces at play in her analysis, or if she does, she brings them up for a paragraph before moving on.In other words, she does not string her analysis along broader themes of race/ism, freedom, democracy, etc, all at play during this period. Education was in fact the very foundation of new conceptions of democracy: it was foundational to the ideology of freedom, and it was not coincidental that freedpeople associated education with a way up in the world. They were in some ways appropriating a republican ideology of free labor that valued education as foundational.

By not considering the broader context--the North, the new forces of industrialization and the changing meaning of labor, contestations of freedom, and so on, Williams' point is less forceful, less connected. However, as descriptive work, and as *the* contemporary (21st century) work on the subject, this is definitely must-reading.

A crucially important book
Books on education in the Reconstruction period are relatively rare; some of the more important ones--Northern Schools, Southern Blacks, and Reconstruction: Freedmen's Education, 1862-1875 (Contributions in American History) by Ronald Butchart and Soldiers of Light and Love: Northern Teachers and Georgia Blacks, 1865-1873 by Jacqueline Jones--are themselves getting old by now. Even another, updated book in the vein of Butchart's or Jones's would've been valuable, but Williams's book is different in both scope and focus, and it makes a vital contribution to educational history and the history of race relations.

For one thing, Williams's book focuses on black education broadly, not just on the school and not just in the Reconstruction period. Williams's book includes not only information on the freedpeople's schools that are the subject of other studies in post-Civil War education for African Americans but also on the "underground" learning taking place in the slave quarters and elsewhere prior to emancipation. Williams is also interested in more than the "Yankee schoolmarm," who has been frequently studied (though, admittedly, not that often in recent decades). Instead, taking the lead of such scholars as James Anderson (The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935), Williams focuses on black initiative in founding, running, and maintaining schools despite white indifference and hostility. While the northern missionary teacher is--rightly--a part of this story, so too are the "native" black teachers who taught other African Americans, formally and informally. While other books and articles have attested to ex-slaves' desire for learning, Williams's book goes to great lengths to illustrate it through a rich array of primary sources and extended examples. Where Self-Taught truly shines is in its highly detailed exploration of the intricacies of starting, staffing, and maintaining schools for African Americans in the immediate postwar period; equally impressive are her efforts to discuss the role of black teachers, both those from the North and those native to the South.

Williams is less successful, however, in contextualizing her study, both historically and historiographically, and the two aspects of the problem are closely related. Williams objects to Butchart's earlier study on the grounds that Butchart seems to her to be suggesting that northern whites imposed education on southern blacks. This is, in fact, a misreading of Butchart's main point. He argues not that southern African Americans had education imposed on them per se (he's quite willing to acknowledge that they themselves wanted education) but that schooling was, in essence, a weak lever for creating social justice, where land reform would've been a more powerful tool. Williams's misreading here points to the larger historical problem of her work: black education is treated mostly in a vacuum. While she does an admirable job of conveying the variety of white northern and southern attitudes to black education, Williams doesn't really explore the issue of what value, ultimately, education had for African Americans in the South. Clearly, it had personal importance, and there were clearly cases where education helped individuals, but Williams's book doesn't really grapple with the thorny question of whether education aided freedpeople economically and politically. Indeed, as the book ends and Reconstruction efforts wane, we get the distinct (and, I think, correct) impression that increasing levels of literacy and education generally weren't able to forestall generations of discriminatory laws and practices. In short, Williams treats education unproblematically, as if it were, ipso facto, as important as its seekers made it out to be, as if (were it attained) it would achieve the full panoply of goals African Americans (and many whites) believed it would, including civil, political, and perhaps even social equaliy between the races.

In general, Williams spends relatively little time explaining the nature of Reconstruction itself; this is a legitimate enough approach, but potential readers should be aware that terms such as "presidential Reconstruction" and "Redeemers" are going to be used without much gloss.

Ultimately, Self-Taught is a great contribution to historical literature and truly covers new ground (as well as old ground in an invigorating way). I would highly recommend this book, even as I would suggest that some of its premises be interrogated.

profound piece of scholarship
African American efforts to become literate during slavery is frequently associated with the experience of bondage in the U.S. The story of Frederick Douglass is emblematic of the enslaved person's attempt to assert, through literacy,his or her humanity. The written word represented to those trapped in the blight of slavery a means to free the mind. As Heather Williams so brilliantly documents in this seminal work, Self Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom, the black quest for literacy did not ebb with the abolishment of slavery. African American hunger for education in the wake of slavery, according to the author, was insatiable. Formerly enslaved men, women and children flocked to the standard of education with an enthusiam and determination that often invoked negative reactions from surrounding white populations. Reactions from Northern whites, who journeyed South to teach blacks, tended toward admiration.

The one theme threading its way through this book is agency. Agency is what African Americans demonstrated as they acted on their own initiative to steal the education denied them by slave owners. It was that same agency that blacks drew upon to create their own educational opportunities in the era of Reconstruction. Williams relays numerous accounts of blacks, partially to fully literate, teaching other blacks, building schools and trying to obtain resources such as books and writing material to keep the schools functional. Freed people did more than seek education. They sought to operate as active partners with Northerners in their own educatiional development. They refused to be sidelined or patronized. In several instances African American educational self reliance reaped rich dividends in the form of lasting institutions. The black soldiers of the 62nd and 65th United States Colored Infantry, for example, made financial contributions that established Lincoln University.

Williams highlights white Southern resentment of blacks' educational aspirations. Such resentment was accompanied by jealousy. Southern whites' fear of dominance by educated blacks generated violence.At the same time black eagarness for education, sparked a desire on the part of Southern whites for public schools. Public school systems, widespread in the North prior to the Civil War, were practically nonexistent in the south of the same period. That blacks contributed to the rise of public education in the south does not figure prominently, if at all in the landscape of American history. That a small minority of whites risked ridicule to attend black schools established by Northerners, due to the superior academic performance of black students, may not be widely known by scholars or laypersons.

The author reveals much in Self Taught that has remained hidden in the shadows of history. Drawing from a wealth of sources, Williams shatters the spurious idea that blacks, freshly emerged from slavery, were too helpless or too ignorant to embark upon a direction of individual and collective uplift in the form of literacy and education. Nor, as the author conveys, were they so cowed by subservience as to prevent them from making their voices heard, and their demands felt in the cause of advancement. Self Taught is an extremely interesting read. No full length study that I am aware of has focused exclusively on black education in the immediate years following the Civil War. Heather Williams has written a classic, one that should be required reading for college courses dealing with the Civil War and Reconstruction periods. ... Read more

Product Description
Part of The Library of Black America series

This collection of anecdotes, tales, jokes, toasts, rhymes, satire, riffs, poems, stand-up sketches, and snaps documents the evolution of African American humor over the past two centuries. It includes routines and writings from such luminaries as Bert Williams, Butterbeans & Susie, Stepin Fetchit, Moms Mabley, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Redd Foxx, Ishmael Reed, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, Martin Lawrence, and Chris Rock. This anthology includes classic stage routines, literary examples, and witty quotations presented in their entirety. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Wonderful Collection of Humor
This collection of African American humor will take you from the beginning to the end, approximately from the 1800s to present day.Learn how slaves coped with their hardships behind the guise of humor that was directed at their masters without them ever catching onto it.See how their humor changed when African Americans were integrated into American society, how fierce and forthright it became, and come all the way to present day to comedians like Chris Rock and Richard Pryor.This book has many parts and selections from various authors.Some of the early selections are difficult to follow, for the language is traditional slave language, but later selections are much easier.I would definitely recommend this to anyone who likes culture and likes to laugh. ... Read more

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Are African Americans part of the "Lost Tribes" mentioned in the Bible?Discover the true 10,000 year history of Black people -- and why others tried to erase it!What happened to the doctors, writers, scientists, builders, educators and spiritual leaders from Africa's Golden Age?And who did they really capture and sell into slavery?Are all African Americans suffering from mental illness because of this conspiracy to hide the truth? Read Psychic Trauma, and take the test on page 22 of this book and find out! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

History that was never told
This book was so informative. It left nothing unexplained. It is amazing how you didn't learn this in school and you never will. This book i sthe truth with interesting and intriguing facts.

Wonderful
This book is a book that i have personally would not have read were it not forced upon me for one of my classes. This book explains alot about the blanks and holes in the African American past that many Europeans have tried so hard to conceal. At first its hard to comprehend because as an African American you've been told were your place already is in society and that your past was one not to talk about. But in fact i never knew alot about my homeland of Africa. Its a very knowledgable book that i highly recommend. Its made me question alot about the African Past. Its made me question everything from the goverment to religion. Its also helped me to understand why white people have tried to conceal our past. I feel that if this book were mandatory for everyone to read the world would become such a better a place. Anyone thats African American should read this book and anyone else too.

Inspirational and Motivational
This is an inspirational book that should be in every school in the country.It explains the root cause of the black/white racial conflict in America.After reading this book, it becomes clear what was really lost by African people who were taken from their homes and families.No American history class is currently teaching that African people were here before Columbus, or that Africans ruled Spain for 800 years prior to the slave trade.No American history class is currently teaching that the African people who were brought here and forced into slavery were highly educated in African schools and universities, and were speaking and writing in several languages prior to their enslavement. This information would make a vast difference in how whites would view blacks and how blacks would view themselves.This is a book that must be read by blacks, whites and every other ethnic group and nationality.It is a very informative review of world history and a very insightful examination of human behavior.

third eye blind
This book covers a wide range of facts that have explained the origin of several negative stereotypes that africans are labeled with. The knowledge that I found in this book was never offered in any of my history classes.This book is a must read for anyone seeking the truth. I highly recommendthis book to all thirsty souls. ... Read more

Product Description
Ellen Craft (c. 1826-c. 1897) was a slave in Macon, Georgia. Her mother was a slave and her father was her mother's owner. She married William Craft (c1826-1900) in 1846. In 1848, Ellen daringly decided to use her light skin to pass as white in order to travel by train and boat to the North, with William posing as her slave. In order to carry out this plan, Ellen also had to pass as male since a single white woman would not have been travelling alone with a male slave at this time. Although they encountered several close calls along the way, the plan worked. Eight days after they began in Georgia, William and Ellen arrived in Philadelphia on Christmas day, 1848. In 1850, William and Ellen went to England for fear that the Fugitive Slave Bill would end their freedom. Their narrative, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom (1860), is one of the most compelling of the many fugitive slave narratives. The Crafts continued to make appearances abroad, and made a life there, including having four children. In 1868 they returned to the U. S. and eventually bought land in Georgia and opened an industrial school for young African Americans. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or, the escape of William and Ellen Craft from slavery
overall in good shape- more importantly got here on time for my class! ... Read more

Product Description
The preeminent history of African-Americans is now available in two volumes. From Slavery to Freedom charts the journey of African-Americans from their origins in the civilizations of Africa, through slavery in the Western Hemisphere, to their struggle for freedom in the West Indies, Latin America, and the United States. Still featuring numerous primary and secondary source boxes, and even more richly illustrated than in previous editions, FROM SLAVERY TO FREEDOM, maintains its status as one of the most important college textbooks in print. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The best detailed book on Slavery
If this is the same book...I read it when I was very young and it made a lasting impression on me.I have never forgotten the illustrations and the drawings of the inside of the ships that brought the African to America.I would be anxious to know the original copyright of this book.
Does anyone know? ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Mixed Review
This book provides a good overview of blacks (slave and free) in New York. It's a very good reference (encyclopedic) book.

My main problem with it is that Leslie M. Harris, the author, relies heavily (if not entirely) on secondary sources. The book, then, is nothing more than a patchwork of various other more scholarly works. Hence, finding the actual primary source (i.e. court decision, council minutes, etc) proves extremely difficult.

I do not recommend this book for advanced students. If, however, you're interested in an easy read and don't care about sources, this is the book for you. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An important contribution to African American and Native American History
As a descendant of African Slaves of the Cherokee Nation, this book has had a profound impact on my understanding of Oklahoma history, our respective African American and Native American legacies, and how assimilation is not a viable solution for any culture.The relationship between African Americans and Native Americans has been, from the time of forced removal, through the Civil War, reconstruction, land runs, statehood, oil discovery, miscegenation laws, civil rights, and subsequent history leading to the recent "vote," very complex indeed.

Person-of-Color Unity Denied
According to Halliburton, Cherokees had black slaves and did not treat them better than white masters would have.They discouraged interracial unions and would not allow part-black Cherokees to become tribal members.They did not have a pronounced abolitionist movement like whites had.They did not promote person-of-color unity; they clearly saw blacks as inferior.Further, whereas modern whites may be ashamed of their slaveowning ancestors, modern Cherokees are not.If the truth is the truth, I may have to let my P.C. assumptions go.Still, there are many things that make me skeptical about this book.

Unlike other historians who write, "This is the general trend and here is an example of it."Halliburton will give an example of Cherokee oppression of blacks and imply that the entire Cherokee Nation must have acted in the same way.I've forgotten the difference between inductive logic and deductive logic, but this author seems to use the method that modern Westerners have rejected.He brutally minimizes the impact of the Trail of Tears; you would think the Cherokees just wanted to have a fun adventure and wanted to come to census on moving, rather than being forced out by the very racist President Andrew Jackson and his administration.He points to many wealthy, male Cherokees slaveowners; did poor or female Cherokees feel differently about slavery?Halliburton cites numerous Cherokee laws against Cherokee-black miscegenation.However, white states had those same laws and it didn't stop white men from fathering children with black slave women.Why does Halliburton say nothing about sexual liaisons that must have gone on between Cherokee slaveowners and black female slaves?

Please remember that Halliburton is a black professor.He is writing for a black book series.His book is written in the 1970s, during the height of the Black Power Movement.He teaches in the Southwest.Was his purpose to say that black are more oppressed than the many Native Americans in the region where he lives?Was this book meant to ensure that blacks get the same or more benefits than what tribal members would receive in Southwestern colleges?Some legal thinkers assert that it's bad to play "the oppression sweepstakes" in which group X tries to maintain that they suffered more than group Y.Halliburton seems to not care about that concern.

The Cherokees were known for accepting white culture much more easily than other tribes.Couldn't having slaves be just one more example of that?Halliburton says little on how whites encouraged Natives and blacks to distrust each other.Maybe that is what is playing out here.If Halliburton is correct, than why do so many African Americans (myself included) claim to have Native American blood?Why did Katz's "Black Indians" book sell so well?Why do people of many races want black-red unity to exist?How is Halliburton's book helpful to modern projects to encourage black-red unity?Who benefits from his research and absolutist descriptions?

This book frustrates me so badly, even as I try to keep an open mind toward what the author is saying. ... Read more