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A good book that is much more than it seems to be
White and White provide a great and useful book not only about slavery, but about African American culture as it emerged, developed itself and extended itself during the years of bondage. Using sound as their guide, they explore not just music, but speech, not just speech, but cries of agony and protest, about the noise instruments, dance, work, love, and death bring.As such they provide many explanations of how the variety of African cultures contributed to the growth of African American culture, how that culture has enabled us to survive, thrive, and contribute mightily the African, North American, and world culture.

This is a useful and practical book.As I type, I am in the home of a friend who is an accomplished jazz and blues singer who is working out a blues to sing at a memorial meeting for the songwriter whowrote it.Serious stuff.The ideas about the nature of African American expression in general, musical and vocal expression in particular, and even what we do when people pass here, animate both the ideas that come to me, to her, and her sister, and memories on how to do this both from musical sources and our grandparents.This is that kind of book.

The level of scholarship here is excellent. Everything is noted well, as such it provides an entryway to folks looking to get into serious sources on African American history, culture, and life.I like the fact that they refer to the 1930s WPA interviews with survivors of slavery as the "ex-slave" interviews instead of slave narratives as others do.

Finally, as a writer myself, I am completely bowled over by their ability to present such a full exposition of these questions, clear in the issues of Black studies, cultural studies, music, and the growing discourse of "everyday life," while using clear and vibrant language. You need not be a scholar or have a dictionary handy to read it and understand it. It is a compelling book that I could not put down and finished the day I started it.

I know I will read it again and again.

The book comes with an 18-track CD of source material chiefly taken from 1930s recordings by Lomax and other folklorists, although there is some material from as late as the 1970s.The CD focuses on aspects of African American folk expression that are usually not known to those who claim to be knowledgeable of African American culture: field hollars, sermons, work songs.

I emphasize that this book is not just about music, but about African American being and life.I emphasize that this book pictures the horror and devastation of slavery and our resistance and triumph of it, but illustrates what and how we do things now.

If you can't buy this book, get one from the library and save your money until you can have one of your own.

A fascinating soundscape
In West African tradition, sound making is functional, part and parcel of daily life, integral to most activities: working, celebrating, praying, mourning, placating, criticizing or just passing time. It's a tradition that was carried to the New World on slave ships, a tradition which enthralled, amused, repelled or even terrified white listeners...often simultaneously.

This book goes beyond the music created by enslaved Africans/African Americans (such as work songs and spirituals) to explore other forms of sound expression (including sermons, drumming, field hollers and storytelling) placed within a historical context to create a soundscape of African American slave life from the 1700's to the 1850's.

The written sources generally fall into two broad categories: the written observationsof whites (letters, journal entries, and newspaper articles by travelers, missionaries, even slave owners themselves) and the testimony of former slaves collected by the WPA Federal Writer's Project during the 1930's.

With only three exceptions, the sound sources on the 18-track CDare field recordings by John, Ruby and/or Alan Lomax from the late 1930's. By that point, the sounds had been "tainted" by pop culture (many are the times I have tracked down one of my father's rural childhood favorites from the 1920's, only to discover that this "old folk song" his grandma sang was actually an 1890's parlor tune) but alas, this is as close as we're going to get to listening in on a time which preceded sound reproduction devices. And as there are few things more frustrating than trying to understand sound by reading about it, the CD alone would be worth the price of the book.

The book is written in a nonlinear style, perhaps reflecting the subject matter which is itself quilt-like: slaves were constantly creating and recreating from the sound materials at hand, materials which often were not even recognized as such by white listeners. This nonlinear style could make the book a bit difficult to use for reference purposes, but fortunately it is well indexed. This fascinating soundscape is recommended for anyone interested in African American music in general, or the era of slavery in particular.

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Incorporating significant and at times controversial literature on questions about the institution of slavery and the social and cultural response of the blacks to their enslavement, this collection reflects recent investigation, offering thirteen readings, eight of them new to this edition, from the most important and stimulating works. ... Read more

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This book brings together the Black Laws of the Old Northwest (now the states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin) for the first time, thereby providing a documentary history of racial discrimination in this free territory. The documents in the volume include statutes, legislative reports and resolutions, and petitions and memorials produced by the state legislatures, government agencies, or concerned citizens. After a brief prologue, the documents are organized by state. Within each state they are placed in sets of documents of specific topics such as immigration laws, welfare and public education laws, and jury and testimony laws. ... Read more

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From the colonial period through the early nineteenth century, Father Thomas J. Murphy writes a compelling chronology and in depth analysis of Jesuit slaveholding in the state of Maryland. ... Read more

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"Masters and Statesmen" delineates a provocative set of parallels between the proslavery argument, concepts of political representation, dueling, the theory and practice of political parties, and secession in the American South. "Slavery in the antebellum South", Kenneth Greenberg writes, "was intimately connected to a distinct set of political values and practices. Ultimately these... helped shape the form and content of conflict with the North." To assert their honor and their power, Southerners rose up against the Union; secession came to be seen, paradoxically, as the only way for the South to free itself from slavery. ... Read more

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Many 19th and 20th century historians have argued that Northern slavery was mild and that master/slave relations were relatively harmonious. Yet, Northern slavery, like Southern, was characterized by the conflict between the masters' desire to control their slaves and the slaves' resistance to this domination. For a variety of political, social, and intellectual reasons, 19th and 20th century historians ignored this inherent conflict in discussions of Northern slavery. Fitts' research focuses on how and why historians sanitized the history of slavery in Narragansett, Rhode Island, and then shows the inadequacy of these interpretations by examining several of the planters' and slaves' conflicting strategies of control and resistance.
Topics include how planters used physical punishment, legislation, and the threat of sale in an attempt to control their slaves, and how slaves resisted through violence, running away, and non-violent crime. Fitts also examines the plantation landscape as a site of symbolic contestation and includes a chapter on slave names.
(Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University, 1995; revised with new preface) ... Read more

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Black slave ownership is a neglected area in the annals of American history. This work illustrates and traces the pattern that black slave ownership took in New York City, from its documented inception in 1661 to its demise after 1830. In New York City the phenomena of black slave ownership may be understood in the classic sense as "benevolent" slave holdings as defined by Carter G. Woodson. The social and material culture histories included in this work provide a unique view of colonial New Amsterdam and New York City. ... Read more

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A study of both the legislation pertaining to runaway slaves and the individual slave uncovers some previously ignored issues from a legal standpoint, and also highlights the efforts made by slaves in the 18th century to confront these controls. The profile presents new research on the legal settin ... Read more

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This study analyzes legislation governing black life in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The years from 1664 to 1712 witnessed the formative era of slavery in the middle colonies, and by the beginning of the 18th century, specific laws governing African Americans were passed.The long range effects of the Insurrection of 1712 (which took the lives of nine whites and critically wounded five others) and the "Negro Conspiracy of 1741" produced extensive slave codes in New York and New Jersey. Pennsylvania took the more subtle approach of high tariffs, starting a tariff war against slavery.
Free blacks suffered under the harsh slave codes, as laws which restricted the movement of slaves also restricted the movement of free African Americans. Slaves were considered property protected by law, but free blacks were denied even this minor protection. Fear of insurrection led New York City, Albany, and Philadelphia to pass restrictive legislation. The greatest obstacle to freeing slaves was legislation requiring manumission bonds.As a result of a diversified economy, African Americans performed virtually every type of labor in the frontier communities of the middle colonies, and developed more skills than their southern counterparts. Eventually, the influx of whitesprovided cheap day labor that reduced dependency upon slave labor.
(Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1969; revised with new preface and foreword) ... Read more

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Frederick Douglass' Leadershop role in the anit-slavery struggle is well known.Even so, much about his life and his role in the black liberation movement is unknown.Wu Jin-Ping reevaluates Douglass' place in the history of the black liberation movement, paying particular attention to Doublass' impact on other black leaders, and to Douglass' Legitimate Reform Strategy. ... Read more

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Jin-Ping makes a vibrant contribution to Douglass scholarshi
This text was useful to me in my recent research on the relationship between the U.S. Constitution and slavery from 1842-1861.It is certainly not the most thorough or detailed analysis of Douglass' life, especially when one considers that Douglass wrote more in-depth accounts of his own life than any future scholar would.However, it is quite useful in that it aptly catalogues the political shifts which Douglass underwent in his life and the impact of his ideas on American and European society.
Jin-Ping's text narrates Douglass' shift from radical, anti-constitutional abolitionist to Lincoln supporter adeptly.Douglass' activism was particularly important in that he was the most prominent anti-slavery orator who actually experienced slavery, and that he always walked a fine line between simple anti-slavery spokesman and revolutionary.If you are looking for an in-depth account of Douglass' life, read one of his autobiographies.However, if you are looking for a fascinating analysis of his politics and its impact, Jin-Ping's work will suit you well. ... Read more

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For more than twenty years David Brion Davis has been recognized as a leading authority on the moral and ideological responses to slavery in the Western world. From Homicide to Slavery, Davis's first book of collected essays, brings together selections reflecting his wide-ranging interests in colonial history, Afro-American history, the social sciences, and American literature.The essays are interconnected by Davis's central concern with violence, irrationality, and the definition of moral limits during a period when Americans believed they were breaking free from historical constraints and acquiring new powers of self-perfection.Topics range from a socially revealing murder trial in 1843 to debates over capital punishment, movements of counter-subversion, the iconography of race, the cowboy as an American hero, the portrayal of violence in American literature, the historiography of slavery, and the British and American antislavery movements. ... Read more

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Before the Civil War, upstate New York earned itself a nickname: the burned-over district.African Americans were few in upstate New York, so this book focuses on reformers in three predominately white communities.At the cutting edge of revolutions in transportation and industry, these ordinary citizenstried to maintain a balance between stability and change. ... Read more

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Examines the role of African Americans in the largest abolitionist organization in the US, the American Missionary Association, and its precursor, the Union Missionary Society, during the generation before the Civil War. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or. ... Read more

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This text clarifies the institution of slavery in its historical context. It encompasses the human implications of slavery and its practices, and emphasizes the distinguished and disreputable elements on both sides of the slavery relationship, and in every part of the United States. ... Read more

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A in this class
the material was for a class but after reading it I gained more than I was to gain. Great combination of Douglass, Washington and Dubois... 3 geniuses with their mind set of slavery and how to live the the life after it. ... Read more