To Make Our World Anew
Volume I: A History of African Americans to 1880
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- $29.99
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- $29.99
Publisher Description
The two volumes of Kelley and Lewis's To Make Our World Anew integrate the work of eleven leading historians into the most up-to-date and comprehensive account available of African American history, from the first Africans brought as slaves into the Americas, right up to today's black filmmakers and politicians. This first volume begins with the story of Africa and its origins, then presents an overview of the Atlantic slave trade, and the forced migration and enslavement of between ten and twenty million people. It covers the Haitian Revolution, which ended victoriously in 1804 with the birth of the first independent black nation in the New World, and slave rebellions and resistance in the United States in the years leading up to the Civil War. There are vivid accounts of the Civil War and Reconstruction years, the backlash of the notorious "Jim Crow" laws and mob lynchings, and the founding of key black educational institutions, such as Howard University in Washington, D.C. Here is a panoramic view of African-American life, rich in gripping first-person accounts and short character sketches that invite readers to relive history as African Americans have experienced it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A detailed survey of African-American life before the 21st century, this volume contains 10 essays by academics, arranged chronologically to provide an invigorating history from the Middle Passage to the election of Maxine Waters to the House of Representatives and the death of Amadou Diallo at the hands of New York City police officers in 1999. In a chapter covering the Great Depression and WWII, William Trotter reveals that blacks called the New Deal "the raw deal" and the National Recovery Act "the Negro Run Around." Noralee Frankel's "Breaking the Chains" explains how, after the Civil War, many black farmers became landless sharecroppers in the shadow of federal programs designed to alleviate the suffering of the poor. James R. Grossman documents how "curriculum and school leadership reflected different notions of how black Americans could attain full citizenship in a nation seemingly committed to their subordination." Other offerings discuss "rent parties," the transformation of the union movement from a roadblock to a facilitator of black rights, the development of Roosevelt's "Black Cabinet," Marcus Garvey, Jimi Hendrix and The Cosby Show. The scholarship sparkles throughout, offering not just the "what," but also the "why" of the social, cultural and political events shaping the present. Editors Kelley and Lewis have synthesized the vast knowledge of contemporary African-American studies into a single, fluid volume that provides an intelligent introduction to the history's intricacies, divisions and accomplishments.
