Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America, 1619-1962
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4.2 • 5 Ratings
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Publisher Description
The black experience in America--starting from its origins in western Africa up to 1961--is examined in this seminal study from a prominent African American figure. The entire historical timeline of African Americans is addressed, from the Colonial period through the civil rights upheavals of the late 1950s to 1961, the time of publication. "Before the Mayflower" grew out of a series of articles Bennett published in Ebony magazine regarding "the trials and triumphs of a group of Americans whose roots in the American soil are deeper than the roots of the Puritans who arrived on the celebrated Mayflower a year after a 'Dutch man of war' deposited twenty Negroes at Jamestown." Bennett's history is infused with a desire to set the record straight about black contributions to the Americas and about the powerful Africans of antiquity. While not a fresh history, it provides a solid synthesis of current historical research and a lively writing style that makes it accessible and engaging reading. After discussing the contributions of Africans to the ancient world, "Before the Mayflower" tells the history of "the other Americans," how they came to America, and what happened to them when they got here. The book is comprehensive and detailed, providing little-known and often overlooked facts about the lives of black folks through slavery, Reconstruction, America's wars, the Great Depression, and the civil rights movement. This is a classic in examining the history of African Americans from their African past through the Revolutionary and Civil Wars to contemporary problems and accomplishments.
Customer Reviews
Before the Mayflower
“Power concedes nothing without a demand.” Frederick Douglass
This is one of the most comprehensive books on people of African descent presence in America and how those people arrived. Mr Bennett certainly did his research.
There are only two races, that I can comprehend that were not immigrants to the United States — the Native Americans (Indians) and African Americans, who came under slavery or were born into slavery on US soil. In each case, the majority of European whites marginalized these groups through force and terror.
Most blacks are assumed to be West Africans, but wars and invasions have taken many of the Africans from country of Sudan and Timbuktu in Mali collapsed under weight of the twin religious forces of Christianity and Islam (according to W.E.B. DuBois). With the collapse of these cultures, so went the African people.
Here in the United States, blacks arrived with the first European explorers as slaves. There were other races that were slaves across the world, but blacks were singled about as the most adaptable to human trafficking on a large scale.
According to Bennett, the European slave traveler began in 1444 and continued for more than 400 years. There were many culprits who contributed to slave trade. The difference between ancient slavery, a consequence of war and modern slavery was race, with Moslem enslaving the darker captives across the Sahara.
For those whites that came to America, there was system of the indentured servant, where their freedom could be bought.
Bennett makes points about slavery and the role of religion in fostering it and justifying it. He also addresses just human greed and savagery in perpetuation.
The author documents the many instances of slavery in early formation of the United States, and its acceptance in order to get Southern colonies to join the first Republic. In fact, there were slaves and some free blacks who fought for the independence of whites from the yoke of colonial rule of Britain. These men, however were not officially allowed to enlist in the colonial US Army. Slaves were not to be trusted with weapons and the Army was considered a white man’s domain in the European tradition.
This book chronicles the struggles of blacks to belong and participate in the economic, political and social life of the United States. It speaks of laws in the North, South and Middle United States that were designed to thwart the advancement of blacks in any quarter of the country. There were laws written every where from what neighborhoods could lived in, to schools, to who you could marry.
Author addresses the great issues that press the United States — race, gender, religion, law and politics. He discusses the evolution of term Jim Crow and how laws, especially in South were enacted to keep blacks “in their place.” In fact, many of the apartheid laws of South Africa were modeled after the Southern Jim Crow laws.