A Companion to African American History

A Companion to African American History is a collection of original and authoritative essays arranged thematically and topically, covering a wide range of subjects from the seventeenth century to the present day.

• Analyzes the major sources and the most influential books and articles in the field
• Includes discussions of globalization, region, migration, gender, class and social forces that make up the broad cultural fabric of African American history

Notes on the Contributors x

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1
Alton Hornsby, Jr

Part I Africa and Other Roots 3

1 Life and Work in West Africa 5
Augustine Konneh

2 Africans in Europe prior to the Atlantic Slave Trade 23
Maghan Keita

3 The African and European Slave Trades 48
Walter C. Rucker

4 Africans in the Caribbean and Latin America: The Post-Emancipation Diaspora 67
Frederick D. Opie

Part II Africans in Early North America 87

5 Ethnicity, Nationality, and Race in Colonial America 89
Jeffrey Elton Anderson

6 Not Chattel, Not Free: Quasi-Free Blacks in the Colonial Era 105
Antonio F. Holland and Debra Foster Greene

7 Africans and Native Americans 121
Tiya Miles and Barbara Krauthamer

Part III In the House of Bondage 141

8 Origins and Institutionalization of American Slavery 143
Jason R. Young

9 Labor in the Slave Community, 1700–1860 159
Frederick C. Knight

10 Spirituality and Socialization in the Slave Community 176
Jason R. Young

11 Slave Rebels and Black Abolitionists 199
Stanley Harrold

Part IV: Transculturation 217

12 The Americanization of Africans and the Africanization of America 219
Samuel T. Livingston

13 African Americans and an Atlantic World Culture 235
Walter C. Rucker

Part V: The Civil War, Emancipation, and the Quest for Freedom 255

14 African Americans and the American Civil War 257
Oscar R. Williams III and Hayward “Woody” Farrar

15 Jim Crowed – Emancipation Betrayed: African Americans Confront the Veil 271
Charles W. McKinney, Jr and Rhonda Jones

Part VI: The Maturation of African American Communities and the Emergence of Independent Institutions 283

16 African American Religious and Fraternal Organizations 285
David H. Jackson, Jr

17 The Quest for “Book Learning”: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom 295
Christopher M. Span and James D. Anderson

18 The Growth of African American Cultural and Social Institutions 312
David H. Jackson, Jr

19 African American Entrepreneurship in Slavery and Freedom 325
Anne R. Hornsby

20 The Black Press 332
Shirley E. Thompson

Part VII: African Americans and Wars “For Democracy” 347

21 The Black Soldier in Two World Wars 349
Hayward “Woody” Farrar

22 Identity, Patriotism, and Protest on the Wartime Home Front, 1917–19, 1941–5 364
Hayward “Woody” Farrar

Part VIII: Gender and Class 379

23 Gender and Class in Post-Emancipation Black Communities 381
Angela M. Hornsby

24 African American Women since the Second World War: Perspectives on Gender and Race 395
Delores P. Aldridge

25 Striving for Place: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) People 412
Juan J. Battle and Natalie D. A. Bennett

Part IX: Migration, Renaissance, and New Beginnings 447

26 Exodus from the South 449
Mark Andrew Huddle

27 Development, Growth, and Transformation in Higher Education 463
Abel A. Bartley

28 Identity, Protest, and Outreach in the Arts 476
Julius E. Thompson

Part X: Searching for Place 497

29 Searching for a New Freedom 499
Hasan Kwame Jeffries

30 “Race Rebels”: From Indigenous Insurgency to Hip-Hop Mania 512
Marcellus C. Barksdale and Samuel T. Livingston

31 Searching for Place: Nationalism, Separatism, and Pan-Africanism 529
Akinyele Umoja

Index 545

"This recent addition to the Blackwell Companions to American History series attests to the maturity of African American history as a discipline and its movement from the margins of academia to its role as a central component of the historical profession ... [It] stands as a useful introduction to the study of African American history and its development. No doubt, students will benefit from this exposure to the breadth of African American historiography."
Journal of Southern History

"Provide[s] good introductions to the writing on the subject ... just the right balance between historiography and a survey incorporating quotations and illustrations."
History

“A Companion to African American History is a valuable contribution of original essays. Its comprehensive coverage of themes and topics make this an important volume and essential reading for scholars, students, and general interest readers.”
Darlene Clark Hine, Northwestern University

“Professor Hornsby has assembled a remarkable array of scholars whose essays tell the story of African Americans from African roots to present day struggles for identity and a place in American society. These exceptional essays illustrating the critical role that race and African American culture played in forming American culture are essential reading for anyone seeking to understand America.”
James Oliver Horton, George Washington University

Alton Hornsby, Jr is Fuller E. Callaway Professor of History at Morehouse College, and former editor of the Journal of Negro History. He is the author of Milestones in 20th Century Black History (1993), and Chronology of African American History (2nd edition, 1997). A Companion to African American History is a collection of original and authoritative essays arranged thematically and topically, covering a wide range of subjects from the seventeenth century to the present day. From their origins in West Africa on the eve of slave trading, through slavery itself and its abolition in the turmoil of the Civil War, and then over the rest of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, as they struggled for freedom, identity, and place, African Americans occupy a central role in their country’s history. This volume surveys the scholarly literature in African American history and provides a guide to the research, analyses, and various interpretations and perspectives that historians have developed over the past fifty years.

Each essay pays particular attention to geographical features as well as conceptual and methodological issues. In this volume, globalization, region, migration, gender, class, and social forces have been knitted into the broad cultural fabric of African American history. With this Companion, readers now have a complete source to the most recent theories and explanations for the changing contours of African American life.