Articles and databases
- Bibliography of Slavery and World Slaving The Bibliography of Slavery and World Slaving is a research tool for discovering journal articles, dissertations, theses and other kinds of secondary academic sources about slavery. It does not contain full text, but having discovered a source, it might be possible to obtain it through OneSearch or Interlibrary Loan. BSWS is hosted by the Virginia Center for Digital History at the University of Virginia.
Encyclopedias and other reference resources
African Americans by
Great Lives from History: African Americans covers more than 770 people from colonial times through the present, offering fascinating perspectives on black American history.
Call Number: General Collection, E185.96 .G736 2011Publication Date: 2011
African American National Biography by
A landmark scholarly achievement publishing February 2008 in 8 volumes -- Order early and save $200! The African American National Biography will present history through a mosaic of the lives of thousands of individuals, illuminating the abiding influence of persons of African descent on the life of this nation from the arrival of Esteban in Spanish Florida in 1529 through to notable blackcitizens of the present day. Available initially as a handsome 8-volume set containing over 4,000 entries written and signed by distinguished scholars, the AANB will continue to grow along with the field of African American biographical research, and continuous updates to the online edition will bring the total number of livesprofiled to more than 5,000. This is a remarkable achievement, an eightfold increase over the number of biographies contained in 2004's award-winning and substantial African American Lives. In addition to Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King Jr., the AANB will include a wide range of African Americans from all time periods and all walks of life, both famous and nearly-forgotten. In the words of AANB editor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "Thesestories, long buried in the dusty archives of history, will never be lost again. And that is what scholarship in the field of African American Studies should be all about."
Call Number: General Collection, E185.96 .A4466 2008ISBN: =Publication Date: 2008
Black America: A State-by-State Historical Encyclopedia by
This two-volume encyclopedia presents a state-by-state history of African Americans in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. * Contributions from experts in various fields * Coverage includes timeline, historical overview, notables, cultural contributions, and bibliography * Boasts numerous historical photos
Call Number: General Collection, E185 .B537 2011Publication Date: 2011
The Timetables of African-American History by
"From the days of the first African communities in North America to slavery, from the esthetic achievements of the Harlem Renaissance to the political accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement, the African-American experience has been marked by both struggle and triumph. Now The Timetables of African-American History chronicles these experiences with thousands of entries documenting the history of African Americans, beginning in 1492 and continuing 500 years into the 1990s. From very well-known events (the 1963 March on Washington) to lesser-known ones (in 1872, "Bud" Fowler became the first paid black baseball player in the major leagues), the book records those events that have defined the African-American experience and have helped to shape the American experience." "The Timetables of African-American History also notes those individuals who contributed to the vibrancy of both African-American culture and American culture in general: from jazz greats like Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker to contemporary hip hop artists like Run DMC and Salt N Pepa, from literary giants Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison to visual artists such as Edmonia Lewis and Romare Bearden, from sports legends such as Joe Louis and Wilma Rudolph to cinematic legends Paul Robeson and Dorothy Dandridge. The accomplishments of these and many other notable African Americans are vividly detailed in the book."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Call Number: General Collection, E185 .H295 1995Publication Date: 1995
The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Civil Rights by
The African American struggle for freedom and equality is one of the truly heroic elements of American history. Yet even today, African Americans as a whole still don't fully share in the American dream. This encyclopedia explores the struggle's successes and setbacks, from emancipation to the beginning of the 21st century. An impressive range of subjects covers everything from W.E.B. DuBois to early legislative acts, constitutional amendments of the mid-1800s, Black Is Beautiful, the tumultuous events of the 1960s, Al Sharpton, the Million Man March, and Adam Clayton Powell. Primary documents--personal vignettes, court cases, newspaper articles, and speeches--provide firsthand accounts and supplement the A-to-Z entries. An extensive timeline highlights key events. Revising and expanding a highly acclaimed, award-winning encyclopedia published in 1992, this book provides an invaluable resource for anyone wishing to understand the African American struggle for civil rights. This edition adds information on the past decade, updates earlier entries and all bibliographies, adds 120 primary documents, and includes a greatly expanded timeline.
Call Number: General Collection, E185.61 .E54 2003Publication Date: 2003
Books
Listed below are some recent books about African-American History. Many more are available; to find others, search OneSearch for "African Americans" and "history," and limit your results to "book/ebook." For additional tips, see this guide's "Books" page.
Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad: The Geography of Resistance by
This enlightening study employs the tools of archaeology to uncover a new historical perspective on the Underground Railroad. Unlike previous histories of the Underground Railroad, which have focused on frightened fugitive slaves and their benevolent abolitionist accomplices, Cheryl LaRoche focuses instead on free African American communities, the crucial help they provided to individuals fleeing slavery, and the terrain where those flights to freedom occurred. This study foregrounds several small, rural hamlets on the treacherous southern edge of the free North in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. LaRoche demonstrates how landscape features such as waterways, iron forges, and caves played a key role in the conduct and effectiveness of the Underground Railroad. Rich in oral histories, maps, memoirs, and archaeological investigations, this examination of the "geography of resistance" tells the new powerful and inspiring story of African Americans ensuring their own liberation in the midst of oppression.
Call Number: General Collection, E450 .L37 2014Publication Date: 2013
The Great Uprising: Race Riots in Urban American in the 1960s by
Between 1963 and 1972 America experienced over 750 urban revolts. Considered collectively, they comprise what Peter Levy terms a 'Great Uprising'. Levy examines these uprisings over the arc of the entire decade, in various cities across America. He challenges both conservative and liberal interpretations, emphasizing that these riots must be placed within historical context to be properly understood. By focusing on three specific cities as case studies - Cambridge and Baltimore, Maryland, and York, Pennsylvania - Levy demonstrates the impact which these uprisings had on millions of ordinary Americans. He shows how conservatives profited politically by constructing a misleading narrative of their causes, and also suggests that the riots did not represent a sharp break or rupture from the civil rights movement. Finally, Levy presents a cautionary tale by challenging us to consider if the conditions that produced this 'Great Uprising' are still predominant in American culture today.
Call Number: General Collection, HV6477 .L48 2018Publication Date: 2018
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by
The National Book Award winning history of how racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American society. Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America--it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit. In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. He uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals to drive this history: Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary activist Angela Davis. As Kendi shows, racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. They were created to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and the nation's racial inequities. In shedding light on this history, Stamped from the Beginning offers us the tools we need to expose racist thinking. In the process, he gives us reason to hope. Praise for Stamped from the Beginning: "We often describe a wonderful book as 'mind-blowing' or 'life-changing' but I've found this rarely to actually be the case. I found both descriptions accurate for Ibram X. Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning... I will never look at racial discrimination again after reading this marvellous, ambitious, and clear-sighted book." - George Saunders, Financial Times, Best Books of 2017 "Ambitious, well-researched and worth the time of anyone who wants to understand racism." - Seattle Times "A deep (and often disturbing) chronicling of how anti-black thinking has entrenched itself in the fabric of American society." - The Atlantic Winner of the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction A New York Times Bestseller A Washington Post Bestseller On President Obama's Black History Month Recommended Reading List Finalist for the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Boston Globe, Washington Post, Chicago Review of Books, The Root, Buzzfeed, Bustle, and Entropy
Call Number: General Collection, E185.61 .K358 2016Publication Date: 2016
Slavery: History and Historians by
This study of slavery focuses initially on the drastic revisions in the historical debate on slavery and the present understanding of ?the peculiar institution.' It gives a concise explanation of the nature of American slavery and its impact on the slaves themselves and on Southern society and culture. And it broadens our understanding of the debates among historians about slavery; compares Southern slavery with slavery elsewhere in the New World; and shows how slavery evolved and changed over time'and how it ended. Peter Parish examines some of the important recent works on slavery to identify crucial questions and basic themes and define the main areas of controversy.
Call Number: ONLINEISBN: 0429965869Publication Date: 2018
A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History by
Praised by The New York Times;O, The Oprah Magazine; Bitch Magazine; Slate;Publishers Weekly; and more, this is "a bracing corrective to a national mythology" (New York Times) around the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement has become national legend, lauded by presidents from Reagan to Obama to Trump, as proof of the power of American democracy. This fable, featuring dreamy heroes and accidental heroines, has shuttered the movement firmly in the past, whitewashed the forces that stood in its way, and diminished its scope. And it is used perniciously in our own times to chastise present-day movements and obscure contemporary injustice. In A More Beautiful and Terrible Historyaward-winning historian Jeanne Theoharis dissects this national myth-making, teasing apart the accepted stories to show them in a strikingly different light. We see Rosa Parks not simply as a bus lady but a lifelong criminal justice activist and radical; Martin Luther King, Jr. as not only challenging Southern sheriffs but Northern liberals, too; and Coretta Scott King not only as a "helpmate" but a lifelong economic justice and peace activist who pushed her husband's activism in these directions. Moving from "the histories we get" to "the histories we need," Theoharis challenges nine key aspects of the fable to reveal the diversity of people, especially women and young people, who led the movement; the work and disruption it took; the role of the media and "polite racism" in maintaining injustice; and the immense barriers and repression activists faced. Theoharis makes us reckon with the fact that far from being acceptable, passive or unified, the civil rights movement was unpopular, disruptive, and courageously persevering. Activists embraced an expansive vision of justice--which a majority of Americans opposed and which the federal government feared. By showing us the complex reality of the movement, the power of its organizing, and the beauty and scope of the vision, Theoharis proves that there was nothing natural or inevitable about the progress that occurred. A More Beautiful and Terrible Historywill change our historical frame, revealing the richness of our civil rights legacy, the uncomfortable mirror it holds to the nation, and the crucial work that remains to be done.
Call Number: General Collection, E185.61 .T44 2018Publication Date: 2018
The Voting Rights War: The NAACP and the Ongoing Struggle for Justice by
The Voting Rights War tells the story of the courageous struggle to achieve voting equality through more than one hundred years of work by the NAACP at the Supreme Court. Readers take the journey for voting rights from slavery to the Plessy v. Ferguson case that legalized segregation in 1896 through today's conflicts around voter suppression. The NAACP brought important cases to the Supreme Court that challenged obstacles to voting: grandfather clauses, all-White primaries, literacy tests, gerrymandering, vote dilution, felony disenfranchisement, and photo identification laws. This book highlights the challenges facing American voters, especially African Americans, the brave work of NAACP members, and the often contentious relationship between the NAACP and the Supreme Court. This book shows the human price paid for the right to vote and the intellectual stamina needed for each legal battle. The Voting Rights War follows conflicts on the ground and in the courtroom, from post-slavery voting rights and the formation of the NAACP to its ongoing work to gain a basic right guaranteed to every citizen. Whether through litigation, lobbying, or protest, the NAACP continues to play an unprecedented role in the battle for voting equality in America, fighting against prison gerrymandering, racial redistricting, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, and more. The Voting Rights War highlights the NAACP's powerful contribution and legacy.
Call Number: General Collection, JK1924 .B76 2016Publication Date: 2016
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by
In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation--that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation--the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments--that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.Through extraordinary revelations and extensive research that Ta-Nehisi Coates has lauded as "brilliant" (The Atlantic), Rothstein comes to chronicle nothing less than an untold story that begins in the 1920s, showing how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning, as millions of African Americans moved in a great historical migration from the south to the north.As Jane Jacobs established in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, it was the deeply flawed urban planning of the 1950s that created many of the impoverished neighborhoods we know. Now, Rothstein expands our understanding of this history, showing how government policies led to the creation of officially segregated public housing and the demolition of previously integrated neighborhoods. While urban areas rapidly deteriorated, the great American suburbanization of the post-World War II years was spurred on by federal subsidies for builders on the condition that no homes be sold to African Americans. Finally, Rothstein shows how police and prosecutors brutally upheld these standards by supporting violent resistance to black families in white neighborhoods.The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited future discrimination but did nothing to reverse residential patterns that had become deeply embedded. Yet recent outbursts of violence in cities like Baltimore, Ferguson, and Minneapolis show us precisely how the legacy of these earlier eras contributes to persistent racial unrest. "The American landscape will never look the same to readers of this important book" (Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund), as Rothstein's invaluable examination shows that only by relearning this history can we finally pave the way for the nation to remedy its unconstitutional past.
Call Number: General Collection, E185.61 .R8185 2017Publication Date: 2017
The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation by
A lyrical, intelligent, authentic and necessary look at the intersection of race and class in Chicago, a Great American City.Mayors Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel have touted Chicago as a "world-class city." The skyscrapers kissing the clouds, the billion-dollar Millennium Park, Michelin-rated restaurants, pristine lake views, fabulous shopping, vibrant theater scene, downtown flower beds and stellar architecture tell one story. Yet swept under the rug is another story: the stench of segregation that permeates and compromises Chicago. Though other cities - including Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Baltimore - can fight over that mantle, it's clear that segregation defines Chicago. And unlike many other major U.S. cities, no particular race dominates; Chicago is divided equally into black, white and Latino, each group clustered in its various turfs.In this intelligent and highly important narrative, Chicago native Natalie Moore shines a light on contemporary segregation in the city's South Side; her reported essays showcase the lives of these communities through the stories of her family and the people who reside there. The South Side highlights the impact of Chicago's historic segregation - and the ongoing policies that keep the system intact.
Call Number: General Collection, F548.9.A1 M66 2016Publication Date: 2016
Primary sources online
For primary sources from and about African-American History, you should try the resources and strategies listed on this guide's "Primary Sources" page. However, the databases, collections, and recent books below might be of particular interest to those researching African-American History.
- America's Historical Newspapers-Indiana State Collection and African American Newspapers This link opens in a new window
- The Other Side of Middletown Photographs In the 1920s, Robert and Helen Lynd conducted a sociological study of Muncie that was published in 1929 as Middletown: A Study in American Culture. Unfortunately, the Lynds virtually overlooked the African American population in their work that examined Muncie as a "representative American Community." The Other Side of Middletown Collection, consisting of over 150 digital images, illustrates the history of the life and achievements of African Americans in Muncie and Delaware County through photographs donated by members of the community. The collection was the product of a collaborative project undertaken in 2003-04 involving Hurley Goodall, Eric Lassister, Elizabeth Campbell, Michelle Natasya Johnson, and a group Ball State students, working with the local African American community, which resulted in the publication of The Other Side of Middletown: Exploring Muncie's African American Community. These photographs are also on permanent display at Faulkner's Mortuary, 915 E. Williard Street, Muncie, Indiana.
- The Other Side of Middletown Project Files and Recordings (physical archival collection) Prompted by the omission of Muncie, Indiana’s black community from the famous study by Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, Luke Eric Lassiter, an associate professor of anthropology at Ball State University, Hurley Goodall, a former Indiana state legislator and life-long Muncie resident, Elizabeth Campbell, an independent folklorist and Michelle Johnson, a graduate student in the anthropology department at Ball State University, came together to reveal for the first time the unrecorded history and contemporary life of African American “Middletown.” They organized a semester-long class through the Virginia Ball Center for Creative Inquiry at Ball State. Students were given the opportunity to research and interview African American residents of Muncie, Indiana. The project resulted in the publication of the book award-winning book The Other Side of Middletown: Exploring Muncie’s African American Community in 2004.
Ripples of Hope by
Ripples of Hope brings together the most influential and important civil rights speeches from the entire range of American history-from the colonial period to the present. Gathered from the great speeches of the civil rights movement of African Americans, Asian Americans, gays, Hispanic Americans, and women, Ripples of Hope includes voices as diverse as Sister Souljah, Spark Matsui, and Harvey Milk, which, taken as a whole, constitute a unique chronicle of the modern civil rights movement.Featuring a foreword by President Bill Clinton and an afterword by Mary Frances Berry, this collection represents not just a historical first but also an indispensable resource for readers searching for an alternative history of American rhetoric. Edited and with an introduction by former Clinton speechwriter Josh Gottheimer, the stirring speeches that make up this volume provide an important perspective on our nation's development, and will inform the future debate on civil rights.
Call Number: ONLINEPublication Date: 2003
Primary sources in physical book format
Homeless, Friendless, and Penniless: The WPA Interviews with Former Slaves Living in Indiana by
Homeless, Friendless, and Penniless The WPA Interviews with Former Slaves Living in Indiana Ronald L. Baker Lives of former slaves in their own words, published for the first time. Based on a collection of interviews conducted in the late 1930s, Homeless, Friendless, and Penniless is an invaluable record of the lives and thoughts of former slaves who moved to Indiana after the Civil War and made significant contributions to the evolving patchwork of Hoosier culture. The Indiana slave narratives provide a glimpse of slavery as remembered by those who experienced it, preserving insiders' views of a tragic chapter in American history. Though they were living in Indiana at the time of the interviews, these African Americans been enslaved in 11 different states from the Carolinas to Louisiana. The interviews deal with life and work on the plantation; the treatment of slaves; escaping from slavery; education, religion, and slave folklore; and recollections of the Civil War. Just as important, the interviews reveal how former slaves fared in Indiana after the Civil War and during the Depression. Some became ministers, a few became educators, and one became a physician; but many lived in poverty and survived on Christian faith and small government pensions. Ronald L. Baker, Chairperson and Professor of English at Indiana State University, is author of many books, including Hoosier Folk Legends and From Needmore to Prosperity: Hoosier Place Names in Folklore and History (both from Indiana University Press. He is co-author of Indiana Place Names with Marvin Carmony and editor of The Folklore Historian, the journal of the Folklore and History Section of the American Folklore Society. Contents Part One: A Folk History of Slavery Background of the WPA Interviews Presentation of Material Living and Working on the Plantation The Treatment of Slaves Escaping from Slavery Education Religion Folklore Recoll
Call Number: General Collection, E444 .H66 2000Publication Date: 2000
Black Lives, White Lives: Three Decades of Race Relations in America by
One evening in 1955, Howard Spence, a Mississippi field representative for the NAACP investigating the Emmett Till murder, was confronted by Klansmen who burned an eight-foot cross on his front lawn. "I felt my life wasn't worth a penny with a hole in it." Twenty-four years later, Spence had become a respected pillar of that same Mississippi town, serving as its first black alderman. The story of Howard Spence is just one of the remarkable personal dramas recounted in Black Lives, White Lives. Not all of the tales told by the sixteen blacks and twelve whites interviewed are as encouraging; some are bitter accounts of failed promises, misunderstandings, and lost opportunities. Black and white, rich and poor, men and women, collectively they reveal in their own words the paradoxical realities wrought by three decades of tumultuous racial change. Beginning in 1968, Bob Blauner and a team of interviewers began to record the words of those caught up in the crucible of rapid racial, social, and political change. Unlike most restrospective oral histories, these interviews capture "live" the intense racial tension of 1968 as people talk with unusual candor about their deepest fears and prejudices. The diverse experiences and changing beliefs of these individuals, most of whom were interviewed again in 1979 and 1986, become an extraordinary commentary on the development of race relations since the 1960s.
Call Number: General Collection, E185.615 .B556 1989BPublication Date: 1989
The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, 1826-August 1919 by
Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887- 1940) led an extraordinary mass movement of black social protest. His Universal Negro Improvement Association and his "back to African" program of racial nationalism introduced many ideas that emerged again during the Black Power years of the 1960s: pride in black roots, pride in black physical features and African culture, and rejection of assimilation into white America. Yet the charismatic black Jamaican who roared his credo before huge audiences on the st reet corners of Harlem remains an enigma. His image as an honest idealist urging blacks to build their own nation has been clouded by accusations that he was a con man who, in the name of black pride, perpetrated one of history's greatest swindles. The Marcus Garvey And Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers clarifies the Garvey phenomenon. This is the first volume in a monumental ten-volume survey of thirty thousand archival documents and original manuscripts from widely separated sources, brought together by editor Robert A. Hill to provide a compelling picture of the evolution, spread, and influence of the UNIA. Letters, pamphlets, vital records, intelligence reports, newspaper articles, speeches, legal records, and diplomatic dispatches are enhanced by Hill's descriptive source notes, explanatory footnotes, and comprehensive introduction. Of the over three hundred items included in Volume I, only very few have ever been published or reprinted before. Volume I begins with the earliest mentions in 1826 of the Garvey family in Jamaica's slave records, and closes with Garvey's triumphant address at Carnegie Hall on August 25, 1919. The information is fascinating and often startling, tracing Garvey's early career in Jamaica, Central America, Europe, and the United States, and detailing the first stirrings of what was to become an international mass movement. Hill presents complete documentation of the first official surveillance of the UNIA, which prepared the way for the beginning of the criminal and civil litigation that engulfed Garvey and his movement, as American and European governments reacted to the perceived threat with repressive policies. The documents also record the internal structure and political splits during the early years of the UNIA, and provide the financial history of Garvey's controversial Black Star Line steamship venture, one of the schemes that ultimately led to the financial collapse of his movement. The first volume and the following five focus on America, the seventh and eighth on Mrica, and the last two on the Caribbean. The information Hill has compiled goes far beyond preoccupation with a single intriguing historical figure to document the growth and demise of a mass social phenomenon, an Mro-American protest movement with strong links to African and Caribbean nationalism in the first decades of the twentieth century.
Call Number: General Collection, E185.97.G3 M36 1983Publication Date: 1983
The Black Panthers: Portraits from an Unfinished Revolution by
Brilliant, painful, enlightening, tearful, tragic, sad, and funny, this photo-essay book is at its core about healing, and about the social justice work that still needs to be done in the era of hip-hop, Black Lives Matter, and the historic presidency of Barack Obama." ,Kevin Powell, author of The Education of Kevin Powell: A Boy's Journey into Manhood A brilliantly conceived volume. Bryan Shih and Yohuru Williams demonstrate why the Panthers'story,its lessons and failures,even fifty years after its founding remains key to understanding national and international struggles for freedom and justice today." ,Cheryl Finley, professor and director of visual studies, Cornell UniversityEven fifty years after it was founded, the Black Panther Party remains one of the most misunderstood political organizations of the twentieth century. But beyond the labels of extremist" and violent" that have marked the party, and beyond charismatic leaders like Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and Eldridge Cleaver, were the ordinary men and women who made up the Panther rank and file.In The Black Panthers , photojournalist Bryan Shih and historian Yohuru Williams offer a reappraisal of the party's history and legacy. Through stunning portraits and interviews with surviving Panthers, as well as illuminating essays by leading scholars, The Black Panthers reveals party members' grit and battle scars,and the undying love for the people that kept them going.
Call Number: General Collection, E185.615 .B54645 2016Publication Date: 2016
Black Workers Remember: An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, and the Freedom Struggle by
The labor of black workers has been crucial to economic development in the United States. Yet because of racism and segregation, their contribution remains largely unknown. Spanning the 1930s to the present, Black Workers Remember tells the hidden history of African American workers in their own words. It provides striking firsthand accounts of the experiences of black southerners living under segregation in Memphis, Tennessee. Eloquent and personal, these oral histories comprise a unique primary source and provide a new way of understanding the black labor experience during the industrial era. Together, the stories demonstrate how black workers resisted racial apartheid in American industry and underscore the active role of black working people in history. The individual stories are arranged thematically in chapters on labor organizing, Jim Crow in the workplace, police brutality, white union racism, and civil rights struggles. Taken together, the stories ask us to rethink the conventional understanding of the civil rights movement as one led by young people and preachers in the 1950s and 1960s. Instead, we see the freedom struggle as the product of generations of people, including workers who organized unions, resisted Jim Crow at work, and built up their families, churches, and communities. The collection also reveals the devastating impact that a globalizing capitalist economy has had on black communities and the importance of organizing the labor movement as an antidote to poverty. Michael Honey gathered these oral histories for more than fifteen years. He weaves them together here into a rich collection reflecting many tragic dimensions of America's racial history while drawing new attention to the role of workers and poor people in African American and American history.
Call Number: General Collection, HD8081.A65 H66 1999Publication Date: 2000
