|
Search
We
welcome all
major
creditcards.
|
|
To say that John Hope Franklin is the dean of African American historians is a little like saying James Watson was a pretty important biologist. Franklin's groundbreaking 'From Slavery to Freedom' has been the standard history of African American life ever since its original publication in 1947, and Franklin's own life story, as told in his long-awaited autobiography, 'Mirror to America : The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin', has been full of personal and professional trailblazing, from his early work for Franklin D. Roosevelt and Thurgood Marshall to a scholarly career that has made later writers like Toni Morrison and Henry Louis Gates cite him as one of the role models who made their own successes possible.
Here he shares with us his choices for the 10 books to read on African American history, a subject for which we could ask no better guide.
1. My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass
'My Bondage and My Freedom (Penguin Classics)': A remarkable work by a former slave who became a leading thinker and activist in post-Emancipation America.
2. The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
'The Souls of Black Folk (Penguin Classics)': This classic clearly delineates the utter frustration of African Americans who attempt to adjust to the American racial jungle.
3. A History of the Negro Race in America, 1619-1880, by George Washington Williams
'History of the Negro Race in America, Volume 1, 1619-1800 and Volume 2, 1800-1880': The very first comprehensive, scholarly treatment of the subject. A remarkable feat!
4. Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery by Leon Litwack
'Been in the Storm So Long : The Aftermath of Slavery (Vintage)': One of few works that corrects the myths about the post-slavery years.
5. Black Women in America by Darlene Clark Hine
'Black Women in America (3 Vol. Set)': A comprehensive biographical tool providing topic information on notable African American women.
6. The Peculiar Institution by Kenneth Stampp
'Peculiar Institution : Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (Vintage)': A remarkable book that deromanticizes slavery in the United States. One of the pioneer works undertaking to refute the apologists for slavery.
7. An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy by Gunnar Myrdal
'An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (Black and African-American Studies) Volume 1': In many ways this is the most comprehensive treatment of the nexus of race and American social, economics, and political institutions in the post-World War II years.
8. The Black Church in the African American Experience by C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya
'The Black Church in the African American Experience': Is perhaps the most comprehensive examination of this major institution in African American life.
9. Black History and the Historical Profession by August Meier and Elliott Rudwick
'Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915 1980': A remarkable history and analysis of the way in which African American history has affected historians and their craft.
10. In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process by A. Leon Higginbotham Jr.
'In the Matter of Color : Race and the American Legal Process 1: The Colonial Period (Race and the American Legal Process)': A comprehensive treatment of the encounter of race and American law. A sequel is his 'Shades of Freedom : Racial Politics and Presumptions of the American Legal Process Race and the American Legal Process, Volume II (Oxford World's Classics , Vol 2)', 1996.
More by John Hope Franklin
'From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans (2 Vols. in 1)'
'The Militant South: 1800-1861'
'Racial Equality in America (Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, Vol 1976)'
'Runaway Slaves : Rebels on the Plantation
|
|
