African American History, Life & Values to 1968
(see also Slavery, Jim Crow, Race Riots, Lynching, African American History, Life & Values since 1968, African American Movements & Civil Rights Movement)
Basics
On the Web: Articles
Roots Vs Roots: Where Does Hip-Hop Culture Stand?
On the Web: Specialized Sites
Africana: Gateway to the Black World
The Encyclopaedia Britannica Guide to Black History
Brown v. Board of Education: 50th Anniversary Facts for Features
Welcome to The Black History Database
In the Library: Articles
Als, Hilton. "Movers & shakers," New Yorker (7/7/03):76-77.
Barsamian, David. "Danny Glover," Progressive (12/02):35-37
Dubois, W.E.B. "Negroes & the crisis of capitalism in the United States," Monthly Review 41,1(5/89):27-35.
Friedman, John S. "Corporate bill for slavery," Nation (3/10/03):6-7.
Guinier, Lani & Gerald Torres. "The miner's canary," Nation (2/18/02):20-22.
Gutman, Herbert. "Black history seduced and abandoned," Nation (09/22/79):232-236.
Hansberry, Lorraine. "The scars of the ghetto," MR 41,3(7-8/89):52-55.
Hodes, Martha. "The mercurial character & abiding power of race: a transnational family story," American Historical Review 108,1 (2/03):84-117.
Platt, Anthony M. "Racism in academia: lessons from the life of E. Franklin Frazier," Monthly Review 4,4 (9/90):29-45.
Reed, Adolph L. Jr. "The case against reparations," Progressive (12/2000):15-17.
Royster, Deirdre A. Race & the Invisible Hand (Berkeley: U. of California, 2003).
Rubin, Richards. "The Colfax riot," Atlantic Monthly (8-9/03):155-158. Forgotten massacre in Louisiana during Reconstruction.
Solinger, Rickie. "Race & 'value': Black & White illegitimate babies in the US, 1945-1965," in V.L. Ruiz & E.C. Dubois (eds.) Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader (2nd ed.; NY: Routledge, 1994), pp. 463-78.
Thelwell, Ekwueme Michael. "H. Rap Brown: Jamil Al-Amin: a profoundly American story," Nation (3/18/02):25-35.
In the Library: Non-Fiction Books
Alexander, Eleanor. Lyrics of Sunshine & Shadow: The Tragic Courtship & Marriage of Paul Laurence Dunbar & Alice Ruth Moore (NY: NYU, 2002).
Ball, Edward. Slaves in the Family (NY: Ballantine, 2002). White man uncovers family histories of descendants of slave & free inhabitants of his ancestors' lands in ante-Bellum South.
Bayor, Ronald H. Race & Ethnicity in the United States (NY: Columbia, 2003).
Blight, David W. Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory, & the American Civil War (Amherst MA: U. Massachusetts, 2002).
Brophy, Alfred L. Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Riot of 1921. Race, Reparations & Reconciliation (NY: Oxford, 2003).
Bryant, Jerry H. "Born in a Mighty Bad Land": The Violent Man in African American Folklore & Fiction (Bloomington: Indiana U, 2002).
Butterfield, Fox. All God's Children: The Boskey Family & the American Tradition of Violence (NY: Knopf, 1995).
Chafe, William H. & Others. Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South (NY: New Press, 2002).
Clayton, Obie. Black Fathers in Contemporary American Society: Strengths, Weaknesses & Strategies for Change (NY: Russell Sage, 2004).
Davis, Angela. Blues Legacies & Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainy, Bessie Smith & Billie Holliday (NY: Random House, 1998).
Driskell, David C. The Other Side of Color: African American Art in the Collection of Camille O. & William H. Cosby, Jr. (San Francisco: Pomegranate, 2001).
Dyson, Michael Eric. Making Malcolm: The Myth & Meaning of Malcolm X (NY: Oxford, 1996)
Du Bois, W.E.B. The Education of Black People: Ten Critiques, 1906-1960 (ed. Herbert Aptheker; NY: Monthly Review, 2001).
__________. The Souls of Black Folk [1903] (ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. & Terri Hume Oliver; NY:Norton, 1999).
Estes, Steve. I Am a Man! Race, Manhood & the Civil Rights Movement (Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina, 2005).
Gerstle, Gary. American Crucible: Race & Nation in the 20th C. (Princeton: Princeton, 2001).
Griffin, Farah Jasmine. "Who Set You Flowin'": The African-American Migration Narrative (NY: Oxford, 1995).
Griffin, Sean Patrick. Philadelphia's "Black Mafia": A Social & Political History (Boston: Kluwer Academic, 2003).
Gussow, Adam. Seems Like Murder Here: Southern Violence & the Blues Tradition (Chicago: U. Chicago, 2002).
Gutman, Herbert G. The Black Family in Slavery & Freedom, 1750-1925 (NY: Vintage, 1976).
Gwaltney, John L. Drylongso: A Self-Portrait of Black America (NY: New Press, 1993).
Haley, Alex. Roots: The Saga of an American Family (NY: Doubleday, 1976).
Height, Dorothy. Open Wide the Freedom Gates: A Memoir (NY: PublicAffairs, 2003).
Henry, Neil. Pearl's Secret: A Black Man's Search for His White Family (Berkeley: U. of California, 2003).
Honey, Michael Keith. Black Workers Remember: An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, & the Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: U. California, 1999).
Harris, Michael D. Colored Pictures: Race & Visual Representation (Chapel Hill: U. North Carolina, 2003).
Hine, Darlene Clark & Kathleen Thompson. A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America (NY: Broadway, 1998).
Holli, Melvin g. & Peter d'A. Jones (eds.) The Ethnic Frontier: Group Survival in Chicago & the Midwest (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977).
Holloway, Karla F.C. Passed On: African American Mourning Stories, A Memorial (Durham NC: Duke, 2002).
Honey, Michael Keith. Black Workers Remember: An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism & the Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: U. of California, 1999).
Jones, LeAlan & Lloyd Newman with David Isay. Our America: Life & Death on the South Side of Chicago (NY: Scribner, 1997).
Katz, William Loren. Eyewitness: A Living Documentary of the African American Contribution to American History (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1995).
Kozol, Jonathan. Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts & Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools (NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1967).
Krasner, David. A Beautiful Pageant: African-American Theater, Drama & Performance in the Harlem Renaissance, 1910-1927 (NY: Palgrave, 2002).
Kuyk, Betty M. African Voices in the African American Heritage (Bloomington: Indiana U, 2002).
Levine, Lawrence W. Black Culture & Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from slavery to Freedom (NY: Oxford, 1977).
Liebow, Elliot. Tally's Corner: A Study of Negro Streetcorner Men (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967).
Lincoln, C. Eric & Lawrence H. Mamiya. The Black Church in the African-American Experience (Durham NC: Duke, 1990).
Lemann, Nicholas. The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration & How It Changed America (NY: Knopf, 1991).
Lerner, Gerda (ed.) Black Women in White America [1972] (NY: Vintage, 1992).
Lomax, Alan. The Land Where the Blues Began (NY: Basic, 1994).
Mandle, Jay R. The Roots of Black Poverty: the Southern Plantation Economy after the Civil War (Durham NC: Duke, 1978).
__________. Not Slave, Not Free: The African American Economic Experience since the Civil War (Durham NC: Duke, 1992).
Marable, Manning (ed). Freedom on My Mind: The Columbia Documentary of the African American Experience (NY: Columbia, 2003).
May, Katja. African Americans & Native Americans in the Creek & Cherokee Nations, 1830s to 1920s: Collision & Collusion (NY: Garland, 1996).
McBride, David. From TB to AIDS: Epidemics among Urban Blacks since 1900 (Albany: SUNY, 1991).
McHenry, Elizabeth. Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies (Durham NC: Duke, 2002).
Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi [1968] (NY: Laurel, 1992).
Ortiz, Paul. Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing & White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920 (Berkeley: U. of California, 2005).
O'Toole, James M. Passing for White: Race, Religion, & the Healy Family, 1820-1920 (Amherst MA: U. Massachusetts, 2002).
Ross, Charles K. Outside the Lines: African Americans & the Integration of the National Football League (NY: NYU, 2002).
Royster, Jacqueline Jones. Southern Horrors & Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900 (NY: Bedford, 1997).
Saunt, Claudio. Black, White, & Indian: Race & the Unmaking of an American Family (NY: Oxford, 2005).
Singh, Amritjit (ed.) The Collected Writings of Wallace Thurman (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, 2003)
Solinger, Rickie. Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy & Race before Roe v. Wade (NY: Routledge, 1992).
Taylor, Monique M. Harlem between Heaven & Hell (Minneapolis: U. Minnesota, 2002). Race, class & Black gentrification.
Tracy, Steven C (ed.) A Historical Guide to Langston Hughes (NY: Oxford, 2003).
Vogel, Todd (ed.) The Black Press: New Literary & Historical Essays (New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers, 2001).
Ward, Geoffrey C. Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise & Fall of Jack Johnson (NY: Knopf, 2004).
Weaver, Afaa Michael. These Hands I Know: African-American Writers on Family (Louisville KY: Sarabande, 2002).
White, Shane. Stories of Freedom in Black New York (Cambridge MA: Harvad, 2002).
Wilder, Craig Steven. In the Company of Black Men: The African Influence on African American Culture in New York City (NY: NYU, 2002).
Williams, Heather Andrea. Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery & Freedom (Chapel Hill: U. of North Carolina, 2005).
Zwiegenhaft, Richard L. & G. William Domhoff. Blacks in the White Establishment: A Study of Race & Class in America (New Haven: Yale, 1991).
In the Library: Fiction
Armstrong, William H. Sounder (NY: Harper & Row, 1969).
Baldwin, James. Go Tell It on the Mountain (NY: Knopf, 1953).
__________. Another Country (NY: Dial, 1960).
__________. Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (NY: Dial, 1968).
Beatty, Paul. The White Boy Shuffle (NY: Picador, 1996).
Bradley, David. The Chaneysville Incident (NY: Harper & Row, 1981).
Brown, Lloyd L. Iron City: A Novel [1951] (Boston: Northeastern U., 1994).
Campbell, Bebe Moore. Your Blues Ain't Like Mine (NY: Putnam, 1993).
__________. Brothers & Sisters (NY: Putnam, 1994).
__________. Singing in the Comeback Choir (NY: Putnam, 1998).
Chesnutt, Charles W. The Marrow of Tradition [1901] (NY: Penguin, 1993).
Cooke, Robert. American Family (?: IUniverse, 2005). Compares post-World War II experiences of an Irish American & an African American family in struggle for fair housing & voting rights.
Demby, William. The Catacombs [1965] (Boston: Northeastern U., 1991).
Dove, Rita. Through the Ivory Gate: A Novel (NY: Pantheon, 1992).
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man (NY: Random House, 1952).
__________. Going to the Territory (NY: Random House, 1986).
__________. Juneteenth (ed. John F. Callahan; NY: Random House, 1999).
Fauset, Jessie Redmon. There is Confusion [1924] (NY: AMS, 1974).
__________. The Chinaberry Tree: A Novel of American Life [1931] (NY: AMS, 1969).
Gaines, Ernest J. Catherine Carmier (NY: Atheneum, 1964).
__________. Of Love & Dust (NY: Dial, 1967).
__________. Bloodline (NY: Dial, 1968).
__________. The Autobiography of Miss Jaine Pittman (NY: Dial, 1971).
__________. In My Father's House (NY: Knopf, 1978).
__________. A Gathering of Old Men (NY: Knopf, 1984).
__________. A Lesson Before Dlying (NY: Knopf, 1993).
Golden, Marita. And Do Remember Me (NY: Ballantine, 1992).
Guy, Rosa. The Friends (NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973).
__________. Ruby (NY: Viking, 1976).
__________. Edith Jackson (NY: Viking, 1978).
Heidish, Marcy. A Woman Called Moses (NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1976). Based on the life of Harriet Tubman.
Herndon, James. The Way it Spozed to Be (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1968).
Hudson, Helen. Criminal Trespass (NY: Putnam, 1985).
Hurston, Zorah Neale. Jonah's Gourd Vine [1934] (NY: Harper & Row, 1990).
__________. Their Eyes Were Watching God [1937] (NY: Perennial, 1998).
Jones, Edward P. "Aunt Hagar's children," New Yorker (12/22/03):129-47. DC life in 50s.
Jones, Gayl. Corregidora (NY: Random House, 1975).
__________. Eva's Man (NY: Random House, 1976).
Lincoln, C. Eric. The Avenue, Clayton City (NY: Morrow, 1988).
Marshall, Paule. Praisesong for the Widow (NY: Putnam, 1983).
McKay, Claude. Home to Harlem [1928] (Boston: Northeastern U., 1987).
McMillan, Terry. Mama (NY: Washington Square, 1987).
__________. Disappearing Acts (NY: Viking Penguin, 1989).
__________. Waiting to Exhale (NY: Viking Penguin, 1992).
__________. How Stella Got Her Groove Back (NY: Viking Penguin, 1996).
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye (NY: Washington Square, 1970).
__________. Song of Solomon (NY: Plume, 1977).
__________. Tar Baby (NY: Knopf, 1981).
__________. Sula (NY: Knopf, 1973).
__________. Beloved (NY: Knopf, 1987).
__________. Jazz (NY: Knopf, 1992).
__________. Playing in the Dark (NY: Knopf, 1992).
__________. Paradise (NY: Knopf, 1997).
Mosley, Walter. Devil in a Blue Dress (NY: Norton, 1990).
__________. A Red Death (NY: Norton, 1991).
__________. White Butterfly (NY: Norton, 1992).
__________. Black Betty (NY: Norton, 1994).
__________. RL's Dream (NY: Norton, 1995).
__________. A Little Yellow Dog: An Easy Rawlins Mystery (NY: Norton, 1996).
__________. Gone Fishin': An Easy Rawlins Novel (Baltimore: Black Classic, 1997).
__________. Walkin' the Dog (Boston: Little, Brown, 1999).
__________. Fearless Jones: A Novel (Boston: Little, Brown, 2001).
__________. Bad Boy Brawley Brown (Boston: Little, Brown, 2002).
__________. Six Easy Pieces: Easy Rawlins Stories (NY: Atria, 2003).
Naylor, Gloria. The Women of Brewster Place (NY: Penguin, 1987).
__________. Mama Day (NY: Houghton & Mifflin, 1988).
Petry, Ann. The Street [1946] (Boston: Beacon, 1986).
Powers, Richard. The Time of Our Singing (London: Heinemann, 2003).
Redding, Jay Saunders. Stranger & Alone: A Novel [1950] (Boston: Northeastern U., 1989).
Smith, Lillian. Strange Fruit [1944] (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972).
Taylor, Mildred D. Mississippi Bridge (NY: Penguin, 1990).
Thurman, Wallace. Infants of the Spring: A Novel [1932] (Carbondale: U. of Southern Illinois, 1979).
Walker, Alice. In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women (NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973).
__________. Meridian (NY: Washington Square, 1976).
__________. The Color Purple (NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982).
__________. The Temple of My Familiar (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989).
Wideman, John Edgar. The Homewood Trilogy (Damballah, Hiding Place & Sent For You Yesterday) (NY: Avon, 1985).
Williams, John A. Sons of Darkness, Sons of Light: A Novel of Some Probability (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969).
Wright, Richard. Native Son (NY: Harper, 1940).
__________. The Outsider (NY: Harper & Row, 1953).
__________. The Long Dream (NY: Doubleday, 1958).
__________. Lawd Today [1963] (Boston: Northeastern U., 1986).
In the Library: For Young Readers
Cooper, Michael L. Bound for the Promised Land: The Great Black Migration (NY: Lodestar, 1995).
In the Library: Poetry
Randall, Dudley (ed.) The Black Poets: A New Anthology (NY: Bantam, 1971).
In the Library: Drama
Duffy, Susan (ed.) The Political Plays of Langston Hughes (Carbondale IL: Southern Illinois U., 2000).
Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun (NY: Vintage, 1958).
In the Library: Photography
de Carava, Roy & Langston Hughes. The Sweet Flypaper of Life (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1955).
CD & Audio
Film & Video
"Amistad' [1997], dir. Steven Spielberg, 152m. In video stores. Recalls 1839 slave ship revolt, & trial of its leaders.
"The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" [1973], dir. John Korty, 106m. In video stores.
"Beloved" [1998], dir. Jonathan Demme, 172m. In video stores. Based on powerful Toni Morrison novel in which terrible memory of slavery lurks among free Blacks in post-Civil War Cincinnati.
"Cora Unashamed" [2000], dir. Deborah M. Pratt, 120m. Moving drama of the single Black family surviving poverty & racism in a small Iowa town before & during the Depression, based on a Langston Hughes story.
"Crossing White Lines" [?], dir. Ari Novak, 12m. Jackie Robinson & Larry Doby in the Negro League of baseball's pre-1947 segregation days.
"Devil in a Blue Dress" [1995], dir. Carl Franklin, 101m. In video stores. Walter Mosley's detective Easy Rawlins in late 1940s LA.
"Glory" [1989], dir. Edward Zwick, 122m. In video stores. White officers lead heroic Black soldiers into terrible carnage in South Carolina during Civil War.
"Lackawanna Blues" [2005], dir. George C. Wolfe, 95m. TV film celebrating post-war Black community life around a boarding-house & the towering figure of its kindly propietress in Lackawanna, NY.
"Midnight Ramble" [1994], dir. Pearl Bowser, 60m. From American Experience. Explores work of "race film" pioneer Oscar Micheaux.
"Nothing But a Man" [1964], dir. Robert M. Young, 95m.
"A Raisin in the Sun" [1961], dir. Daniel Petrie, 128m. In video stores. First of three films based on classic Lorraine Hansberry play about poverty & striving in an urban family.
"Rosewood" [1997], dir. John Singleton, 140m. In video stores. Massacre & resistance in rural Florida, 1923.
"The Sky is Gray" [1987], dir. Stan Lathay, 47m. From Monterey Home Video. Young boy on rare trip to town learns what it's like to be Black, poor & proud in rural Louisiana in late 1940s, & that race relations are more complex than they seem at first sight. From an Ernest Gaines story.
"Sounder" [1972], dir. Martin Ritt, 105m. In video stores. Moving portrait of Black rural life in pre-war Louisiana.
"Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise & Fall of Jack Johnson" [2004], dir. Ken Burns, 214m. From PBS Home Video.