The African American Experience: An Historiographical and Bibliographical Guide

455 Pages·2000·2.803 MB·English

by  Arvarh E. Strickland, Robert E. Weems

The
African American
Experience

THE
AFRICAN AMERICAN
EXPERIENCE
An Historiographical and Bibliographical Guide
Edited by
ARVARH E. STRICKLAND
and
ROBERT E. WEEMS, JR.
GREENWOOD PRESS
Westport, Connecticut • London
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
TheAfricanAmericanexperience : anhistoriographicalandbibliographicalguide /
editedbyArvarhE.StricklandandRobertE.Weems,Jr.
p. cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN0–313–29838–6(alk.paper)
1. Afro-Americans—Historiography. 2. Afro-Americans—History—Bibliography. I.
Strickland,ArvarhE. II. Weems,RobertE.,1951–
E184.65.A37 2001
973.0496073—dc21 00–025148
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationDataisavailable.
Copyright(cid:2)2001byArvarhE.StricklandandRobertE.Weems,Jr.
Allrightsreserved.Noportionofthisbookmaybe
reproduced,byanyprocessortechnique,without
theexpresswrittenconsentofthepublisher.
LibraryofCongressCatalogCardNumber:00–025148
ISBN:0–313–29838–6
Firstpublishedin2001
GreenwoodPress,88PostRoadWest,Westport,CT06881
AnimprintofGreenwoodPublishingGroup,Inc.
www.greenwood.com
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
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Thepaperusedinthisbookcomplieswiththe
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface vii
I African American Migration and Urbanization 1
Arvarh E. Strickland and Robert E. Weems, Jr.
II The African American Worker in Slavery and Freedom 23
Joe William Trotter, Jr.
III African American Families: Historically Resilient 55
Aaron Thompson
IV African American Women 71
Wilma King
V The African American Educational Experience 93
Carolyn A. Dorsey
VI The African American Literary Tradition 116
Clenora Hudson-Weems
VII The African American Musical Experience: There’s a 144
Story in the Song
John A. Taylor
VIII African American Intellectual and Political Thought 166
Robert L. Harris, Jr.
IX The African American Political Experience 189
Sharon D. Wright and Minion K. C. Morrison
vi Contents
X The African American Press 216
Julius E. Thompson
XI African Americans in the Military of the United States 231
John F. Marszalek and Horace D. Nash
XII The African American Athletic Experience 255
David K. Wiggins
XIII Constructing an Historiography of African American Business 278
Juliet E. K. Walker
XIV Sexuality and Race 315
Stanley O. Gaines, Jr.
XV African American Consumerism 336
Robert E. Weems, Jr.
XVI The Civil Rights Movement 352
John Dittmer
XVII African American Religion in the United States 368
Charles H. Long
Index 395
About the Editors and Contributors 445
Preface
Three decades ago, the volume of scholarly writing was such that a careful
studentofthefieldcouldhaveadetailedknowledgeofthemajorworkstreating
AfricanAmericanlifeandhistory.Outsidethetopicsofslavery,Reconstruction,
and African American migration, there was a dearth of scholarly publication.
AsidefromMonroeN.Work’svoluminousBibliographyoftheNegroinAfrica
and America, first published in 1928 and reprinted in 1966, two or three rela-
tively slim bibliographies were about all the aspiring student needed to survey
the basic books and journal articles available.
Beginning in the 1960s, this situation changed radically. The civil rights and
black power movements brought increased demands for the study and teaching
of African American history. University presses and commercial publishersre-
sponded to this sentiment by publishing an increasing number of works related
to African American life and history. In fact, compared to the first decades of
the twentieth century, the last thirty years has featured a literal (and ongoing)
explosion of published works related to the African American experience.
Thisvolumeisintendedtohelpfilltheneedforacomprehensivebibliograph-
ical work to serve as a guide in the use of this growing body of sources.More-
over, this purpose requires not only a listing of key books and articles but also
analysis of how the study of African Americans has changed. Consequently,
scholars from the fields of history, literature, religion, political science, sociol-
ogy, psychology, music, and religion have contributed essays that spotlight the
historiographicaltrendsassociatedwiththeevolvingstudyofAfricanAmerican
life and history. Students and scholars, as well as general readers, should find
viii Preface
this guide useful as a tool in identifying secondary materials for study, class
use, and scholarly research.
It is evident that this, like all bibliographies, is a compilation of selected
works, and also that while the authors and editors were at work and while the
book was in press, important new works on these and additional topics were
writtenandpublished.Moreover,althoughtheauthorsandeditorsexerciseddue
diligence, inevitably in works of this type, errors of spelling and even errorsof
citation are inadvertently overlooked. For these, we apologize in advance and
will correct such errors subsequently discovered.
I
African American Migration and
Urbanization
Arvarh E. Strickland and Robert E. Weems, Jr.
By the 1990s migration and urbanization as a subtopic in African American
history had come of age. Scholars in African American history and migration
studies have long recognized the dramatic movement of southern blacks to
northern and western cities during the early to mid-twentieth century as a sig-
nificant phenomenon, and thus this period has received extensive study. Yet
black America’s entire history has been profoundly influenced by the mass
movement of people—both voluntary and involuntary.
Before the twentieth century, there existed a wide range of movementlinked
with the mobility of African Americans. In the pre–Civil War years these in-
cluded the transatlantic slave trade, the subsequent forced movement of slaves
based upon the whims of their white masters, runaway slaves and suchsupport
groupsasthe“UndergroundRailroad,”andorganizedmovementsthatpromoted
blacks returning to Africa. Moreover, while there is a tendency toviewAfrican
American urbanization as primarily a twentieth-century phenomenon, as early
asthecolonialperiod,AfricanAmericanswerepresent,inavarietyofcapacities,
in American cities. Before the Civil War, most African Americancity-dwellers
were free persons, yet there also existed aconsiderablenumberofurbanslaves.
Between1865and1900,AfricanAmericanmigrationandurbanizationinten-
sified asformerslavesgraphicallydemonstratedtheirfreedombymovingabout
freely, often to nearby cities. Moreover, as the promise of Reconstruction de-
scended into the nightmare of “Jim Crow,” a considerable number of late-
nineteenth-centuryAfricanAmericansresurrectedtheemigrationistsentimentof
theirforebears.AlthoughphysicallyreturningtoAfricaessentiallyremainedthe
elusive “impossible dream” of many southern blacks, some did, in the short
2 The AfricanAmericanExperience
term, solve the dilemma posed by southern white racism by moving to such
western locales as Kansas and Oklahoma. In fact, this late-nineteenth-century
westward movement of southern blacks resulted in, among other things, the
establishment of a number of all–African American towns. Moreover, other
southern blacks, during this period, began what would subsequently become a
massive movement to northern urban areas.
In 1860, 94.9 percent of the black population lived in the South, and only
5.1 percent lived in the North and West. By 1910, the percentage living in the
North and West had risen to 10.4 percent, in 1940 this proportion stoodat23.8
percent, and in 1970 ithad risen to 46.8 percent.Inotherwords,thepercentage
of the black population in the North and West doubled each generation from
1860 to 1970. After 1970, however, these proportions stabilized at about 47
percent in the North and West.
There exist a numberof importantworksthatchroniclepre-twentieth-century
African American migration and urbanization from the transatlantic slavetrade
to the late-nineteenth-century dispersal of southern blacks. In fact, the histori-
ographyofthisexpansivechronologicalperiodhasgrowndramaticallyinrecent
years.
Despite ongoing research examining the dynamics of the transatlantic slave
trade, Elizabeth Donnan’s four-volume Documents Illustrative of the Historyof
theSlaveTradetoAmerica(1930–1935)stillprovidesthebestoveralldepiction
of this phenomenon. Major historiographical issues related to the transatlantic
slave trade include estimating the number of Africans taken to the Western
Hemisphere, the nuances of theMiddle Passageandthesubsequentdispersalof
Africans in Europe’s “New World,” and the linkage of the transatlantic slave
trade with the development of capitalism. Phillip D. Curtin’s Atlantic Slave
Trade: A Census (1969), which critics maintain is an undercount, remains,per-
haps,themostdiscussedbookassociatedwithestimatingthenumberofAfricans
taken to the Western Hemisphere. There exist a number of important studies
related to the actual dynamics of the transatlantic slave trade and its aftermath,
including W.E.B. Du Bois’s Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the
UnitedStates,1638–1870(1896);DanielR.Mannix’sBlackCargoes:AHistory
of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1518–1865 (1962); and Herbert S. Klein’s Middle
Passage: Comparative Studies in the Atlantic Slave Trade (1978). Finally, Eric
Williams’s Capitalism and Slavery (1944) remains the starting point for any
inquiry into the broader economic ramifications of the transatlantic slavetrade.
An overview of the historiography of slavery during the colonial and ante-
bellum periods provides insight into the involuntary movement of transplanted
African slaves at the whim of their white owners. Important sources include
LorenzoJ.Greene’sclassic,TheNegroinColonialNewEngland(1942);Edgar
J. McManus’s History of Negro Slavery in Colonial New York (1966); Peter
Wood’sBlackMajority:NegroesinColonialSouthCarolinafrom1670through
the Stono Rebellion (1974); Betty Wood’s Slavery in Colonial Georgia, 1730–
1775 (1984); Frederick Bancroft’sSlaveTradingintheOldSouth(1931);Ken-