A Constant Struggle: African-American History 1865-Present
Edition: 2
Copyright: 2005
Pages: 706
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$163.04
The A Constant Struggle: Documents and Readings in African American History volumes provide essential primary source documents and informative essays for the study of African American history from its African origins to contemporary times. The volumes assist in building critical thinking skills for the analysis of the historical record based on the sources pertinent to the topics under discussion and the interpretation of noted historians. A Constant Struggle functions as the primary or supplementary text in African American history, United States history, or Black/ Africana studies courses.
Introduction: Why Study Black History?
Documents1. The Ideology of White Supremacy
2. America Taught My Son's Killer to Hate Blacks
Camille O. Cosby
3. Official Police Report on the Murder of James Byrd, Jr. of Jasper, Texas
4. The Objectives of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (1937)
Mary McLeod Bethune
5. The Black Family in Crisis
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
6. A Conservative Writer Discusses the Benefits of Slavery (1995)
Dinesh D'Souza
7. A Historian Discusses the Roots of Institutional Racism (1995)
Sean Wilentz8. Black History: A Spoken Word Poet Reflects (2004)
Christo Johnson
Essay1. The Differences Between Negro History and Black History (1971)
Vincent Harding
Chapter 1: The Civil War
Documents1. Abraham Lincoln Quotes
2. What We Are to Expect Now That Mr. Lincoln Is Re-elected
3. The Emancipation Proclamation (1863)
Abraham Lincoln4. Letter from Missouri Black Soldier to His Daughter's Owner (1864)
Spotswood Rice
5. Letter from Missouri Black Solider to His Enslaved Daughters (1864)
Spotswood Rice
6. The Civil War Amendments (1865-1870)
7. Black Codes of Mississippi (1865)
8. A Freedwoman Praises Her Father (1904)
Anonymous
Essay1. The Glorious Cause of Freedom: Emancipation, Patriotism, and African-American
Service in the Civil War
Dr. Roger Davidson, Jr.
Chapter 2: Reconstruction
Documents1. Freedman Appeal for Education: Northern Aid to Negro Education (1866)
2. The Freedman's Bureau Cartoon
3. Black Women's Rights, White Women's Displeasure (1867)
4. John Wesley Hardin of Texas: Peerless Gunman (1868-75)
5. Ku Klux Klan Discipline (1871)
6. What Is to Become of the African in Our Country? (1868)
John W. DeForrest
7. Enforcement Act of 1870
8. Slaughterhouse Cases (1873)
9. United States v. Cruishank (1875), United States v. Reese (1875),
& United States v. Harris (1883)
Essays1. Reconstruction and Its Benefits
W. E. B. Du Bois2. Making Freedom Pay: Freedpeople Working for Themselves (1865-1900)
Sharon Ann Holt
Chapter 3: The Origins of Jim Crow
Documents1. A Pennsylvania Judge Endorses Segregation in Places of Public Accommodation
(1867)
2. The Civil Rights Act (1875)
2. Civil Rights Cases (1883)
3. A Sharecropping Contract (1886)
4. A Crop Lien (1876)
5. Literacy Test and Poll Tax (1899)
6. Oklahoma Grandfather Clause (1866)
7. The Freedman's Case (1855)
George Washington Cable8. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
Henry Brown
9. Dissenting Opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
John Marshall Harlan
10. State Laws on Race and Color (1865-1927)
11. "Jim Crow" Laws (1896-1950)
Essays1. American Polygeny and Craniometry before Darwin
Stephen Jay Gould
2. Trouble in Mind: The Bicentennial and the Afro-American Experience
Leon F. Litwack
Chapter 4: Resistance and Accommodation
Documents1. Frederick Douglass Calls on the Freedmen to Organize for Self-Defense (1883)
Frederick Douglass
2. Bishop Henry M. Turner Questions the Motivations of the United States Supreme
Court (1883)
3. The Atlanta Exposition Address (1895)
Booker T. Washington
4. The Beginnings of the National Club Movement: Club Work Among Negro Women
(1895)
Margaret Murray Washington
Yohuru R. Williams is the founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas where he holds the University Distinguished Chair, is professor of history, and formally served as dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. One of the foremost scholars on the Black Panther Party and the Black Power Movement, Dr. Williams is a sought-after commentator, public intellectual, and educational consultant regularly featured in media outlets like the History Channel. He is the author of numerous scholarly texts and articles including Black Politics/White Power: Civil Rights Black Power and Black Panthers in New Haven, Rethinking the Black Freedom Movement, and Teaching beyond the Textbook: Six Investigative Strategies. Yohuru Williams has co-edited The Black Panthers: Portraits of an Unfinished Revolution, In Search of the Black Panther Party, New Perspectives on a Revolutionary Movement, and Liberated Territory: Toward a Local History of the Black Panther Party.
Roger A. Davidson Jr., an expert in military and naval history, is associate professor of history at Bowie State University where he teaches African American history, United States history, and diplomatic history. Dr. Davidson conducts his research from the perspective of a social historian by assessing how the lives of the military personnel intersect with the demands of military service in times of war and peace and his scholarship centers on the Civil War, Emancipation, and Reconstruction
Tamara Lizette Brown is professor of history and director of women’s studies at Bowie State University. The editor of Soul Thieves: The Appropriation and Misrepresentation of African American Popular Culture, she is a cultural historian specializing in Black expressive culture, popular culture, and the performing/vernacular arts. Specifically, Dr. Brown advocates for the historical analysis of dance, culture, and the arts as history—how dance and other cultural forms inform the historical record