A Constant Struggle: Documents and Readings in African American History to 1865, Volume 1
Edition: 2
Copyright: 2024
Pages: 560
Edition: 2
Copyright: 2024
Pages: 560
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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.
CHAPTER 1 Introduction: The Politics of African American History
Some Things Negroes Need to Do
Carter G. Woodson
Emancipation Then and Now: Address at the 54th Annual NAACP Convention
Charles H. Wesley
U. B. Phillips and the Plantation Legend
Richard Hofstadter
The Black Woman of the South: Her Neglects and Her Needs
Alexander Crummell
Whiteness as Property
Cheryl I. Harris
The Most Damaging Myths about Slavery, Now Debunked
Yohuru R. Williams
CHAPTER 2 African Origins
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African
Olaudah Equiano
Leo Africanus, History and Description of Africa
North and West African Empires (900–1800)
Chapter 2 Questions
Further Reading
CHAPTER 3 Middle Passage
Job, The Son of Solomon
Thomas Bluett
Letters to the King of Portugal
Nzinga Mbemba (Afonso I)
Views of the King of Asante, 1820
Osei Bonsu
Views of a King at Old Calabar, 1850
Eyo Honesty II
The Second Voyage of John Hawkins, 1564–1565
The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the West African Kingdoms Engaged in the Trade (1500–1800)
SCHOLARLY ARTICLE: The Middle Passage and Personality Change among Diaspora Africans
Okon Edet Uya
Further Reading
CHAPTER 4 Colonial America (1619–1763)
John Rolfe Records the Arrival of African Slaves to Virginia, August 1619
Out of Africa: The African Background and Transatlantic Journeys of the 1619 “20 and odd Negroes” in Virginia
Robert Trent Vinson
Colonial Laws Regarding Slavery in Maryland and Virginia
Elizabeth Key
Tamara Lizette Brown and Richlyn Goddard
The Freedom Suit of Elizabeth Key 1655/56
Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, &c., 1755
Benjamin Franklin
Pinkster Festivities in Albany Sixty Years Ago
The New England Negro. A Remnant.
Jane de Forest Shelton
The Origins of North American Slavery and Racism
SCHOLARLY ARTICLE: The Origins of Debate: Slavery and Racism in Seventeenth-Century Virginia
Alden T. Vaughan
Chapter 4 Questions
Further Reading
CHAPTER 5 Blacks and the American Revolution (1763–1789)
African Americans and the American Revolution (1770–1783)
An Act Prohibiting the Importation of Negroes into this Colony
An Act to Prevent Domestic Insurrections, and for Other Purposes
Proclamation of the Earl of Dunmore
Prince Whipple, Soldier of the American Revolution
Bill Belton
Edward Griffin, Revolutionary Soldier
Herbert Aptheker
Saul, a Slave Revolutionary Veteran, Petitions for Freedom, 1792
Blacks Are Inferior to Whites
Thomas Jefferson
Virginia Negro Soldiers and Seamen in the American Revolution
Luther Porter Jackson
Chapter 5 Questions
Further Reading
CHAPTER 6 African Americans in the New Republic (1789–1820)
Natural and Inalienable Right to Freedom: Slaves’ Petition for Freedom to the Massachusetts Legislature, 1777
Mumbet Sues for Freedom: Brom & Bett v. J. Ashley Esq.
Proposed Establishment of a Colony of Free Blacks
American Colonization Society to Congress
Banneker’s Letter to Jefferson
From “Life among the Lowly, No. 1”
Madison Hemings
Preamble of the Free African Society
Memoir of Old Elizabeth, a Coloured Woman
The Missouri Compromise and Its Impact on Slavery in the United States (1819–1821)
SCHOLARLY ARTICLE: The Federal Government and the Free Negro, 1790–1860
Leon F. Litwack
Chapter 6 Questions
Further Reading
CHAPTER 7 Slavery and Freedom in Antebellum America (1820–1860)
Memorial of the Citizens of Charleston to the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of South Carolina
Texas Disturbances Regarding the Status of Slavery
Address Delivered at the African Masonic Hall, Boston
Maria Stewart
The Role of the Black Mammy in the Plantation Household
Jessie W. Parkhurst
The Progress of the Antislavery Cause
Theodore S. Wright
Prigg v. Pennsylvania
Fugitive Slave Act, 1850
Antebellum Free Blacks and the “Spirit of ‘76”
Benjamin Quarles
SCHOLARLY ARTICLE: Racism, Slavery, and Black Enterprise: Black Entrepreneurship before the Civil War
Juliet E. K. Walker
Chapter 7 Questions
Further Reading
CHAPTER 8 Slave Resistance (1619–1860)
The New York City Slave Uprising of 1712
Court of Common Pleas of Delaware: Phillis v. Evan Lewis
An Account of the Late Intended Insurrection among a Portion of the Blacks of This City
The Confessions of Nat Turner
Forward v. Thamer
An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America
Henry Highland Garnet
The Passage of the First Fugitive Slave Act and the Development of the Underground Railroad (1793)
Slave Revolts and Maroon Communities in the Caribbean and the Americas (1800–1888)
SCHOLARLY ARTICLE: Maroons within the Present Limits of the United States
Herbert Aptheker
Chapter 8 Questions
Further Reading
CHAPTER 9 The Impending Crisis and the Challenge to Slavery (1850–1860)
Letter to Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Henry Stanton
Should Colored Men Be Subject to the Pains and Penalties of the Fugitive Slave Law?
Charles H. Langston
“The Free Negro Question,” A Southern Newspaper Reflects
The Daily Intelligencer (Atlanta, Georgia)
The Christiana Riot and The Treason Trials of 1851: An Historical Sketch
W. U. Hensel
Speech at Rochester, July 5, 1852
Frederick Douglass
SCHOLARLY ARTICLE: In the Shadow of Old John Brown: Insurrection Anxiety and Confederate Mobilization, 1861–1863
Armstead L. Robinson
Chapter 9 Questions
Further Reading
CHAPTER 10 The Civil War
Abraham Lincoln Quotes
What We Are to Expect Now That Mr. Lincoln Is Re-elected
The Emancipation Proclamation (1863)
Abraham Lincoln
Letter from Missouri Black Soldier to His Daughter’s Owner (1864)
Letter from Missouri Black Soldier to His Enslaved Daughters (1864) 503
Spotswood Rice
Alexander Stephens’s Cornerstone Speech
Alexander H. Stephens
South Carolina Secession Justification
Mississippi Secession
Juneteenth
The Civil War Amendments (1865–1870)
Black Codes of Mississippi (1865)
A Freedwoman Praises Her Father (1904)
Anonymous
Silent Sam Statue Dedication Speech
The Glorious Cause of Freedom: Emancipation, Patriotism, and African American Service in the Civil War
Roger A. Davidson Jr.
Chapter 10 Questions
Further Reading
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.
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
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