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Alan Yuhas, NY Times, Sept. 1, 2020, "Roanoke's 'Lost Colony' Was Never Lost, New Book Says"

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Alan Yuhas, NY Times, Sept. 1, 2020, "Roanoke's 'Lost Colony' Was Never Lost, New Book Says"

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A new book aims to settle a centuries-old question of what happened to a group of English colonists. Archaeologists said that its theory was plausible but that more evidence was needed.

An etching from the 1870s depicts John White returning to the Roanoke Colony in 1590 to discover the settlement abandoned. Credit... State Archives of North Carolina

In 1590, the would-be governor of a colony meant to be one of England's first outposts in North America discovered that more than 100 settlers weren't on the small island where he left them.

More than 400 years later, the question of what happened to those settlers, who landed on Roanoke Island, off the coast of modern North Carolina, has grown into a piece of American mythology, inspiring plays, novels, documentaries and a tourism industry in the Outer Banks.

Stories have taken root that the colonists, who left no clear trace aside from the word "Croatoan" carved on a tree, survived somewhere on the mainland, died in conflict with Native Americans or met some other end.

A new book about the colonists, " The Lost Colony and Hatteras Island," published in June and citing 10 years of excavations at nearby Hatteras Island, aims to put the mystery to bed. The book's author, Scott Dawson, a researcher from Hatteras, argues that the Native people who lived there took in the English settlers and that historical records and artifacts can end the debate.

"Basically, the historical evidence says that's where they went," said Mark Horton, an archaeologist at the University of Bristol, in England, who worked with Mr. Dawson. Dr. Horton acknowledged that there was no "smoking gun" but said that with everything in context, "it's not rocket science."

The Croatoan people lived on what is now Hatteras Island on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Credit... Joshua Corsa/Associated Press

Historians and archaeologists not involved in the recent research on Hatteras were more skeptical, saying that the evidence was inconclusive and that they wanted to see peer-reviewed work. They also said the argument was not new: The idea that the Croatoans, as the Native people on Hatteras were called, adopted at least some of the settlers has long been considered plausible.

"Sure, it's possible - why wouldn't it be?" said Malinda Maynor Lowery,a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "People don't get lost. They get murdered, they get stolen, they get taken in. They live and die as members of other communities."

Dr. Maynor Lowery presented a similar possibility in her 2018 book on the history of the Lumbee people, the descendants of dozens of tribes in a wide region including eastern North Carolina. Despite violence by the English against Croatoan villagers, she wrote, the settlers probably took refuge with them.

"The Indians of Roanoke, Croatoan, Secotan and other villages had no reason to make enemies of the colonists," she wrote. "Instead, they probably made them kin."

The English landed into a complicated fray of conflict and shifting alliances, said Lauren McMillan, a professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va.

"They're all interfighting, and these different groups are trying to use the English against one another," she said. "The Croatoans perhaps saw the English as a powerful ally and sources of valuable new things."

Dr. Maynor Lowery, who is Lumbee, added that the "lost colony" story is itself based on the incorrect premise "that Native people also disappeared, which we didn't."

The story, she said, was like "a monument that has to come down," adding that "it's harder to dismantle an origin story than a statue."

Mr. Dawson, a founder of the Croatoan Archaeological Society, a local research group, said he hoped his book would dismantle some of that story.

"I was trying to get the Croatoans' history back from the depths of mythology," he said. "They played a huge role in American history, took these people in and in school you're taught that no one knows what Croatoan means."

He also wanted to counter the mystique around the settlers, which has ballooned over the centuries in popular culture. They were made the heroes of 19th-century romances; Confederate sympathizers tied them in with themes of the "lost cause"; and a nationalistic, outdoor musical has drawn more than four million people, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, since 1937.

Before those works, the colonists had been historical footnotes, said Charles Ewen, an archaeologist at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C. It is not clear how much their contemporaries even wondered what happened to them, he said, given how common failure, death and disappearances were in European ventures across the Atlantic.

"It's no big mystery until you start to get a historical type of writing in the 1800s," he said. "Then it gets to be our big mystery, and it fits into racist ideas."

Dr. Ewen, who is also working on a book about the colony, said there were so many stories about it in part because there was so little evidence about what happened to the colonists. The settlers could have been killed by hostile Native people or by England's rival, the Spanish, or faced famine, a hurricane or shipwreck. They could have moved into the mainland, allying with Native groups there, or moved in with the Croatoan people on Hatteras.

"I'm not saying it's not true," Dr. Ewen said of the last theory. "I'm just saying I'm very skeptical."

Experts disagreed about how reliable sources were from the era and the next, including one Englishman's account, published in 1709, about Native people on Hatteras whose ancestors could read.

Researchers at a dig site on Hatteras Island. Experts said it was difficult to know for sure how colonists' artifacts got there. Credit... B.Rain Bennett

They were also skeptical that artifacts found on Hatteras, including a rapier hilt, late 16th-century gun hardware and part of a slate writing tablet, could definitively be traced to the colonists. (Dr. Horton said he was preparing a study for peer review on the Hatteras research.)

"It's very easy to find European things intermingled with Native American things," said Dennis Blanton, an archaeologist at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va. "There were Europeans in and out of the Mid-Atlantic and the Southeast for a long time, and a lot of those landfalls were brief, unrecorded or poorly recorded."

He said that it was "very hard to know" how objects wound up on Hatteras, given how much trade, conflict and contact was going on. "The scenarios are so varied, it just makes your head spin," he said.

Dr. Blanton added that feeding and sheltering about 100 colonists would have been "a fairly significant strain" on the Croatoan community. "If experience is any guide, the adoption of Europeans into an Indigenous community would have been quite limited," he said.

James Horn, a historian and member of the First Colony Foundation, a research nonprofit, said that most historians over the past 50 years had considered Hatteras a destination for the settlers. But he said it was unlikely that all of the colonists ended up there.

Mr. Horn and an archaeologist with the First Colony Foundation, Nicholas M. Luccketti, believe they have evidence that some of the settlers moved about 50 miles inland to a place they call Site X.

Dr. Luccketti said the colonists could have split up, with some on Hatteras, others at Site X and another group somewhere else.

Although there have been no excavations at Site X since 2018, Dr. Horn said he expected the search for evidence to continue.

"It's a 400-year-old mystery that revolves around all sorts of mysteries within it," he said. "It's too tempting for many people."

Mr. Dawson continues to lead a small team on Hatteras, which is now dotted with luxury homes and vacation rentals. "I just wanted to salvage something before it's under somebody's 10-bedroom house with a pool," he said. "At least we can salvage something to argue about."

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Roanoke's 'Lost Colony' Was Never Lost, New Book Says

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A new book aims to settle a centuries-old question of what happened to a group of English colonists. Archaeologists said that its theory was plausible but that more evidence was needed. In 1590, the would-be governor of a colony meant to be one of England's first outposts in North America discovered that more than 100 settlers weren't on the small island where he left them.

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"Teaching Hard History" podcast, Season 1, Episode 6, "Resistance Means More than Rebellion"

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"Teaching Hard History" podcast, Season 1, Episode 6, "Resistance Means More than Rebellion"

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To see a more complete picture of the experience of enslaved people, you have to redefine resistance. Dr. Kenneth S. Greenberg offers teachers a lens to help students see the ways in which enslaved people fought back against the brutality of slavery.
Download the transcript

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Episode 6, Season 1 To see a more complete picture of the experience of enslaved people, you have to redefine resistance. Dr. Kenneth S. Greenberg offers teachers a lens to help students see the ways in which enslaved people fought back against the brutality of slavery.

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"Let It Begin Here!: Lexington and Concord: First Battles of the Revolution"

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"Let It Begin Here!: Lexington and Concord: First Battles of the Revolution"

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Told in a step-by-step account of the 24 hours leading up to the battles that sparked the American revolution, this picture book is sure to both inform and entertain.

On April 18th at 9:30 p.m. Paul Revere learned that the British Army was marching toward Lexington and Concord to arrest rebel leaders. At 5:20 the next morning, a shot rang out and the American Revolution had begun.In less than 24 hours a rebellious colony would be changed forever.

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Told in a step-by-step account of the 24 hours leading up to the battles that sparked the American revolution, this picture book is sure to both inform and entertain. On April 18th at 9:30 p.m. Paul Revere learned that the British Army was marching toward Lexington and Concord to arrest rebel leaders.

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Zinn Education Project, "Teaching Critically About Lewis and Clark"

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Zinn Education Project, "Teaching Critically About Lewis and Clark"

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The first chapter of this excellent resource about the uses and misuses of Lewis and Clark in U.S. classrooms is "Beyond Adventure." This evocative title also says a lot about what is offered by the authors of a book that is at once critique (of the dominant Lewis and Clark adventure narrative) and curriculum (new lessons that help teachers move beyond).

On the critique side, the authors of Teaching Critically about Lewis and Clark: Challenging Dominant Narratives in K-12 Curriculum examine how popular textbook treatments of Lewis and Clark miseducate children by erasing Indigenous people, knowledge, and history - like the Harcourt Social Studies book for elementary students that asserts, "Little was known about the land in the Louisiana Purchase." Known by whom? On the curriculum side, the authors offer promising lesson plans for children of all ages.

One example that powerfully refutes the textbook passage above is "Everything Was Already Loved." In this elementary lesson, each student learns about and draws a different plant known and used by Indigenous peoples before the arrival of white colonizers - red cedar, huckleberries, wapato, camus, biscuitroot, etc. - to create a "card" and play a game similar to Uno, with a unique set of rules. The rules, of course, are not the point. The point is to help children marinate in the wealth of scientific knowledge held by Indigenous people. To quote poet Karenne Wood, from which the lesson takes its title, "Nothing was discovered. Everything was already loved." [Description from Rethinking Schools.]

ISBN: 9780807763704 | Teachers College Press

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Teaching Critically About Lewis and Clark: Challenging Dominant Narratives in K-12 Curriculum | Zinn Education Project

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The first chapter of this excellent resource about the uses and misuses of Lewis and Clark in U.S. classrooms is "Beyond Adventure." This evocative title also says a lot about what is offered by the authors of a book that is at once critique (of the dominant Lewis and Clark adventure narrative) and curriculum (new lessons that help teachers move beyond).

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Nathan McAlister, Gilder Lehrman Instititute, "The Soldier's Experience: Letters from Four American Wars"

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Nathan McAlister, Gilder Lehrman Instititute, "The Soldier's Experience: Letters from Four American Wars"

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Affiliate School Registration | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

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Michelle Duster, "Ida B. the Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells"

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Michelle Duster, "Ida B. the Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells"

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Journalist. Suffragist. Antilynching crusader. In 1862, Ida B. Wells was born enslaved in Holly Springs, Mississippi. In 2020, she won a Pulitzer Prize.

Ida B. Wells committed herself to the needs of those who did not have power. In the eyes of the FBI, this made her a "dangerous negro agitator." In the annals of history, it makes her an icon.

Ida B. the Queen tells the awe-inspiring story of an pioneering woman who was often overlooked and underestimated-a woman who refused to exit a train car meant for white passengers; a woman brought to light the horrors of lynching in America; a woman who cofounded the NAACP. Written by Wells's great-granddaughter Michelle Duster, this "warm remembrance of a civil rights icon" ( Kirkus Reviews) is a unique visual celebration of Wells's life, and of the Black experience.

A century after her death, Wells's genius is being celebrated in popular culture by politicians, through song, public artwork, and landmarks. Like her contemporaries Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, Wells left an indelible mark on history-one that can still be felt today. As America confronts the unfinished business of systemic racism, Ida B. the Queen pays tribute to a transformational leader and reminds us of the power we all hold to smash the status quo.

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Ida B. the Queen: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells

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Journalist. Suffragist. Antilynching crusader. In 1862, Ida B. Wells was born enslaved in Holly Springs, Mississippi. In 2020, she won a Pulitzer Prize. Ida B. Wells committed herself to the needs of those who did not have power. In the eyes of the FBI, this made her a "dangerous negro agitator."

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COVID-19
The UMass Amherst Libraries and the W. E. B. Du Bois Center will be closed until further notice to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Du Bois Center staff will be working remotely during this time.

Visit the University's site on the coronavirus outbreak for the latest information.

The W. E. B. Du Bois Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst was established in 2009 to engage audiences in discussion and scholarship about global issues involving race, labor, and social justice. UMass Amherst is the proud home of the W. E. B. Du Bois Papers, which are housed on the 25th floor of the library in Special Collections University Archives. The entire collection is free to view digitally.

The Du Bois Center's mission is to make the writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, as well as his contemporaries, available and accessible to everyone throughout the world for application to the problems and issues of the 21st Century, and to create new knowledge and support scholarship emanating from the life and teachings of W. E. B. Du Bois.

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COVID-19 The UMass Amherst Libraries and the W. E. B. Du Bois Center will be closed until further notice to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Du Bois Center staff will be working remotely during this time. Visit the University's site on the coronavirus outbreak for the latest information. The W.

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Philip Hoose, "We Were There, Too!: Young People in U.S. History"

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Philip Hoose, "We Were There, Too!: Young People in U.S. History"

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Reading of the Declaration of Independence

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Peter Nabokov, "Native American Testimony: A Chronicle of Indian-White Relations From Prophecy to the Present, 1492-2000"

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Peter Nabokov, "Native American Testimony: A Chronicle of Indian-White Relations From Prophecy to the Present, 1492-2000"

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Native American Testimony by Peter Nabokov: 9780140281590 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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From the author of How the World Moves--the classic collection of more than 500 years of Native American History In a series of powerful and moving documents, anthropologist Peter Nabokov presents a history...

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Folder of Lesson Plan Activities Submitted by the Group

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Folder of Lesson Plan Activities Submitted by the Group

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NPR, February 20, 2012, "Forget Lincoln Logs: A Tower of Books to Honor Abe"

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NPR, February 20, 2012, "Forget Lincoln Logs: A Tower of Books to Honor Abe"

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This President's Day, a group of historians in Washington, D.C., decided they wanted to do something different to recognize the legacy of Abraham Lincoln. But how do you memorialize someone who is already one of the most memorialized people in history?

Their solution: to physically illustrate Lincoln's importance by creating a tower of books written about him. The tower measures about eight feet around and 34 feet - that's three and a half stories tall.

"It makes a real statement to anyone that this is an important guy and there was a whole lot written about him, and there continues to be a whole lot written about him," says Paul Tetreault, director of Ford's Theatre, where Lincoln was assassinated in 1865.

The towering tribute to the 16th president rises up through the middle of a spiral staircase in the lobby of the new Ford's Theatre Center for Education and Leadership, located just across the street.

Some 15,000 books have been written about Lincoln - more books, says Tetreault, than have been written about any other person in world history, with the exception of Jesus Christ.

Nearly 7,000 of these books are contained in the tower. They even look authentic up close ( click here to get a closer look) but the tower's books are actually replicas made of pieces of bent aluminum, with the covers of the real books printed on them.

"There are books here for people of all ages," says Tetreault. "There's young people's books, there's an Abraham Lincoln stickers book, there's an Abraham Lincoln coloring book. And then of course there's all of the bestsellers: David Herbert Donald's great book about Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team of Rivals - all of these major scholars who've written about Abraham Lincoln, they're all contained in this stack."

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Forget Lincoln Logs: A Tower Of Books To Honor Abe

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There's a new, towering tribute to the 16th president in the nation's capitol: A three-story sculpture of 7,000 books written about the 16th president. The sculpture represents less than half of the 15,000 some books written about Lincoln, says Paul Tetreault, director of Ford's Theatre.

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John E. Washington (ed. and with a new introduction by) Kate Masur, "They Knew Lincoln"

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John E. Washington (ed. and with a new introduction by) Kate Masur, "They Knew Lincoln"

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Originally published in 1942 and now reprinted for the first time, They Knew Lincoln is a classic in African American history and Lincoln studies. Part memoir and part history, the book is an account of John E. Washington's childhood among African Americans in Washington, DC, and of the black people who knew or encountered Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln.

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James Swanson, "Chasing Lincoln's Killer: The Search for John Wilkes Booth"

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James Swanson, "Chasing Lincoln's Killer: The Search for John Wilkes Booth"

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(this is essentially a young readers' version of "Manhunt")

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Product Details

5.74 X 8.4 X 0.78 inches | 0.9 pounds

Earn by promoting books

About the Author

James L. Swanson is the award-winning author of the bestseller Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer. His other books include Chasing Lincoln's Killer, an adaptation of Manhunt for young adults, and his follow-up, The President Has Been Shot!: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy, which was a finalist for the YALSA-ALA Excellence in Young Adult Nonfiction award. He has held a number of government and think-tank posts in Washington, D.C.

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Chasing Lincoln's Killer: The Search for John Wilkes Booth

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NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author James Swanson delivers a riveting account of the chase for Abraham Lincoln's assassin.Based on rare archival material, obscure trial manuscripts, and interviews with relatives of the conspirators and the manhunters, CHASING LINCOLN'S KILLER is a fast-paced thriller about the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth: a wild twelve-day chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia.

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James Swanson, "Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer"

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James Swanson, "Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer"

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The murder of Abraham Lincoln set off the greatest manhunt in American history -- the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth. From April 14 to April 26, 1865, the assassin led Union cavalry troops on a wild, twelve-day chase from the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia.

At the very center of this story is John Wilkes Booth, Americas notorious villain. A confederate sympathizer and member of a celebrated acting family, Booth threw away his fame, wealth, and promise for a chance to avenge the South's defeat. For almost two weeks, he confounded the manhunters, slipping away from their every move and denying the justice they sought.

Manhunt is a fully documented work, but it is also a fascinating tale of murder, intrigue, and betrayal. A gripping hour-by-hour account told through the eyes of the hunted and the hunters, this is history as you've never read it before.

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Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer|Paperback

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The murder of Abraham Lincoln set off the greatest manhunt in American history -- the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth. From April 14 to April 26, 1865, the assassin led Union cavalry troops on a wild, twelve-day chase from the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland...

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Library of Congress, "History of Liberia, a Timeline"

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Library of Congress, "History of Liberia, a Timeline"

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1820 to 1847 | History Of Liberia: A Time Line | Articles and Essays | Maps of Liberia, 1830-1870 | Digital Collections | Library of Congress

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Denver Brunsman and John Donoghue, "Teaching History in the Age of Trump"

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Denver Brunsman and John Donoghue, "Teaching History in the Age of Trump"

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Denver Brunsman teaches American history at George Washington University. John Donoghue teaches American history at Loyola University Chicago.

In this, our Age of Trump, as each day features a new uproar over issues ranging from immigration to health care, a quieter campaign is underway on college campuses.The same type of bitter war waged to discredit scientific research on climate change for the past generation has shifted to the humanities, especially history. Granted, the stakes are different, but each campaign poses significant dangers. Whereas the war on climate research puts our entire civilization at risk, the fight against professional history threatens our soul as a nation.

Both efforts by the right imperil the academic goal of objectivity and long accepted channels for evaluating and disseminating facts. There are antecedents to the current campaign against academic history, including the controversy over the U.S. National History Standards in the 1990s and the more recent uproar over the College Board's changes to the Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. History exam. What is worse this time around is that the attacks are being waged on individual college and university history departments and professors. We should know, as we have each, in different ways, found ourselves in the crosshairs of right-wing attacks in the past several weeks.

The attacks came as a surprise given that we laugh at our own all-American bona fides, which include, between us, playing and coaching high school and college football, serving in the U.S. Army Reserves, and sharing a friendship forged on baseball and a joint love of American and British Atlantic history. Now we also share being attacked for the crime of doing our job: interpreting the past according to what actually happened, not what we imagine or wish happened.

In Brunsman's case, as director of undergraduate studies in the History Department at George Washington University, he and his colleagues have faced a stream of derogatory emails and phone calls since reports surfaced in right-wing campus "watchdog" publications in December that the department removed a requirement for history majors to take an American history course. Other conservative media outlets, including Breibart, the National Review, and Fox News (in a report tweeted by Kellyanne Conway) picked up the story, further blurring the facts with each retelling. The reports lobbed the wild charge that the curriculum change was motivated by anti-American sentiments and implied that GW had turned from teaching American history.

Never mind that the curriculum change took place last March and came as part of a broader effort to reform the history major to attract more students and give them more freedom to specialize in a particular area. For the majority of students, that focus will undoubtedly be American history. GW's graduate program in history and the preponderance of its undergraduate history courses are and will continue to be focused on American history.

Perhaps the most laughable charge in this campaign has been that George Washington University does not even teach about George Washington! This came as news to Brunsman, as he teaches an annual course titled, "George Washington and His World," which takes place at Washington's Mount Vernon estate, and lectures widely about Washington on GW's campus. The course focuses on the evolution of Washington's leadership from a naive provincial officer on the frontier to the mature founder of the United States. It also gives attention to the issue of slavery and the enslaved population at Mount Vernon, not as a liberal critique but in the honest pursuit of fully grasping Washington and the circumstances surrounding his leadership of the new American nation. Here Brunsman has taken a cue from none other than Mount Vernon, which last fall turned its museum space over to the enthralling exhibition, "Lives Bound Together: Slavery at George Washington's Mount Vernon." Even the historical custodians of the American founders have moved past simplified celebratory narratives that ignore facts and the full historical record.

In Donoghue's case, he was placed on the now infamous Professor Watchlist in November for linking the histories of slavery and capitalism in his courses. The connection proved offensive to the site's conservative creator; nonetheless it reflects a viewpoint widely shared by many historians of American slavery. Donoghue's efforts to recruit black students for his spring 2017 course entitled "Slavery and Abolition Then and Now" were also trolled by right-wing websites, which condemned him for revising a part of the "Now" section to discuss how slavery's racist legacy figures in the present. Though Donoghue announced there would be several case studies in the "Now" section, the condemnations focused on one: the way Donald Trump's presidential campaign capitalized on American racial tensions.

Donoghue's choice to include the Trump campaign in his course did not emerge from the "liberal bias" that conservatives routinely attribute to academics. Instead it reflected an engagement between past and present to discuss how the history of American racism and anti-immigrant sentiment resonates with the ways in which the Trump campaign rebuilt American populism.

One does not have to look hard for historical or present-day examples to prove the point. American racism, forged first largely through slavery, lived on through Jim Crow segregation, lynching epidemics, the vagrancy laws that fed the convict-lease labor system, the poll taxes, literacy tests, and terrorism that suppressed the black vote, the jailing, beatings and murders of civil rights workers, and the red-lining that created urban ghettos. Anti-immigrant sentiment was first legislated in the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798), surged again a half-century later when Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany faced the wrath of Protestant mobs and the "Know Nothing Party," and continued into the 20th century through the mass deportation of Mexicans and outright bans or restrictions on southern and eastern European immigration.

Trump added a new chapter to this history by leading the "birther" movement, using imaginary statistics to gin-up fears of black-on-white crime, wrongly blaming the Black Lives Matter movement for encouraging its members to murder police officers, and promising a Justice Department investigation of the movement for the alleged threat it posed to "law and order." He also advanced his plans for the mass deportation of undocumented migrants through racist depictions of Latinas, proposed banning Muslim immigration, characterized all Muslims as potential terrorists, and called for a national registry of American Muslims. Sadly, President Trump is now following through on several of these campaign promises.

For Trump, American greatness is not damaged by racial injustice, xenophobia, and religious intolerance in either the past or the present. Instead, making America "great" again depends on abolishing "political correctness" and folding the "race card." This would destroy the "safe space" that America's internal enemies had made for black thugs, Mexican rapists, and Muslim terrorists to wreak havoc on the nation through crime, jihadism, and the theft of jobs, benefits, and the vote.

If there is a silver lining to these disturbing trends, it is that the academic study and teaching of history offers an antidote to the spread of "alternative facts" in our brave new "post-truth" era. Teaching history on a sound basis of facts drawn from the varying viewpoints of historical actors and historians is crucial for the American Republic. It reinforces what only a short time ago was a truism: that verifiable facts matter, particularly in a Republic whose founders recognized that an informed citizenry was a bulwark against tyranny, corruption, and demagoguery. History, taught honestly, gives students the analytical tools to separate fact from fiction, both in the past and present-a skill that might prove essential to safeguarding their own freedom.

As Americans, we have many things to celebrate in our history, but we can also honor our land as the home of the brave by reconciling ourselves to the nation's historical shortcomings, particularly its heritage of white supremacy. Teaching American history is a vital means to this end. Confronting difficult chapters of American history can be unsettling for students, and some critics may mistake this pursuit of truth as unpatriotic. But for most students, engaging fully with the American past is revealing, as it helps explain their own experience in the 21st century.

Teaching history is a process fraught with complexity and tension, but therein lies its real value. We don't teach history to promote patriotism by creating a "safe space" from unsettling knowledge. Facing the American past honestly is the only way to kindle a truly authentic love of country. Nobody can really love an illusion because illusions are unreal. But those with the intellectual courage to shine light in the dark space between America's rarefied ideals and its lived experience stand a better chance of realizing those ideals in the future. What could be more patriotic than that?

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Denver Brunsman teaches American history at George Washington University. John Donoghue teaches American history at Loyola University Chicago. In this, our Age of Trump, as each day features a new uproar over issues ranging from immigration to health care, a quieter campaign is underway on college campuses.The same type of bitter war waged to discredit scientific research on climate change for the past generation has shifted to the humanities, especially history.

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Khalil Gibran Muhammad discussing "The Condemnation of Blackness" on Book Breaks

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Khalil Gibran Muhammad discussing "The Condemnation of Blackness" on Book Breaks

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Harvard Kennedy School professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad looked at how race became linked to criminality in post-Civil War America. This was a virtual event hosted by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York City.

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Kendra Taira Field, "Growing Up with the Country: Family, Race, and Nation after the Civil War"

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Kendra Taira Field, "Growing Up with the Country: Family, Race, and Nation after the Civil War"

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Family, Race, and Nation after the Civil War

Kendra Taira Field

Format: Hardcover View Inside
Price: $38.00

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Paper

The masterful and poignant story of three African-American families who journeyed west after emancipation, by an award-winning scholar and descendant of the migrants
Following the lead of her own ancestors, Kendra Field's epic family history chronicles the westward migration of freedom's first generation in the fifty years after emancipation. Drawing on decades of archival research and family lore within and beyond the United States, Field traces their journey out of the South to Indian Territory, where they participated in the development of black and black Indian towns and settlements.

When statehood, oil speculation, and Jim Crow segregation imperiled their lives and livelihoods, these formerly enslaved men and women again chose emigration. Some migrants launched a powerful back-to-Africa movement, while others moved on to Canada and Mexico. Their lives and choices deepen and widen the roots of the Great Migration. Interweaving black, white, and Indian histories, Field's beautifully wrought narrative explores how ideas about race and color powerfully shaped the pursuit of freedom.

Kendra Taira Field is associate professor of history at Tufts University.

"This is a wonderful, capacious narrative about a country that remains always a dodgy work in progress. Field's seamless interweaving of family, race, and nation---of the particular, the subordinate, and the superordinate-recaptures exceptionalist possibilities that will upend and enrich her readers' understanding of the American past."-David Levering Lewis, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography

"Personal and profoundly learned, Field, by unearthing the deeper roots of the Great Migration and back-to-Africa movement, explodes the simple structures of inherited histories while complicating understandings of race and nation in an America that never was, and never shall be, purely black and white."-Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University

" Growing Up with the Country is a work of startling brilliance and originality, of heart-wrenching beauty and theoretical innovation. In Kendra Field's able hands, her family stories become a window into the struggle for freedom in an era when emancipation and the dismantling of Indian sovereignty gave way to new forms of unfreedom, constriction, and possibility."-Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original

ISBN: 9780300180527
Publication Date:

256 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
42 b/w illus.

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Family, Race, and Nation after the Civil War Kendra Taira Field Format: Hardcover View Inside Price: $38.00 Our shopping cart only supports Mozilla Firefox. Please ensure you're using that browser before attempting to purchase.

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Alaina E. Roberts, "I've Been Here All the WhileBlack Freedom on Native Land"

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Alaina E. Roberts, "I've Been Here All the WhileBlack Freedom on Native Land"

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Alaina E. Roberts

First Edition
224 pages | 6 x 9 | 10 b/w
Cloth 2021 | ISBN 9780812253030 | $34.95a | Outside the Americas £26.99
Ebook editions are available from selected online vendors
A volume in the series America in the Nineteenth Century
View table of contents and excerpt

Winner of the Phillis Wheatley Book Award, in the Historical Era category, granted by the Sons and Daughters of the United States Middle Passage

"Roberts's original book will cause historians to reexamine generalities about Indigenous and Black people in Oklahoma and their empowerment and identity; and to extend the story of Reconstruction and its aftermath westward in time and space."-Library Journal
"In I've Been Here All the While, historian Alaina E. Roberts tells a riveting story about Indian Territory in the Reconstruction era that illuminates a broader national moment. A descendant of the African Americans, Chickasaws, and white settlers about whom she writes, Roberts speaks in a bold voice and advances a provocative argument, urging readers to see how the various groups who migrated to Indian Territory by choice or by force all consciously participated in a process of settler colonialism and thus a national narrative. Scholars of the U.S. West, African American history and Native American history, and descendants of the many populations Roberts carefully recovers and calls to account, will want to contend with the complex portrayal she offers of family, land, hope, and loss."-Tiya Miles, author of The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits

"A revealing and heartfelt book. Alaina E. Roberts' study, clear-eyed and richly ironic, is of the tangled story of Blacks, Indians, and whites during those years when the reconstructing nation was sorting out who would be in and out of the American family. Her focus is one of the most underappreciated theaters of that story, Indian Territory. More broadly, Roberts has given us as well something of a meditation on the universal human desire for home and belonging."-Elliott West, author of The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado

"In her elegant book, Alaina E. Roberts powerfully illuminates themes of freedom, ownership, belonging, citizenship, opportunity, land, and colonialism in the crucible of mid-nineteenth-century Indian Territory."-Kathleen DuVal, author of Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution

"Combining family history and rigorous research, this brilliant text deepens our understanding of post-Civil War Reconstruction by interrogating what happened in Indian Territory, revealing the layered wreckage wrought on the Native nations and formerly enslaved Africans, all entrapped in the pernicious logic of settler-colonialism."-Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Perhaps no other symbol has more resonance in African American history than that of "40 acres and a mule"-the lost promise of Black reparations for slavery after the Civil War. In I've Been Here All the While, we meet the Black people who actually received this mythic 40 acres, the American settlers who coveted this land, and the Native Americans whose holdings it originated from.

In nineteenth-century Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma), a story unfolds that ties African American and Native American history tightly together, revealing a western theatre of Civil War and Reconstruction, in which Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole Indians, their Black slaves, and African Americans and whites from the eastern United States fought military and rhetorical battles to lay claim to land that had been taken from others.

Through chapters that chart cycles of dispossession, land seizure, and settlement in Indian Territory, Alaina E. Roberts draws on archival research and family history to upend the traditional story of Reconstruction. She connects debates about Black freedom and Native American citizenship to westward expansion onto Native land. As Black, white, and Native people constructed ideas of race, belonging, and national identity, this part of the West became, for a short time, the last place where Black people could escape Jim Crow, finding land and exercising political rights, until Oklahoma statehood in 1907.

Alaina E. Roberts teaches history at the University of Pittsburgh.

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I've Been Here All the While | Alaina E. Roberts

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First Edition 224 pages | 6 x 9 | 10 b/w Cloth 2021 | ISBN 9780812253030 | $34.95a | Outside the Americas £26.99 Ebook editions are available from selected online vendors A volume in the series America in the Nineteenth Century View table of contents and excerpt Winner of the

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Online registration for 2021 Two Hearted Family Reunion Run.

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Khalil Gibran Muhammad, "The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, With a New Preface"

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Khalil Gibran Muhammad, "The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, With a New Preface"

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The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, with a New Preface a book by Khalil Gibran Muhammad

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Winner of the John Hope Franklin PrizeA Moyers & Company Best Book of the Year “A brilliant work that tells us how directly the past has formed us.”--Darryl Pinckney, New York Review of Books How did we come to think of race as synonymous with crime? A brilliant and deeply disturbing biography o…

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Slavery by Another Name is a 90-minute documentary that challenges one of Americans' most cherished assumptions: the belief that slavery in this country ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. The film tells how even as chattel slavery came to an end in the South in 1865, thousands of African Americans were pulled back into forced labor with shocking force and brutality. It was a system in which men, often guilty of no crime at all, were arrested, compelled to work without pay, repeatedly bought and sold, and coerced to do the bidding of masters. Tolerated by both the North and South, forced labor lasted well into the 20 th century.

For most Americans this is entirely new history. Slavery by Another Name gives voice to the largely forgotten victims and perpetrators of forced labor and features their descendants living today.

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Slavery by Another Name is a 90-minute documentary that challenges one of Americans' most cherished assumptions: the belief that slavery in this country ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. The film tells how even as chattel slavery came to an end in the South in 1865, thousands of African Americans were pulled back into forced labor with shocking force and brutality.

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Equal Justice Institute, "Reconstruction in America" report

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Equal Justice Institute, "Reconstruction in America" report

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EJI has now documented nearly 6,500 racial terror lynchings in America between 1865 and 1950. Thousands more Black people have been killed by white mob lynchings whose deaths may never be discovered.

In our 2015 report, Lynching in America, EJI documented 4,500 racial terror lynchings in the period between 1877 and 1950. Our newest report, Reconstruction in America, documents nearly 2,000 additional lynchings between 1865 and 1876, raising the total number of documented lynchings to nearly 6,500.

Thousands more were attacked, sexually assaulted, and terrorized by white mobs and individuals who were shielded from arrest and prosecution.

White perpetrators of lawless violence against formerly enslaved people were almost never held accountable-instead, they were often celebrated. Emboldened Confederate veterans and former enslavers organized a reign of terror that effectively nullified constitutional amendments designed to provide Black people with equal protection and the right to vote.

In a series of devastating opinions, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked Congressional efforts to protect formerly enslaved people. The Court ceded control to the same white Southerners who used terror and violence to stop Black political participation, upholding laws and practices that codified racial hierarchy and embracing a new constitutional order defined by "states' rights."

Within a decade after the Civil War, Congress began to abandon the promise of assistance to millions of formerly enslaved Black people. Violence, mass lynchings, and lawlessness enabled white Southerners to create a regime of white supremacy and Black disenfranchisement alongside a new economic order that continued to exploit Black labor.

White officials in the North and West similarly rejected racial equality, codified racial discrimination, and occasionally embraced the same tactics of violent control seen in the South.

We cannot understand our present moment without recognizing the lasting damage caused by allowing white supremacy and racial hierarchy to prevail during Reconstruction.

Bryan Stevenson, Director

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EJI has now documented nearly 6,500 racial terror lynchings in America between 1865 and 1950. Thousands more Black people have been killed by white mob lynchings whose deaths may never be discovered. In our 2015 report, Lynching in America, EJI documented 4,500 racial terror lynchings in the period between 1877 and 1950.

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Learning Activities: "African-American life in Savannah before & after the Civil War"

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Learning Activities: "African-American life in Savannah before & after the Civil War"

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NY Times and Serial Productions, "Nice White Parents" podcast

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NY Times and Serial Productions, "Nice White Parents" podcast

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Introducing: Nice White Parents (Published 2020)

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A new five-part series about building a better school system, and what gets in the way. New episodes of “Nice White Parents” are available here, brought to you by Serial Productions and The New York Times.

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Sonya Douglass Horsford, "Learning in a Burning House: Educational Inequality, Ideology, and (Dis)Integration"

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Sonya Douglass Horsford, "Learning in a Burning House: Educational Inequality, Ideology, and (Dis)Integration"

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The negative consequences of school desegregation on Black communities in the United States are now well documented in education research. Learning in a Burning House is the first book to offer a historical look at the desegregation dilemma with clear recommendations for what must be done to ensure Black student success in today's schools.

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American Panorama, Map of Forced Migration

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American Panorama, Map of Forced Migration

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American Panorama - Forced migration in the American south

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Zinn Education Project, "Teach Reconstruction"

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Zinn Education Project, "Teach Reconstruction"

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Reconstruction, the era immediately following the Civil War and emancipation, is full of stories that help us see the possibility of a future defined by racial equity. Yet the possibilities and achievements of this era are too often overshadowed by the violent white supremacist backlash. Too often the story of this grand experiment in interracial democracy is skipped or rushed through in classrooms across the country. Today-in a moment where activists are struggling to make Black lives matter-every student should probe the relevance of Reconstruction. Our campaign aims to help teachers and schools uncover the hidden, bottom-up history of this era.

We offer lessons for middle and high school, a student campaign to make Reconstruction history visible in their communities, and an annotated list of recommended teaching guides, student friendly books, primary document collections, and films. This campaign is informed by teachers who have used our Reconstruction lessons and a team of Reconstruction scholars.

Sections: Why * Lessons * Related Resources * Student Project * Support * Advisors * In the News

Reconstruction, the era immediately following the Civil War and emancipation, is full of stories that help us see the possibility of a future defined by racial equity. Though often overlooked in classrooms across the country, Reconstruction was a period where the impossible suddenly became possible.
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This role play engages students in thinking about what freedpeople needed in order to achieve-and sustain-real freedom following the Civil War. It's followed by a chapter from the book Freedom's Unfinished Revolution on what would happen to the land in the South after slavery ended.

Teacher Comments
"I found the lesson plan to be a valuable addition to my teaching about this era. The students were engaged in their roles and, later, more engaged than ever before in finding out what choices were actually made the years following the Civil War." -Amy Grant, a middle school social studies teacher, Dexter, Michigan

A mixer role play that explores the connections between different social movements during Reconstruction.

The " Make Reconstruction History Visible " mapping project is an opportunity for students and teachers to identify and advocate for recognition of Reconstruction history in their community. This helps students learn about this vital era in U.S. history while also playing an active role in giving visibility to an era that has been hidden or misrepresented for too long.

For this project, students (individually or as a class) identify and document Reconstruction history such as schools, hospitals, election sites, Freedmen's Bureau offices, Black churches, Black newspapers, Black owned businesses, prominent individuals, organizations, key events, and more. Learn how to participate.
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Article By Adam Sanchez
From the urban rebellions to the salute at the Olympics, commemorations of 1968 - a pivotal year of Black Power - have appeared in news headlines throughout this anniversary year. Yet 2018 also marks the 150th anniversary of 1868 - the height of Black Power during Reconstruction. Read more.

Readings, primary documents, and films for classrooms about the Reconstruction era.

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The Teach Reconstruction campaign is made possible by donations from individuals. Please contribute today so that more teachers receive free lessons on Reconstruction history and more students can participate in the Make Reconstruction History Visible project. Donate now!

Shawn Leigh Alexander is an associate professor of African and African American Studies and the director of the Langston Hughes Center at the University of Kansas. Alexander is the author of An Army of Lions: The Struggle for Civil Rights Before the NAACP, and editor of Reconstruction Violence and the Ku Klux Klan Hearings.

David Blight is a professor of American history at Yale University and the director of the Gilder Lehman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale. Blight is the author of several books including A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory.

Gregory Carr is associate professor of Africana Studies, chair of the Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University, and Adjunct Faculty at the Howard School of Law. Carr is co-founder of the Philadelphia Freedom Schools Movement.

Michael Charney is a retired public school social studies teacher with over 30 years of experience in education, labor organizing, and education policy. He provides strategic guidance to the campaign. Charney wrote curriculum guides to support student organizing including "Fulfilling the Promise of America: The Struggle for Voting Rights," "The Minimum Wage and the Youth Vote (PDF)," and the "Present as History: A Look into the Origins of the Cleveland School Desegregation Case."

Gregory P. Downs is an associate professor of history at the University of California, Davis, and the author of After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War. Downs is also the co-author of the National Parks Service's Theme Study, The Era of Reconstruction 1861-1900.

Jim Downs is professor of history and the interim director of the American Studies Program at Connecticut College. Downs is the author of several books including Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction and Beyond Freedom: Disrupting the History of Emancipation which he co-edited with David Blight.

Hilary N. Green is an assistant professor of history at the University of Alabama and serves as the co-program director of the African American Studies program. Green is the author of Educational Reconstruction: African American Schools in the Urban South, 1865-1890.

Steven Hahn is a professor of history at New York University and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History for his book A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration.

William Loren Katz is the author of numerous books on U.S. history for middle school students, including An Album of Reconstruction.

Chenjerai Kumanyika is a researcher, journalist, and artist who works as an assistant professor in Rutgers University's Department of Journalism and Media Studies. He is also the co-executive producer and co-host of "Uncivil," Gimlet Media's podcast on the Civil War.

James Loewen is the emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Vermont and the author of several books including Lies My Teacher Told Me, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong and The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The "Great Truth" about the "Lost Cause".

Kate Masur is an associate professor of history and African-American studies at Northwestern University and author of An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle Over Equality in Washington, D.C. Masur is also the co-author of the National Parks Service's Theme Study The Era of Reconstruction 1861-1900.

Jeremy Nesoff is associate director for staff development at Facing History and Ourselves. He was a 7-12th grade social studies teacher and administrator for 10 years, in a small New York City public school and a small Vermont progressive independent school. Nesoff has been on staff at Facing History for more than 10 years. Among his roles is leading work connected to the curriculum unit The Reconstruction Era and The Fragility of Democracy.

Paul Ortiz is the director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida. Ortiz is the author of Emancipation Betrayed The Hidden History of Black Organizing & White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920 and An African American and Latinx History of the United States.

Tyler Parry is an associate professor in African American studies at California State University, Fullerton. He studies slavery, the African Diaspora, and the Atlantic world, and is the author of "Black Radicalism and the 'Tuition-Free' University," an article exploring the profound impact South Carolina's majority Black Reconstruction era legislature had on public education.

David Roediger is the foundation professor at the University of Kansas. He is the author of several books on race and class in the United States including Seizing Freedom: Slave Emancipation and Liberty for All.

Mark Roudané is a retired early childhood teacher. He is dedicating his life to documenting and sharing the history of his great, great grandfather, Charles Roudanez, who founded the New Orleans Daily Tribune, the first daily Black newspaper during Reconstruction.

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Reconstruction, the era immediately following the Civil War and emancipation, is full of stories that help us see the possibility of a future defined by racial equity. Yet the possibilities and achievements of this era are too often overshadowed by the violent white supremacist backlash.

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Here is a list of readings that educators can use to broach conversations in the classroom about the horrendous events that unfolded in Charleston, South Carolina on the evening of June 17, 2015. These readings provide valuable information about the history of racial violence in this country and contextualize the history of race relations in South Carolina and the United States in general. They also offer insights on race, racial identities, global white supremacy and black resistance. All readings are arranged by date of publication. This list is not meant to be exhaustive-you will find omissions. Please check out the Charleston Syllabus book for additional reading suggestions.

#Charlestonsyllabus was conceived by Chad Williams (@Dr_ChadWilliams), Associate Professor of African and Afro-American Studies at Brandeis University. With the help of Kidada Williams (@KidadaEWilliams), the hashtag started trending on Twitter on the evening of June 19, 2015. The following list was compiled and organized by AAIHS blogger Keisha N. Blain (@KeishaBlain) with the assistance of Melissa Morrone (@InfAgit), Ryan P. Randall (@foureyedsoul), and Cecily Walker (@skeskali). Special thanks to everyone who contributed suggestions via Twitter. Please click to read more about the origin and significance of #Charlestonsyllabus.

#Charlestonsyllabus is more than a list. It is a community of people committed to critical thinking, truth telling and social transformation."- Chad Williams

GENERAL HISTORICAL OVERVIEWS OP-EDS AND EDITORIALS

Yoni Applebaum, "Why Is the Flag Still There?," 21 June 2015, The Atlantic.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, "Take Down the Confederate Flag-Now," 18 June 2015, The Atlantic.

Jelani Cobb, "Terrorism in Charleston," 29 June 2015, The New Yorker.

Heather Cox Richardson, "Reconstructing the American Tradition of Domestic Terrorism," 18 June 2015, Werehistory.org

Michael Eric Dyson, "Love and Terror in the Black Church," 20 June 2015, New York Times.

Douglas R. Egerton, "Before Charleston's Church Shooting, a Long History of Attacks," 18 June 2015, New York Times.

Benjamin Foldy, "Rhodesian Flag, Confederate Flag: Roof & the Legacies of Racial Hate," 20 June 2015, Juan Cole at Informed Comment.

Robert Greene II, "Racism Can't Destroy This Charleston Church," 19 June 2015, Politico.com.

Libby Nelson, "The Confederate Flag Symbolizes White Supremacy -and it Always Has," 20 June 2015, Vox.

Nell Irvin Painter, "What is Whiteness?," 20 June 2015, New York Times.

Charles P. Pierce, "Charleston Shooting: Speaking the Unspeakable, Thinking the Unthinkable," 18 June 2015, Esquire.

David Remnick, "Charleston and the Age of Obama," 19 June 2015, New Yorker.

Manisha Sinha, "The Long and Proud History of Charleston's AME Church," 19 June 2015, Huffington Post.

Rebecca Traister, "Our Racist History Isn't Back to Haunt Us. It Never Left Us," 18 June 2015, The New Republic.

Kidada Williams, "Centuries of Violence," 19 June 2015, Slate.

READINGS ON SOUTH CAROLINA

William W. Freehling, Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816-1836 (1966)

Stephen Channing, Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina (1970)

Gerda Lerner, The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina: Pioneers for Women's Rights and Abolition (1971)

Peter Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (1974)

Thomas Holt, Black Over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina During Reconstruction (1977)

Daniel Littlefield, Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade in Colonial South Carolina (1981)

Charles Joyner, Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (1984)

Margaret Washington Creel, A Peculiar People: Slave Religion and Community Culture Among the Gullah (1988)

Julie Saville, The Work of Reconstruction: From Slave to Wage Laborer in South Carolina, 1860-1870 (1994)

Stephanie McCurry, Masters of Small World: Yeoman Households, Gender Relations and the Political Culture of the Antebellum South Carolina Low Country (1995)

Richard Zuczek, Reconstruction in South Carolina (1996)

Leslie Schwalm, A Hard Fight For We: Women's Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina (1997)

Douglas Egerton, He Shall Go Out Free: The Lives of Denmark Vesey (1999)

David M. Robertson, Denmark Vesey, The Buried History of America's Largest Slave Rebellion and the Man Who Led It (1999)

Manisha Sinha, Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina (2000)

Judith Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas (2001)

Michael Johnson, "Denmark Vesey and his Co-Conspirators," The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 4 (2001): 915-976.

Charles J. Holden, In the Great Maelstrom: Conservatives in Post-Civil War South Carolina (2002)

John Hammond Moore, Carnival of Blood: Dueling, Lynching, and Murder in SC, 1880-1920 (2006)

Peter Lau, Democracy Rising: South Carolina and the Fight for Black Equality since 1865 (2006)

Andrew Billingsley, Yearning to Breathe Free: Robert Smalls of South Carolina and His Families (2007)

Orville Vernon Burton and Winifred B. Moore, eds. Toward the Meeting of the Waters: Currents in the Civil Rights Movement of South Carolina during the Twentieth Century (2008)

Katherine Mellen Charron, Freedom's Teacher: The Life of Septima Clark (2009)

Orville Vernon Burton, Emory Campbell, and Wilbur Cross, Penn Center: A History Preserved (2014)

LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant, Talking to the Dead: Religion, Music, and Lived Memory among Gullah-Geechee Women (2014)

Charlotte S. Riley, A Mysterious Life and Calling: From Slavery to Ministry in South Carolina (2016)

*On Charleston, SC

Bernard Powers, Black Charlestonians: A Social History, 1822-1885 (1999)

David Blight, "The First Decoration Day" (2001)

Harlan Greene, Harry Hutchins, Jr. et. al., Slave Badges and the Slave-Hire System in Charleston, South Carolina: 1783-1865 (2004)

Stephanie Yuhl, A Golden Haze of Memory: The Making of Historic Charleston (2005)

Edmund Drago, Charleston's Avery Center: From Education and Civil Rights to Preserving the African American Experience (2006)

R. Scott Baker, Paradoxes of Desegregation: African American Struggles for Educational Equity in Charleston, South Carolina, 1926-1972 (2006)

Amrita Myers, Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston (2011)

Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts, "'Is it Okay to Talk about Slaves?' Segregating the Past in Historic Charleston," in Karen L. Cox, ed., Destination Dixie: Tourism and Southern History (2012), 137-159.

Blain Roberts, "Uncovering the Confederacy of the Mind: Or, How I Became a Belle of the Ball in Denmark Vesey's Church," Southern Cultures, Volume XIX, No. 3 (2013), 6-25.

Stephanie Yuhl, "Hidden in Plain Sight: Centering the Domestic Slave Trade in American Public History," Journal of Southern History, Volume LXXIX, No. 3 (2013): 593-624.

Steve Estes, Charleston in Black and White: Race and Power in the South after the Civil Rights Movement (2015)

Jeff Strickland, Unequal Freedoms: Ethnicity, Race, and White Supremacy in Civil War-Era Charleston (2015)

READINGS ON SLAVERY *General Overviews *On Slavery in the U.S. South

John Hope Franklin, The Militant South, 1800-1861 (1956)

John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (1972)

Eugene Genovese, Roll Jordan, Roll: the World the Slaves Made (1974)

Deborah Gray White, Ar'n't I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South (1985)

William Dusinberre, Them Dark Days: Slavery in the American Rice Swamps (1996)

Edward Ball, Slaves in the Family (1998)

T.H. Breen, Myne Owne Ground: Race and Freedom on Virginia's Eastern Shore, 1640-1676 (1980)

Brenda Stevenson, Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South (1996)

Michael Angelo Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (1998)

Noralee Frankel, Freedom's Women: Black Women and Families in Civil War Era Mississippi (1999)

Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market (1999)

Sally Hadden, Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas (2001)

Sharla M. Fett, Working Cures: Healing, Health, and Power on Southern Slave Plantations (2002)

Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (2002)

Dylan C. Penningroth, The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South (2003)

Stephanie Camp, Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South (2004)

David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: the Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (2006)

Daina Ramey Berry, Swing the Sickle for the Harvest is Ripe: Gender and Slavery in Antebellum Georgia (2007)

Thavolia Glymph, Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household (2009)

Adam Rothman, Beyond Freedom's Reach: A Kidnapping in the Twilight of Slavery (2015)

*On Slavery in the U.S. North

Lorenzo J. Greene, The Negro in Colonial New England, 1620-1776 (1942)

Gary B. Nash, Forging Freedom the Formation of Philadelphia's Black Community, 1720-1840 (1988)

James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community, and Protest among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860 (1997)

Joanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation And "Race" In New England, 1780-1860 (1998)

Leslie M. Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863 (2003)

Erica Armstrong Dunbar, A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City (2008)

*On Slavery in the Atlantic World

John Thorton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 (1998)

Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-headed Hyrda: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (2000)

Hilary Beckles and Verene Shepherd, eds., Caribbean Slavery in the Atlantic World (2000)

Verene Shepherd, Working Slavery, Pricing Freedom: Perspectives from the Caribbean, Africa, and the African Diaspora (2002)

Jennifer Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (2004)

Pamela Scully and Diana Paton, eds, Gender and Slave Emancipation in the Atlantic World (2005)

Stephanie E. Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora (2007)

Edda L. Fields-Black, Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora (2008)

*READINGS ON THE CIVIL WAR & RECONSTRUCTION

Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (1901)

W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction (1935)

Hortense Powdermaker, After Freedom: A Cultural Study in the Deep South (1939)

Leon Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (1979)

George Rable, But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction (1984)

Michael P. Johnson and James Roark, Free Family of Color in the Old South (1984)

James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1988)

Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (1988)

Ira Berlin, Slaves No More: Three Essays on Emancipation and the Civil War (1992)

Elsa Barkley, "Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom," Public Culture 7 (1994): 107-146.

Tera W. Hunter, To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors after the Civil War (1997)

Martha Hodes, White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-century South (1997)

Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (1998)

David Blight, Race and Reunion: the Civil War in American Memory (2001)

Charles Dew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War (2001)

Alfred Brophy, Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Riot of 1921: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation (2003)

Douglas Blackmon, Slavery By Another Name (2008)

Carole Emberton, Beyond Redemption: Race, Violence, & American South after Civil War (2009)

Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South (2010)

Doug Egerton, The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America's Most Progressive Era (2013)

*Readings on the Confederate Flag READINGS ON POST-RECONSTRUCTION AND JIM CROW

W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903)

C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1974)

Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction (1977)

Wilson Jeremiah Moses, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850-1925 (1978)

Howard N. Rabinowitz, Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865-1890 (1978)

Neil R. McMillen, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow (1989)

Robin D. G. Kelley, "We Are Not What We Seem: Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South," Journal of American History (1993): 75-112

Glenda Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920 (1996)

Leon F. Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (1998)

Grace Elizabeth Hale, Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940 (1998)

Deborah Gray White, Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894-1994 (1999)

Nell Irvin Painter, Southern History across the Color Line (2002)

Manning Marable, The Great Wells of Democracy: The Meaning of Race in American Life (2002)

Michele Mitchell, Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny after Reconstruction (2004)

James W. Loewen, Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism (2005)

W. Fitzhugh Brundage, The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory (2005)

James C. Cobb, Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity (2005)

Mark Smith, How Race is Made: Slavery, Segregation, and the Senses (2006)

Bruce E. Baker, What Reconstruction Meant: Historical Memory in the American South (2007)

Kate Dossett, Bridging Race Divides: Black Nationalism, Feminism and Integration, 1896-1935 (2008)

Blair L. M. Kelley, Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African-American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy v. Ferguson (2010)

Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (2010)

Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, (2011)

Andrew W. Kahrl, The Land Was Ours: African American Beaches from Jim Crow to the Sunbelt South (2012)

*Readings on Racial Violence

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1961)

Nancy MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: the Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan (1994)

Saidiya V. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America (1997)

David Grimsted, American Mobbing: Toward Civil War (1998)

Sheila Smith McKoy, When Whites Riot: Writing Race and Violence in American and South African Culture (2001)

Christopher Waldrep, Lynching in America: A History in Documents (2006)

Rebecca Nell Hill, Men, Mobs, and Law: Anti-lynching and Labor Defense in US Radical History (2008)

Crystal Feimster, Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching (2009)

Hannah Rosen, Terror in the Heart of Freedom: Citizenship, Sexual Violence, and the Meaning of Race in the Post-Emancipation South (2009)

Amy Louise Wood, Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940 (2009)

Danielle McGuire, At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape and Resistance (2010)

Kidada Williams, They Left Great Marks on Me: African American Testimonies of Racial Violence from Emancipation to World War I (2012)

Michael J. Pfeifer, Lynching Beyond Dixie: American Mob Violence Outside the South (2013)

Brenda E. Stevenson, The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender, and the Origins of the LA Riots (2013)

*Readings on White Racial Identity

Ian Haney-López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (1996)

Thomas Guglielmo, White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945 (2004)

David R. Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White (2005)

Shannon Sullivan, Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege (2006)

Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People (2010)

*Readings on White Supremacy in the U.S. and Abroad Note: See the AAIHS's Bibliography on Black Internationalism and RacismReview's Bibliography on White Supremacy

Reg Austin, Racism and Apartheid in Southern Africa (1975)

George M. Frederickson, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study (1981)

John Cell, The Highest Stage of White Supremacy: the Origins of Segregation in South Africa and the American South (1982)

Thomas J. Noer, Cold War and Black Liberation: the United States and White Rule in Africa, 1948-1968 (1985)

David Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning (1993)

Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995)

Brenda Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960 (1996)

Penny Von Eschen, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957 (1997)

Jessie Daniels, White Lies: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality in White Supremacist Discourse (1997)

Stephen David Kantrowitz, Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy (2000)

Howard Winant, The World is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy since World War II (2001)

Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (2001)

James Meriwether, Proudly We Can Be Africans: Black Americans and Africa, 1935-1961 (2002)

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America (2003)

Joe R. Feagin, Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression (2006)

Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Color Line: White Men's Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (2008)

Carl Nightingale, Segregation: A Global History of Divided Cities (2012)

READINGS ON RACE AND RELIGION

Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans (1963)

Marcus Garvey and Amy Jacques Garvey, The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey (1967)

Charles Wesley, Richard Allen: Apostle of Freedom (1969)

Carol V. R. George, Segregated Sabbaths: Richard Allen and the Emergence of Independent Black Churches, 1760-1840 (1973)

William R. Jones, Is God A White Racist?: A Preamble to Black Theology (1973)

Albert Raboteau, Slave Religion: The Invisible Institution in the Antebellum South (1978)

Leonardo Boff and Clodovis Boff, Introducing Liberation Theology (1987)

James Campbell, Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Church in the United States and South Africa (1995)

Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited (1996)

Allan D. Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America: Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles (1997)

Paul Harvey, Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities Among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925 (1997)

Eddie Glaude, Jr., Exodus! Religion, Race and Nation in Early 19th Century Black America (2000)

Albert Raboteau, Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans (2001)

Jason R. Young, Rituals of Resistance: African Atlantic Religion in Kongo and the Lowcountry South in the Era of Slavery (2007)

Karla Holloway, Passed On: African American Mourning Stories (2002)

Richard Newman, Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers (2008)

Charles Irons, Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia (2008)

J. Kameron Carter, Race: A Theological Account (2008)

Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920 (2009)

George C. Rable, God's Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War (2010)

Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (2010)

James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (2011)

Rebecca Anne Goetz, The Baptism of Early Virginia: How Christianity Created Race (2012)

Edward J. Blum, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America (2012)

*Readings on African American Women's Religious History Note: See the University of California's Bibliography on Black Feminism and Womanism READINGS ON THE CIVIL RIGHTS-BLACK POWER ERA

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963)

James Cone, Black Theology and Black Power (1969)

Howell Raines, My Soul is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered (1977)

Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (1981)

Aldon D. Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (1984)

David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1986)

David J. Garrow, "Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Spirit of Leadership," Journal of American History, Vol. 74 (1987): 438-447.

Adam Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America: the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr. (1987)

Jo Ann Gibson Robinson and David J. Garrow, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It : The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson (1987)

Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: American in the King Years, 1954-1963 (1988)

Clayborne Carson, The Eyes on the Prize: Civil Rights Reader (1991)

William Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975 (1992)

David L. Chappell, Inside Agitators: White Southerners in the Civil Rights Movement (1994)

John Dittmer, Local People: the Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi (1994)

Charles Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (1995)

Gerald Horne, Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s (1995)

Robert F. Williams, Negroes with Guns (1998)

Chana Kai Lee, For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer (1999)

Bruce Nelson, Divided We Stand: American Workers and the Struggle for Black Equality (2001)

Bettye Collier-Thomas and V. P. Franklin, eds., Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement (2001)

Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (2003)

Martha Biondi, To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City (2003)

Lance Hill, The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement (2004)

Matthew Countryman, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (2005)

Clive Webb, Massive Resistance: Southern Opposition to the Second Reconstruction (2005)

Peniel E. Joseph, Waiting 'til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (2006)

Thomas Jackson, From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice (2007)

Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950 (2008)

Thomas Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (2008)

Hasan Jeffries, Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama's Black Belt (2009)

Akinyele Umoja, We Will Shoot Back Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement (2013)

AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE

Charles W. Chestnutt, The House Behind the Cedars (1900)

James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912)

Nella Larson, (1928)

Nella Larson, (1929)

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

Richard Wright, (1945)

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

James Baldwin, Go Tell it on the Mountain (1953)

Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun (1959)

Charles W. Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition (1969)

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (1970)

Ernest J. Gaines, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971)

Toni Cade Bambara, Gorilla, My Love (1972)

Richard Wright, American Hunger (1977)

Octavia E. Butler, (1979)

Alice Walker, You Can't Keep A Good Woman Down (1981)

John Edgar Wideman, Brothers and Keepers (1984)

Toni Morrison, (1987)

Charles Johnson, Middle Passage (1990)

Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress (1990)

Edward P. Jones, Lost in the City (1992)

Ernest J. Gaines, A Lesson Before Dying (1993)

Rita Dove, The Darker Face of the Earth (1994)

Tananarive Due, The Between (1996)

Charles W. Chestnut, Conjure Tales and Stories of the Color Line (2000)

Lalita Tademy, (2001)

Edward P. Jones, The Known World (2003)

Percival Everett, Damned if I Do: Stories (2004)

Toni Morrison, (2008)

Ntozake Shange, Some Sing, Some Cry (2010)

Danielle Evans, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self (2010)

Lorene Cary, If Sons, Then Heirs (2011)

Jesmyn Ward, Men We Reaped: A Memoir (2013)

Jeffery Renard Allen, Song of the Shank: A Novel (2014)

Kekla Magoon, How It Went Down (2014)

Jina Ortiz and Rochelle Spencer, eds., All About Skin: Short Fiction by Women of Color (2014)

Alysia Burton Steele, Delta Jewels: In Search of My Grandmother's Wisdom (2015)

*Poetry SELECTED PRIMARY SOURCES

David Walker, "Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World" (1829)

Absalom Jones, "A Thanksgiving Sermon" (1808)

Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave (1831)

Richard Allen, The Life, Experience, and Gospel Labours of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen (1833)

Charles Ball, A Narrative of the Life of Charles Ball (1837)

Henry Highland Garnet, "An Address To The Slaves Of The United States" (1843)

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845)

Frederick Douglass, "Slaveholding Religion and the Christianity of Christ" (1845)

Jarena Lee, Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee (1849)

"What to the Slave is the Fourth Of July?" (1852)

Benjamin Morgan Palmer, "Thanksgiving Sermon" (1860)

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, A Red Record: Alleged Causes of Lynching (1895)

Mark Smith, ed. Stono: Documenting and Interpreting a Southern Slave Revolt

WPA Slave Narratives (1930s)

Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" (1963)

Charles Morgan, "A Time to Speak" (1963)

Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968)

Malcolm X and Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)

John Lewis, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (1998)

David Halberstam, The Children (1998)

Manning Marable and Leith Mullings, eds., Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices of Resistance, Reform, and Renewal (2000)

Jane Dailey, The Age of Jim Crow: A Norton Casebook in History (2009)

James W. Loewen and Edward H. Sebesta, The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader (2010)

MULTIMEDIA RESOURCES *Films

Spike Lee, Do The Right Thing (1989)

William Elwood, The Road to Brown (1990)

Julie Dash, Daughters of the Dust (1991)

Terrence Francis, Black Sci-Fi (1992)

Haile Gerima,(1993)

Toni Morrison, (1999)

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (2005)

Harry Moore, Michael Carter, et. al., Black Wall Street, Tulsa (2007)

Bestor Cram et al., Scarred Justice: the Orangeburg Massacre 1968 (2009)

Göran Hugo Olsson et al., The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (2011)

Douglas Blackmon, Slavery By Another Name (2012)

Kerry Taylor, The Charleston Hospital Workers Movement, 1968-1969 (2013)

Ryan Coogler, Fruitvale Station (2013)

Dawn Porter, Rick Bowers, et al., Spies of Mississippi (2014)

*Music *Websites *Course Handouts and Other Teaching Sources FOR YOUNG READERS

Joy Hakim, Reconstruction and Reform (1994)

Zak Mettger, Reconstruction: America After the Civil War (1994)

Marybeth Lorbieck, Sister Anne's Hands (1998)

Karen Katz, The Colors of Us (1999)

Joyce Hansen, Bury Me Not in the Land of Slaves: African-Americans in the Time of Reconstruction (2000)

Deborah Wiles, Freedom Summer (2001)

Patricia McKissack, Goin' Someplace Special (2001)

Meg Greene, Into the Land of Freedom: African Americans in Reconstruction (2004)

Doreen Rappaport and Shane Evans, Free At Last!: Stories and Songs of Emancipation (2004)

Michael Tyler, The Skin You Live In (2005)

Tonya Bolden, Cause: Reconstruction America, 1863-1877 (2005)

James M. McPherson, Into the West: From Reconstruction to the Final Days of the American Frontier (2006)

Adriane Ruggiero, Reconstruction (2007)

Linda Barrett Osborne, Traveling the Freedom Road From Slavery & the Civil War through Reconstruction (2009)

Deborah Wiles, Revolution (2014)

Chris Barton and Don Tate, The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch (2015)

*This list is currently being maintained by Keisha N. Blain. Please send an email if you find errors; broken links etc. We are no longer accepting new suggestions for this list. However, we'll include more recommendations in our forthcoming book, Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism, and Racial Violence (University of Ge orgia Press, 2016).

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Here is a list of readings that educators can use to broach conversations in the classroom about the horrendous events that unfolded in Charleston, South Carolina on the evening of June 17, 2015. These readings provide valuable information about the history of racial violence in this country and contextualize the history of race relations in South Carolina and the United States in general.

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Podcast: Dr. Kidada Williams, "Seizing Freedom"

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Podcast: Dr. Kidada Williams, "Seizing Freedom"

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Freedom gets built up over time-through a billion tiny, everyday acts. It's there in the chance to enlist and fight for a cause. It's there in the effort to reunite families torn apart by the cruelty of slave trading. It's there in the right to learn to read or found a church or decide how you want to make a living. And it's there in the insistence on the legal recognition of the right to do all these things.

That's the freedom you'll hear about on this podcast, and you'll hear about it directly from the people who seized it. All of the stories on this show are drawn from archives of voices from American history that have been muted time and time again.

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Freedom gets built up over time-through a billion tiny, everyday acts. It's there in the chance to enlist and fight for a cause. It's there in the effort to reunite families torn apart by the cruelty of slave trading. It's there in the right to learn to read or found a church or decide how you want to make a living.

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The Avalon Project, "Confederate States of America - Mississippi Secession: A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union"

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The Avalon Project, "Confederate States of America - Mississippi Secession: A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union"

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Confederate States of America - Mississippi Secession

A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.

The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory.

The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived the South of more than half the vast territory acquired from France.

The same hostility dismembered Texas and seized upon all the territory acquired from Mexico.

It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.

It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.

It tramples the original equality of the South under foot.

It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.

It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.

It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.

It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.

It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without providing a better.

It has invaded a State, and invested with the honors of martyrdom the wretch whose purpose was to apply flames to our dwellings, and the weapons of destruction to our lives.

It has broken every compact into which it has entered for our security.

It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system.

It knows no relenting or hesitation in its purposes; it stops not in its march of aggression, and leaves us no room to hope for cessation or for pause.

It has recently obtained control of the Government, by the prosecution of its unhallowed schemes, and destroyed the last expectation of living together in friendship and brotherhood.

Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England.

Our decision is made. We follow their footsteps. We embrace the alternative of separation; and for the reasons here stated, we resolve to maintain our rights with the full consciousness of the justice of our course, and the undoubting belief of our ability to maintain it.

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Avalon Project - Confederate States of America - Mississippi Secession

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Confederate States of America - Mississippi Secession In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

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Frederick Douglass Museum Management Link

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Frederick Douglass Museum Management Link

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This exhibit showcases Frederick Douglass' life at His personal belongings, home furnishings, books, photographs of family and friends can be seen in the very place where Douglass and his family used them. They provide a unique insight into his personal and public life, family,
home, and interests.

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Frederick Douglass National Historic Site

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This exhibit showcases Frederick Douglass' life at His personal belongings, home furnishings, books, photographs of family and friends can be seen in the very place where Douglass and his family used them. They provide a unique insight into his personal and public life, family, home, and interests.

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ALCU, "Gold Chains: The Hidden History of Slavery in California"

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ALCU, "Gold Chains: The Hidden History of Slavery in California"

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Peter Hardeman Burnett, the first elected governor of California (1849-1851) and one of the founders of Sacramento, was a former slaveholder from Tennessee with a burning passion to create a whites-only American West.

In 1843, Burnett led a wagon train to Oregon. He was elected to the legislature where he took the lead in passing a law that excluded African Americans from the state. The law allowed whites to keep slaves for three years, after which they would be freed and required to leave. Any black person who refused to leave would be whipped, earning it the nickname of "Peter Hardeman Burnett's Lash Law." It was rescinded, though other black exclusionary laws were later passed. In 1848, Burnett followed tales of gold to California where he befriended John Sutter Jr. and helped him found Sacramento. Burnett was later elected governor of California. He tried again to pass laws banning black people from the state but was unsuccessful. Burnett also helped fuel the enslavement and genocide of California's indigenous people. He signed the perversely-named Act for the Government and Protection of Indians. This law enabled whites to force Native people from their lands into indentured servitude. While Burnett was governor, U.S. Cavalry troops slaughtered Native Californians, including Pomo Tribal members in the "Bloody Island Massacre." Burnett later became a California Supreme Court Justice and was sitting on the bench that ordered that fugitive slave Archy Lee be returned to his enslaver -- in violation of California's constitution. While Burnett's vision of an exclusively white West was extreme, it fit within broader white supremacist policies of the time.

From speech as Governor:
That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected. While we cannot anticipate this result but with painful regret, the inevitable destiny of the race is beyond the power or wisdom of man to avert.

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Speech read by Jacob Snow, a civil liberties attorney at the ACLU of Northern California
Read full speech

Looking to satisfy demands for cheap household labor, California passed a law that encouraged the kidnapping of Native Children.
Read more

Today it's the site of a federal courthouse in Los Angeles. But in the mid-19th century, a stretch of Main Street in downtown Los Angeles was a flourishing slave market.
Read more
Listen and learn

In one of the most celebrated fugitive slave cases in California, Archy Lee, a young black man who had been brought to the state from Mississippi, escaped and waged a successful legal battle for his freedom that went all the way to the federal courts.
Read more

In 1859, an argument about the future of slavery in California led to a deadly duel between two prominent policians.
Read more

Explore all stories

The mission of Gold Chains is to uncover the hidden history of slavery in California by lifting up the voices of courageous African American and Native American individuals who challenged their brutal treatment and demanded their civil rights, inspiring us with their ingenuity, resilience, and tenacity. We aim to expose the role of the courts, laws, and the tacit acceptance of white supremacy in sanctioning race-based violence and discrimination that continues into the present day. Through an unflinching examination of our collective past, we invite California to become truly aware and authentically enlightened.

We the people dare to create a more perfect union.

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Peter Hardeman Burnett - Gold Chains: The Hidden History of Slavery in California | ACLU NorCal

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Peter Hardeman Burnett, the first elected governor of California (1849-1851) and one of the founders of Sacramento, was a former slaveholder from Tennessee with a burning passion to create a whites-only American West. In 1843, Burnett led a wagon train to Oregon.

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Stacey L. Smith, "Freedom's FrontierCalifornia and the Struggle over Unfree Labor, Emancipation, and Reconstruction"

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Stacey L. Smith, "Freedom's FrontierCalifornia and the Struggle over Unfree Labor, Emancipation, and Reconstruction"

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Most histories of the Civil War era portray the struggle over slavery as a conflict that exclusively pitted North against South, free labor against slave labor, and black against white. In Freedom's Frontier, Stacey L. Smith examines the battle over slavery as it unfolded on the multiracial Pacific Coast. Despite its antislavery constitution, California was home to a dizzying array of bound and semibound labor systems: African American slavery, American Indian indenture, Latino and Chinese contract labor, and a brutal sex traffic in bound Indian and Chinese women. Using untapped legislative and court records, Smith reconstructs the lives of California's unfree workers and documents the political and legal struggles over their destiny as the nation moved through the Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction.

Smith reveals that the state's anti-Chinese movement, forged in its struggle over unfree labor, reached eastward to transform federal Reconstruction policy and national race relations for decades to come. Throughout, she illuminates the startling ways in which the contest over slavery's fate included a western struggle that encompassed diverse labor systems and workers not easily classified as free or slave, black or white.

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Freedom's Frontier | Stacey L. Smith | University of North Carolina Press

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Most histories of the Civil War era portray the struggle over slavery as a conflict that exclusively pitted North against South, free labor against slave labor, and black against white. In Freedom's Frontier, Stacey L. Smith examines the battle over slavery as it unfolded on the multiracial Pacific Coast.

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Henry Louis Gates Jr., Tonya Bolden, "Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow"

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Henry Louis Gates Jr., Tonya Bolden, "Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow"

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This is a story about America during and after Reconstruction, one of history's most pivotal and misunderstood chapters. In a stirring account of emancipation, the struggle for citizenship and national reunion, and the advent of racial segregation, the renowned Harvard scholar delivers a book that is illuminating and timely.

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"Martha Hughes Cannon," Utah Women's History

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"Martha Hughes Cannon," Utah Women's History

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Illustration by Brooke Smart

"All men and women are created free and equal."

By Rebekah Clark

Historical Research Associate, Better Days 2020

A pioneer in many respects, Martha "Mattie" Hughes Cannon (1857-1932) blazed trails for women as a skilled physician, ardent suffragist, progressive public health reformer, and most notably, the first female state senator in the United States.

Born in Wales, United Kingdom, young Martha immigrated with her family to Utah Territory to join the Latter-day Saints in 1861. Deeply impacted by the deaths of her baby sister and father, bright and independent Martha aspired to be a medical doctor at a time when women rarely even went to college. In response to Brigham Young's encouragement for women to enter the medical field, she enrolled in the University of Deseret (now the University of Utah) at age sixteen to fulfill the pre-med requirements. While earning her chemistry degree, she saved money for medical school by working as a typesetter for the Deseret News and then the Woman's Exponent , where she became immersed in the women's rights movement. She earned her medical degree from the University of Michigan in 1880 and a degree in pharmaceuticals at the University of Pennsylvania in 1882, where she was the only female student in her program. She displayed exceptional public speaking skills and simultaneously earned a degree from the National School of Elocution and Oratory in Philadelphia, giving her four degrees by the time she was twenty-five.

Back home in Salt Lake City, Martha set up a private medical practice and became the resident physician at the woman-run Deseret Hospital. In 1884, during the height of the national anti-polygamy movement, she secretly married prominent Latter-day Saint church leader Angus M. Cannon and became the fourth of his six polygamous wives. As polygamy prosecutions intensified, Martha moved to England in 1886 with her infant daughter Elizabeth. She lived there in exile for more than a year to avoid incriminating her husband or being forced to testify against her obstetrics patients. Angus ended up being convicted of cohabitation anyway and served six months in prison. Letters between Martha and Angus illustrate her deep love for him, her faith in her religion, and her strong-willed independence, but they also reveal the loneliness, jealousy, and depression she battled while in exile. She and Elizabeth returned to Utah in 1888, where Martha resumed her private medical practice and established a nursing school. Two years later, Martha gave birth to her son James.

While Martha was living in Europe, federal anti-polygamy legislation in 1887 had repealed the voting rights that Utah women had exercised for seventeen years. Upon her return, she quickly became a leader in Utah's burgeoning suffrage movement. Shortly after the formation of the Utah Woman Suffrage Association in 1889, Martha delivered a "well written address" at a large territorial suffrage meeting held in the Assembly Hall on Temple Square, where she argued: "No privileged class either of sex, wealth, or descent should be allowed to arise or exist; all persons should have the same legal right to be the equal of every other, if they can."

She was a featured speaker at the Women's Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, prompting the Chicago Record to observe: "Mrs. Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon. . .is considered one of the brightest exponents of woman's cause in the United States." At a territorial suffrage meeting in Salt Lake City in 1894, she again strongly advocated for women's rights based on equality, arguing that "one of the principal reasons why women should vote-is that all men and women are created free and equal." In 1898, she testified before a United States legislative committee on the success of Utah women's suffrage and also spoke at the Seneca Falls 50th celebration in Washington, D.C., asserting: "The story of the struggle for woman's suffrage in Utah is the story of all efforts for the advancement and betterment of humanity."

When the Utah constitutional convention approved including women's suffrage in the new state constitution in 1895, Martha was the first woman in Salt Lake City to register to vote. The territorial court, however, ultimately determined that women could not vote in that pre-statehood election to ratify the constitution and elect the new state's first legislature. The next year, in the first Utah election that permitted women to vote and run for office, Martha ran as a Democrat in an at-large election for one of five state senate positions. Her husband and Emmeline B. Wells were also on the ballot as Republican candidates. The Democratic-leaning Salt Lake Herald endorsed Martha rather than her Republican husband, stating that she was "the better man of the two." When the election results were counted, the Democrats swept the election. Martha's victory garnered national attention not only because she was the first woman elected to a state senate but also because she ran against and defeated her own husband.

Martha continued to practice medicine while she served one four-year term with the otherwise all-male Utah Senate in the Salt Lake City and County Building. As a Utah state senator, she authored several successful legislative bills that revolutionized public health and sanitation in Utah. She also sponsored a pure food law and a law regulating working conditions for women and girls, spearheaded funding for the education of speech-and-hearing-impaired students, and helped establish Utah's first state board of health. She joined forces with Representative Alice Merrill Horne, the only other woman serving in the state legislature during the 1899-1900 term, to achieve their most important legislative victories. During debates over both Cannon's public health bill and Horne's art bill, they secured success by scattering yellow flowers on the desks of male legislators as a symbol of women's suffrage and the influence they wielded among female voters.

In April 1899, while she was still in office, Martha once again made headlines by giving birth to her third child, Gwendolyn. Occurring well after the 1890 Manifesto that officially ended Church-sanctioned polygamy, Gwendolyn's birth was cited as evidence of the continuation of polygamy in Utah. In the wake of resurgent anti-polygamy sentiment, sparked by the concurrent disputed election of polygamist B. H. Roberts to the U.S. Congress, Martha's husband Angus was arrested, convicted, and fined for unlawful cohabitation. Newspaper reports on the trial emphasized Martha's prominence as the first female state senator. Perhaps because of this controversy, Martha chose not to run for another term in 1900. She moved to California with her children in 1904, worked at the University of California Graves Clinic, and became the vice-president of the American Congress for Tuberculosis. Martha passed away in Los Angeles in 1932.

Martha Hughes Cannon called for a wider sphere for women, explaining: "You give me a woman who thinks about something besides cook stoves and wash tubs and baby flannels, and I'll show you, nine times out of ten, a successful mother." She struck an often difficult balance between the demands of motherhood to her three children and her passion for public service and health. Expressing a philosophy that defined her approach to life, she urged: "[L]et us not waste our talents in the cauldron of modern nothingness, but strive to become women of intellect, and endeavor to do some little good while we live in this protracted gleam called life."

Rebekah Clark holds a law degree from J. Reuben Clark Law School and a bachelor's degree in American History and Literature from Harvard University, where she wrote her honors thesis on Utah's participation in the national women's suffrage movement. She is a member of the Mormon Women's History Initiative Team and the Historical Research Associate for Better Days 2020.

Footnotes

[1] For published materials relating to Martha Hughes Cannon, see Jonathan A. Stapley and Constance L. Lieber, "Do Some Little Good While We Live," Women of Faith in the Latter Days , vol. 3, eds. Richard E. Turley Jr. and Brittany A. Chapman (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2014); Letters from Exile: The Correspondence of Martha Hughes Cannon and Angus M. Cannon, 1886-1888, eds. Constance L. Lieber and John Sillito, (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989); Mari Graña, Pioneer, Polygamist, Politician: The Life of Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon (Guilford, CT: TwoDot, 2009).

[2] "Woman Suffrage Meeting," 17 Woman's Exponent (May 15, 1889), 190.

[3] "Woman's Great Forum," Chicago Record , May 15, 1893, 1; "Utah Women in Chicago," Woman's Exponent 21, no. 24 (June 15, 1893): 179.

[4] Martha Hughes Cannon, "A Woman's Assembly," Woman's Exponent 22, no. 15 (April 1, 1894): 114.

[5] Martha Hughes Cannon, "Woman Suffrage in Utah," February 15, 1898, U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary Hearing on House Joint Resolution 68, Church History Library, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City.

[6] Salt Lake Herald-Republican , October 31, 1896, p. 4.

[7] "Senator Cannon's Baby," Ogden Daily Standard, April 22, 1899; "Angus M. Cannon Under Arrest," Salt Lake Tribune , July 9, 1899; "Angus Cannon Under Arrest," Salt Lake Herald-Republican , July 9, 1899.

[8] Annie Laurie Black, "Our Woman Senator," San Francisco Examiner , November 8, 1896. Reprinted in the Salt Lake Herald , November 11, 1896.

[9] Martha Hughes Cannon to Barbara Replogle, May 1, 1885, quoted in Stapley and Lieber, "Do Some Little Good While We Live," 17.

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Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon - Better Days Curriculum

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Illustration by Brooke Smart A pioneer in many respects, Martha "Mattie" Hughes Cannon (1857-1932) blazed trails for women as a skilled physician, ardent suffragist, progressive public health reformer, and most notably, the first female state senator in the United States.

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Kidada E. Williams, "They Left Great Marks on Me"

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Kidada E. Williams, "They Left Great Marks on Me"

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African American Testimonies of Racial Violence from Emancipation to World War I

by Kidada E. Williams

Published by: NYU Press

Imprint: NYU Press

293 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 x 0.00 in

Paperback

9780814795361

Published: March 2012

$28.00

BUY

Hardcover

9780814795354

Published: March 2012

$89.00

BUY

eBook

9780814795378

Published: March 2012

Request Exam or Desk Copy

Shares wrenching accounts of the everyday violence experienced by emancipated African Americans

Well after slavery was abolished, its legacy of violence left deep wounds on African Americans' bodies, minds, and lives. For many victims and witnesses of the assaults, rapes, murders, nightrides, lynchings, and other bloody acts that followed, the suffering this violence engendered was at once too painful to put into words yet too horrible to suppress.

In this evocative and deeply moving history Kidada Williams examines African Americans' testimonies about racial violence. By using both oral and print culture to testify about violence, victims and witnesses hoped they would be able to graphically disseminate enough knowledge about its occurrence and inspire Americans to take action to end it. In the process of testifying, these people created a vernacular history of the violence they endured and witnessed, as well as the identities that grew from the experience of violence. This history fostered an oppositional consciousness to racial violence that inspired African Americans to form and support campaigns to end violence. The resulting crusades against racial violence became one of the political training grounds for the civil rights movement.

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by Kidada E. Williams Published by: NYU Press Imprint: NYU Press 293 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 x 0.00 in Paperback 9780814795361 Published: March 2012 $28.00 BUY Hardcover 9780814795354 Published: March 2012 $89.00 BUY eBook 9780814795378 Published: March 2012 Request Exam or Desk Copy Shares wrenching accounts of the everyday violence experienced by emancipated African Americans Well after slavery was abolished, its legacy of violence left deep wounds on African Americans' bodies, minds, and lives.

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Kelly Marie Kennington, "Law, Geography, and Mobility: Suing for Freedom in Antebellum St. Louis"

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Kelly Marie Kennington, "Law, Geography, and Mobility: Suing for Freedom in Antebellum St. Louis"

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Law, Geography, and Mobility: Suing for Freedom in Antebellum St. Louis

The Journal of Southern History

Published By: Southern Historical Association

https://www. jstor .org/stable/23795258

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Law, Geography, and Mobility: Suing for Freedom in Antebellum St. Louis on JSTOR

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Kelly Marie Kennington, Law, Geography, and Mobility: Suing for Freedom in Antebellum St. Louis, The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 80, No. 3 (AUGUST 2014), pp. 575-604

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Lea VanderVelde, "Redemption Songs: Suing for Freedom before Dred Scott"

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Lea VanderVelde, "Redemption Songs: Suing for Freedom before Dred Scott"

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Andrés Reséndez, "The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America"

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Andrés Reséndez, "The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America"

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" The Other Slavery is nothing short of an epic recalibration of American history, one that's long overdue...In addition to his skills as a historian and an investigator, Résendez is a skilled storyteller with a truly remarkable subject. This is historical nonfiction at its most important and most necessary."- Literary Hub, 20 Best Works of Nonfiction of the Decade?

"Long-awaited and important . . . No other book before has so thoroughly related the broad history of Indian slavery in the Americas."- San Francisco Chronicle

"A necessary work . . . [Reséndez's] reportage will likely surprise you."-NPR

"One of the most profound contributions to North American history."- Los Angeles Times

Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet, as Andrés Reséndez illuminates in his myth-shattering The Other Slavery, it was practiced for centuries as an open secret. There was no abolitionist movement to protect the tens of thousands of Natives who were kidnapped and enslaved by the conquistadors. Reséndez builds the incisive case that it was mass slavery-more than epidemics-that decimated Indian populations across North America. Through riveting new evidence, including testimonies of courageous priests, rapacious merchants, and Indian captives, The Other Slavery reveals nothing less than a key missing piece of American history. For over two centuries we have fought over, abolished, and tried to come to grips with African American slavery. It is time for the West to confront an entirely separate, equally devastating enslavement we have long failed truly to see.

"Beautifully written . . . A tour de force."- Chronicle of Higher Education

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The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America

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" The Other Slavery is nothing short of an epic recalibration of American history, one that's long overdue...In addition to his skills as a historian and an investigator, Résendez is a skilled storyteller with a truly remarkable subject. This is historical nonfiction at its most important and most necessary."- Literary Hub, 20 Best Works of Nonfiction of the Decade?

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Don Doyle, "The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War"

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Don Doyle, "The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War"

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When Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address in 1863, he had broader aims than simply rallying a war-weary nation. Lincoln realized that the Civil W...

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Youtube Video: MSNBC, "Creator Of Term ‘Critical Race Theory’ Kimberlé Crenshaw Explains What It Really Is"

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Youtube Video: MSNBC, "Creator Of Term ‘Critical Race Theory’ Kimberlé Crenshaw Explains What It Really Is"

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Creator Of Term ‘Critical Race Theory’ Kimberlé Crenshaw Explains What It Really Is

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Southern Poverty Law Center, "Hate Maps"

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Southern Poverty Law Center, "Hate Maps"

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Subscribe to the https://soundslikehate.org/">Sounds Like Hate podcast to learn more about hate groups like the Proud Boys.​

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The Simpsons, Apu Explains the Civil War's Cause

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The Simpsons, Apu Explains the Civil War's Cause

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Matthew Mason, "Op-ed: The monument controversy: a crucial distinction between history and memory"

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Matthew Mason, "Op-ed: The monument controversy: a crucial distinction between history and memory"

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As a historian of the American Civil War, I write to respond to the oft-repeated idea that removing Confederate monuments amounts to "erasing history." Seen in places including the tweets of the president as well as the political cartoon that ran in Saturday's Deseret News, this formulation of what's involved misses the crucial distinction between history and memory.

History is what happened in the past. To study history is to try to understand what happened and why. Memory is how an individual or community chooses to remember what happened, usually to celebrate or condemn the events or people being commemorated. To study memory is to examine what in their history a community chooses to emphasize, as a way to understanding what they value at the moment of commemoration. Civil War monuments document the memory, not the history, of the war.

In the case of the Southern monuments to the war making recent news, they were built almost entirely during the late 19th and early 20th century by white Southerners who wished to celebrate the Confederacy. This was not a random choice, for in this era those same white Southerners were enacting the laws and preaching the social norms that created the system of segregation. They could have emphasized (in order to celebrate) any number of participants in the Civil War, including Northern Unionist soldiers and leaders, African-American participants in the war, and even the hundreds of thousands of white Southerners who fought for the Union rather than the Confederacy. So to celebrate the Confederacy and its leaders, who also stood for white supremacy, was in no way a politically neutral remembrance of history for them any more than it is for those who do so today. The Confederate monuments tell us more about the Jim Crow era and what white Southerners valued at that moment, therefore, than they do about the Civil War itself.

Likewise, today's debates about those monuments are not really about history, but rather what we as 21st-century Americans value and want to celebrate. The fact that these debates are really about our own identities is why they are so contentious. People who identify themselves with particular participants in the Civil War take it personally when we decide whether to celebrate or condemn those participants.

Furthermore, the history of the Confederacy would be alive and well even were all the monuments to it removed from their places of honor or even destroyed. The leaders and soldiers in the Confederate cause left us mountains of written evidence to which we can go to try to understand what they did and why they did it. That started from the moment the Confederate States of America was born, when Southern state secession conventions declared that the preservation of slavery was the reason for their secession from the Union.

It continued when those conventions sent commissioners to other Southern states to convince them to join the new secessionist nation, who joined the new nation's vice president in declaring white supremacy to be the "cornerstone" of the Confederacy. The hundreds of thousands of lesser-known Confederates' letters and diaries, as well as public documents in the ongoing debate within the South about what the CSA was all about, add further depth to our understanding.

There is not an archive fire or even an online hack that can erase all that history. So what we are really debating is which version of that history we want to emphasize and celebrate. That tells us much more about ourselves than it does about the American experience from 1861-1865.

Matthew Mason is an associate professor of history at Brigham Young University. He is the author or co-editor of six books on the history of slavery and the American Civil War. His views do not necessarily represent those of BYU.

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Op-ed: The monument controversy: a crucial distinction between history and memory

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As a historian of the American Civil War, I write to respond to the oft-repeated idea that removing Confederate monuments amounts to "erasing history." Seen in places including the tweets of the president as well as the political cartoon that ran in Saturday's Deseret News, this formulation of what's involved misses the crucial distinction between history and memory.

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Cory Turner, "What Do Alabama And California Have In Common? Top-Notch U.S. History Standards"

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Cory Turner, "What Do Alabama And California Have In Common? Top-Notch U.S. History Standards"

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A new review of states' learning standards brings fresh insight - and facts - to the heated debate over critical race theory (CRT) and America's K-12 schools.

Critical race theory is an academic approach that looks at how race and racism has shaped U.S. institutions - and the discourse around it has been hard to miss. Some families, mostly white, accuse K-12 schools of teaching children to be ashamed of their race and their country. Many educators and school leaders insist they're simply teaching U.S. history, and that they are victims in a culture war drummed up by conservative activists.

Into this fight arrives a 377-page review of states' U.S. history and civics standards that eschews politics for a deep-dive into what states say kids should actually be learning.

Learning standards act as a kind of lighthouse for schools, guiding curriculum, the creation of textbooks and, ultimately, teaching itself. They might not be a thrilling read, but they do provide vital context for this roiling CRT debate - because they are the clearest view we have of a state's values. Where else but Texas would standards require that first-graders understand the contributions of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. and ... Sam Houston, a leader of the Texas Revolution?

Better yet, while many educators and activists have argued that students everywhere should learn about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, Oklahoma requires it in its fifth grade history standards. Yes, the language still uses "riot" to describe the slaughter of as many as 300 Black Tulsans, but a follow-up standard demands that classrooms examine "the role labels play in understanding historic events, for example 'riot' versus 'massacre.' " If the former suggests Oklahoma's continued reluctance to speak honestly of its painful past, the latter shines a hot light on that reluctance and invites students to pick it apart.

For this new survey, reviewers rated the U.S. history and civics standards for all 50 states and Washington, D.C., giving them letter grades - A through F - for things like depth and clarity.

At the top, earning As, were Alabama, California, D.C., Massachusetts and Tennessee. At the bottom, 10 states earned Fs, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Alaska. In the case of Alaska, the reviewers quipped, "The Lower Forty-Eight states sometimes seem to forget that Alaska exists - and judging from its social studies standards, the state seems determined to return the favor."

Ouch.

Ten more states scored no better than Ds.

"Unfortunately, what I found is that [the low-rated standards] tended to be broad and vague, not specific enough," says José Gregory, who has taught high school U.S. history for nearly 20 years and was one of the reviewers for the report, which comes from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Though Fordham is a conservative-leaning think tank, a handful of experts told NPR the survey is nonpartisan and worth taking seriously.

"I'm really worried," says Hasan Kwame Jeffries, an associate professor of history at the Ohio State University. "If you don't teach about race and racism in American history, past and present, I don't know what the hell you're teaching. It's not the truth."

Jeffries says the fight over critical race theory is, essentially, about how schools teach about race and racism. And that is deeply informed by what states do - and do not - include in their U.S. history and civics standards.

In Texas, students learn about the Civil War before they learn about slavery

Since its last survey, in 2011, Fordham says states' handling of race and racism - for example, slavery and Jim Crow - has improved, though many states' standards are still vague or disjointed.

Texas, for example, wants fifth-graders to "explain the central role of the expansion of slavery in causing sectionalism, disagreement over states' rights, and the Civil War." But students aren't expected to learn about slavery itself - including "the development of the plantation system, the transatlantic slave trade, and the spread of slavery" - until three years later, in eighth grade.

"I cannot teach students about the emancipation without talking about slavery itself," says reviewer José Gregory, who currently teaches AP U.S. History in Georgia. "I cannot talk about civil rights and the movement for equality without discussing Jim Crow."

I cannot teach students about the emancipation without talking about slavery itself.

The Fordham report highlights one Southern state with a more streamlined approach. In Tennessee, third-graders must "identify the economic, political, and religious reasons for founding the Thirteen Colonies and the role of indentured servitude and slavery in their settlement."

The following year, in fourth grade, Tennessee asks students to "contrast how the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence clashed with treatment of different groups including: women, slaves, and American Indians."

Strong state standards can help teachers navigate anti-CRT laws

The depth and clarity of history and civics standards matter now more than ever as some state legislatures have moved to pass anti-CRT laws that purport to limit what teachers can say about race and racism in the classroom. For example, in June, Iowa's governor signed a new law prohibiting teachers from doing anything that might make students "feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of that individual's race or sex."

Stefanie Wager, past president of the National Council for the Social Studies, lives in Iowa and says she's heard from history teachers there who say they feel vulnerable.

"They're just very scared. They don't know, you know, 'Does this mean I can't, like, teach my unit on the Civil War and we talk about slavery as one of the causes? Like, what does this mean?' "

The same is true, Wager says, when Iowa teachers tackle the U.S. Constitution. How should they handle something like the Three-Fifths Compromise, which allowed states to count three-fifths of enslaved people in their population tallies - thereby increasing slaveholding states' political power.

"How could you talk about that in any other way than to say this was all about White power, maintaining systems of power," Wager asks.

In some states, educators can turn to their state's standards for help and, to a certain extent, political cover. But Fordham gave Iowa's U.S. history standards an F for their lack of depth; the standards don't mention the Three-Fifths Compromise, which could make it easier for anxious teachers to avoid it.

On the other hand, Oklahoma - which got a B+ for both its history and civics standards - specifically says fifth-graders should study the Three-Fifths Compromise "and its maintenance of the institution of slavery."

As it happens, Oklahoma also recently passed an anti-CRT law which, like Iowa's, says students should not be made to feel discomfort based on race. But unlike Iowa, Oklahoma's standards offer educators a roadmap through the uncomfortable facts of our history. And that new Oklahoma law? It says, explicitly, that it does not stop teachers from following those standards.

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What Do Alabama And California Have In Common? Top-Notch U.S. History Standards

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A new review of states' learning standards brings fresh insight - and facts - to the heated debate over critical race theory (CRT) and America's K-12 schools. Critical race theory is an academic approach that looks at how race and racism has shaped U.S. institutions - and the discourse around it has been hard to miss.

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1861, NYT, "The Secession Movement: Its Causes and Progress–Southern Intolerance of Conservatism–The Absurdity of Secession–Necessity for Preserving the Union, &c."

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1861, NYT, "The Secession Movement: Its Causes and Progress–Southern Intolerance of Conservatism–The Absurdity of Secession–Necessity for Preserving the Union, &c."

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"The State of State Standards for Civics and U.S. History in 2021"

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"The State of State Standards for Civics and U.S. History in 2021"

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Is America a racist country? Or the greatest nation on earth?

Such a divisive question leaves little room for the complexity, richness, and nuance of our country's past and present. But it's the sort of question that often seems to get asked in today's polarized environment. It's little wonder, then, that the tattered condition of civics and U.S. history education constitutes a national crisis. Various efforts-some wise, some hasty, some dangerous-are underway to repair the situation, but the logical place to start is with what states expect their schools to teach and their children to learn in these two key subjects.

To that end, The State of State Standards for Civics and U.S. History in 2021 evaluates the K-12 civics and U.S. History standards adopted by the fifty states and the District of Columbia based on the quality, completeness, and rigor of their content and the clarity of its presentation. Reviews were conducted by a bipartisan team of veteran educators and subject-matter experts with deep knowledge of civics and U.S. History.

Some key findings are as follows:

Five jurisdictions (Alabama, California, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and the District of Columbia) were rated "exemplary" in both subjects.

Another ten states were rated "good" in both subjects.

Fifteen states were rated "mediocre" in at least one subject.

Twenty states were rated "inadequate" in both subjects.

To ensure that every American student has access to a rich and balanced civics and U.S. History education, states are encouraged to

Maximize attention to civics and U.S. History in elementary and middle school and require at least one year of U.S. History and one semester of Civics in high school;

Provide comprehensive and detailed guidance in both subjects;

Take a user-friendly approach to the organization and presentation of their standards; and

Put more emphasis on writing, argumentation, problem analysis, and the connections between core content and current events.

The great purpose of civics and U.S. history education is to provide a common framework for resolving our differences even as we respect them-that is, to manage peacefully and constructively the eternal balancing and rebalancing of pluribus and unum. This report is one step in that direction.

For more on the findings, read the national report.

For more specific recommendations for all fifty states and D.C., click on your state below to navigate to its individual review.
How strong are your state's civics and U.S. history standards?
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The State of State Standards for Civics and U.S. History in 2021

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Is America a racist country? Or the greatest nation on earth? Such a divisive question leaves little room for the complexity, richness, and nuance of our country's past and present. But it's the sort of question that often seems to get asked in today's polarized environment.

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Even one hundred and fifty years later, we are haunted by the Civil War-by its division, its bloodshed, and perhaps, above all, by its origins. Today, many believe that the war was fought over slavery. This answer satisfies our contemporary sense of justice, but as Gary Gallagher shows in this brilliant revisionist history, it is an anachronistic judgment.

In a searing analysis of the Civil War North as revealed in contemporary letters, diaries, and documents, Gallagher demonstrates that what motivated the North to go to war and persist in an increasingly bloody effort was primarily preservation of the Union. Devotion to the Union bonded nineteenth-century Americans in the North and West against a slaveholding aristocracy in the South and a Europe that seemed destined for oligarchy. Northerners believed they were fighting to save the republic, and with it the world's best hope for democracy.

Once we understand the centrality of union, we can in turn appreciate the force that made northern victory possible: the citizen-soldier. Gallagher reveals how the massive volunteer army of the North fought to confirm American exceptionalism by salvaging the Union. Contemporary concerns have distorted the reality of nineteenth-century Americans, who embraced emancipation primarily to punish secessionists and remove slavery as a future threat to union-goals that emerged in the process of war. As Gallagher recovers why and how the Civil War was fought, we gain a more honest understanding of why and how it was won.

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history: united states: civil war period (1850-1877)

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Today, many believe the Civil War was fought over slavery. This view satisfies our contemporary sense of justice, but as Gallagher's searing revisionist history shows, it is an anachronistic judgment. Northern citizen-soldiers fought the war to preserve the Union. Emancipation was secondary to the war's primary goal of safeguarding the republic.

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Charles B. Dew, "Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War"

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Charles B. Dew, "Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War"

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In late 1860 and early 1861, state-appointed commissioners traveled the length and breadth of the slave South carrying a fervent message in pursuit of a clear goal: to persuade the political leadership and the citizenry of the uncommitted slave states to join in the effort to destroy the Union and forge a new Southern nation.

Directly refuting the neo-Confederate contention that slavery was neither the reason for secession nor the catalyst for the resulting onset of hostilities in 1861, Charles B. Dew finds in the commissioners' brutally candid rhetoric a stark white supremacist ideology that proves the contrary. The commissioners included in their speeches a constitutional justification for secession, to be sure, and they pointed to a number of political "outrages" committed by the North in the decades prior to Lincoln's election. But the core of their argument-the reason the right of secession had to be invoked and invoked immediately-did not turn on matters of constitutional interpretation or political principle. Over and over again, the commissioners returned to the same point: that Lincoln's election signaled an unequivocal commitment on the part of the North to destroy slavery and that emancipation would plunge the South into a racial nightmare.

Dew's discovery and study of the highly illuminating public letters and speeches of these apostles of disunion-often relatively obscure men sent out to convert the unconverted to the secessionist cause--have led him to suggest that the arguments the commissioners presented provide us with the best evidence we have of the motives behind the secession of the lower South in 1860-61.

Addressing topics still hotly debated among historians and the public at large more than a century after the Civil War, Dew challenges many current perceptions of the causes of the conflict. He offers a compelling and clearly substantiated argument that slavery and race were absolutely critical factors in the outbreak of war-indeed, that they were at the heart of our great national crisis.

Reviews:

Charles B. Dew, W. Van Alan Clark Third Century Professor in the Social Sciences at Williams College, is the author of Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge and Ironmaker to the Confederacy: Joseph R. Anderson and the Tredegar Iron Works.

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Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War

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In late 1860 and early 1861, state-appointed commissioners traveled the length and breadth of the slave South carrying a fervent message in pursuit of a clear goal: to persuade the political leadership and the citizenry of the uncommitted slave states to join in the effort to destroy the Union and forge a new Southern nation.Directly refuting the neo-Confederate contention that slavery was neither the reason for secession nor the catalyst for the resulting onset of hostilities in 1861, Charles B.

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Daniel at the Siege of Boston, 1776 : Calkhoven, Laurie : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

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Includes bibliographical references (p. 195)

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Nathaniel Philbrick, "Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, a Revolution"

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Nathaniel Philbrick, "Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, a Revolution"

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Boston in 1775 is an island city occupied by British troops after a series of incendiary incidents by patriots who range from sober citizens to thuggish vigilantes. After the Boston Tea Party, British and American soldiers and Massachusetts residents have warily maneuvered around each other until April 19, when violence finally erupts at Lexington and Concord. In June, however, with the city cut off from supplies by a British blockade and Patriot militia poised in siege, skirmishes give way to outright war in the Battle of Bunker Hill. It would be the bloodiest battle of the Revolution to come, and the point of no return for the rebellious colonists.Philbrick brings a fresh perspective to every aspect of the story. He finds new characters, and new facets to familiar ones. The real work of choreographing rebellion falls to a thirty-three year old physician named Joseph Warren who emerges as the on-the-ground leader of the Patriot cause and is fated to die at Bunker Hill. Others in the cast include Paul Revere, Warren's fiancé the poet Mercy Scollay, a newly recruited George Washington, the reluctant British combatant General Thomas Gage and his more bellicose successor William Howe, who leads the three charges at Bunker Hill and presides over the claustrophobic cauldron of a city under siege as both sides play a nervy game of brinkmanship for control.With passion and insight, Philbrick reconstructs the revolutionary landscape-geographic and ideological-in a mesmerizing narrative of the robust, messy, blisteringly real origins of America.

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Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution (Viking, ISBN: 9780670025442, $32.95) Winner of the 2013 New England Book Award for Non-Fiction Boston in 1775 is an island city occupied by British troops after a series of incendiary incidents by patriots who range from sober citizens to thuggish vigilantes.

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Henry Louis Gates and Tonya Bolden, "Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow"

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Henry Louis Gates and Tonya Bolden, "Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow"

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Henry Louis Gates, Jr. presents a journey through America's past and our nation's attempts at renewal in this look at the Civil War's conclusion, Reconstruction, and the rise of Jim Crow segregation.

This is a story about America during and after Reconstruction, one of history's most pivotal and misunderstood chapters. In a stirring account of emancipation, the struggle for citizenship and national reunion, and the advent of racial segregation, the renowned Harvard scholar delivers a book that is illuminating and timely. Real-life accounts drive the narrative, spanning the half century between the Civil War and Birth of a Nation. Here, you will come face-to-face with the people and events of Reconstruction's noble democratic experiment, its tragic undermining, and the drawing of a new "color line" in the long Jim Crow era that followed. In introducing young readers to them, and to the resiliency of the African American people at times of progress and betrayal, Professor Gates shares a history that remains vitally relevant today.

Related collections and offers

Product Details

ISBN-13:

9781338713657

Publisher:

Scholastic, Inc.

Publication date:

12/01/2020

Pages:

240

Sales rank:

192,593

Product dimensions:

5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.70(d)

Age Range:

9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard. He is an acclaimed author and critic who has unearthed literary gems. He also has produced, written, and hosted an array of documentary films for public television, including Africa's Great Civilizations, Finding Your Roots, Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise, and The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. Gates is the recipient of 55 honorary degrees and numerous prizes. A member of the first class awarded "genius grants" by the MacArthur Foundation in 1981, he was, in 1998, the first African American scholar to be awarded the National Humanities Medal. In addition, he was named to Time's 25 Most Influential Americans list in 1997, Ebony's Power 150 list in 2009, and Ebony's Power 100 list in 2010 and 2012.

Editorial Reviews

*"Lyrical...Brings depth to history."- School Library Journal, starred review"Beautifully conceived and written. Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow is the right book at the right time. It's beyond necessary."-Holly Goldberg Sloan, New York Times bestselling author, Counting by 7s"Brilliant and more necessary now than ever before. This is a book that should be on every beside table and in every classroom in America. It's a history that belongs to all of us. In Gates's and Bolden's hands, it is a deeply comprehensive, beautifully illustrated, and moving narrative of survival."-Jacqueline Woodson, National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, National Book Award Winner for Brown Girl Dreaming Praise for Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Emmy Award Winner for Outstanding Historical Program — Long Form, for The African Americans: Many Rivers to CrossPeabody Award Winner for The African Americans: Many Rivers to CrossFeatured among Time magazine's "25 Most Influential Americans"Included in Ebony magazine's "100 Most Influential Black Americans"Named a MacArthur FellowWinner of four NAACP Image AwardsSelected as a National Humanities medalistElected to the American Academy of Arts & LettersChosen as the National Endowment for the Humanities Jefferson LecturerInducted into the Sons of the American Revolution

From the Publisher

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Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow|Paperback

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Henry Louis Gates, Jr. presents a journey through America's past and our nation's attempts at renewal in this look at the Civil War's conclusion, Reconstruction, and the rise of Jim Crow segregation.This is a story about America during and after Reconstruction, one of history's most...

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Historic Jamestowne, "How to Govern, and How to Obey" (Martial Law)

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Historic Jamestowne, "How to Govern, and How to Obey" (Martial Law)

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17th Century Pikeman

Between 1609 and 1612, Jamestown's leaders created and enforced a code which, compared with English Common Law seemed both strict and harsh. The Laws Divine, Moral and Martial were, however, necessary. The colony of Virginia had collapsed into chaos and was careening towards failure and disaster.

As colonist Ralph Hamor observed in 1615, if discipline had not been restored, and quickly, "I see not how the utter subversion and ruin of the Colony should have been prevented." When order once more reigned, Jamestown could not only survive, but begin to thrive. In 1619, martial law was replaced by the forerunner of the government which Americans still enjoy today.

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"How to Govern, and How to Obey" - Historic Jamestowne Part of Colonial National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)

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Between 1609 and 1612, Jamestown's leaders created and enforced a code which, compared with English Common Law seemed both strict and harsh. The Laws Divine, Moral and Martial were, however, necessary. The colony of Virginia had collapsed into chaos and was careening towards failure and disaster.

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Virginians know that Captain John Smith was vital to the survival of Jamestown in its early years. They can quote his order: " He that will not worke, shall not eate." But few know that Smith's adventures started years before Jamestown.

Born in 1580 in Willoughby, England, Smith left home at age 16 after his father died. He joined volunteers in France who were fighting for Dutch independence from Spain. Two years later, he set off for the Mediterranean Sea as a sailor on a merchant ship. In 1600 he joined Austrian forces to fight the Turks in the "Long War." A valiant soldier, he was promoted to captain while fighting in Hungary. He was fighting in Transylvania in 1602 when he was wounded in battle, captured, and sold as a slave to a Turk. This Turk then sent Smith as a gift to his sweetheart in Istanbul, but Smith wrote that this girl fell in love with him and sent him to her brother for training to join Turkish imperial service. Smith said he escaped by murdering the brother and fleeing through Russia and Poland. He traveled throughout Europe and Northern Africa before he returned to England in the winter of 1604-05.

Restless in England, Smith became actively involved with plans by the Virginia Company to colonize Virginia for profit. Smith was on the fleet of three ships that set sail December 20, 1606, and during the four-month voyage was charged with mutiny by the leader of the expedition, Captain Christopher Newport. Smith was a prisoner when the ships reached Virginia in April 1607-but was released when the other colony leaders opened orders from the Virginia Company and discovered Smith was to be on the governing council. The colony struggled to feed itself, and Smith proved skillful at securing food from the Virginia Indians. He was exploring the Chickahominy River region in December 1607 when he was captured by Chief Powhatan's men. Smith's first meeting with Chief Powhatan, the supreme leader in the Chesapeake region, was eventful, but historians have cast doubt on whether the captain's life was really saved by Powhatan's favorite daughter, Pocahontas, as Smith reported years later. What is known is that Powhatan released Smith, and the ongoing rise and fall of the relationship between Smith and Powhatan determined many of the early successes and challenges of Jamestown.

On September 10, 1608, Smith became president of the council for the colony. He installed a policy of rigid discipline, strengthened defenses, and encouraged farming with his order that all must work or face starvation. Smith had settlers dig the first well inside the fort (and Jamestown Rediscovery archaeologists have found that well and the many unique artifacts it held when it became a trash pit). Smith ordered the repair of many buildings and the expansion of the fort into a five-sided structure, which archaeologists have also traced. Smith also led the first English explorations of the Chesapeake Bay and was almost killed by a ray on the first of the two expeditions. Smith's strong leadership helped the colony survive and grow but also made him enemies within the fort. As he slept in a boat in the river one night, Smith was badly injured by a mysterious gunpowder explosion. He returned to England for treatment in October 1609 and never set foot in Virginia again.

Smith produced some of the most detailed reports about early Virginia, such as True Relation of Virginia in 1608, Map of Virginia in 1612, Generall Historie of Virginia (beginning in 1624, there were six editions in eight years), and True Travels in 1630. Archaeology at the original fort site has confirmed some of his most famous details. Smith died in England in 1631 at age 51.

"For in Virginia, a plaine Souldier that can use a Pick-axe and spade, is better than five Knights."
- John Smith

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Visit the real thing at Historic Jamestowne, explore the actual location and active archaeological dig, Jamestown Rediscovery, home of the first successful English settlement.

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"A map of that part of Georgia occupied by the Cherokee Indians, taken from an actual survey made during the present year 1831...", Library of Congress

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"A map of that part of Georgia occupied by the Cherokee Indians, taken from an actual survey made during the present year 1831...", Library of Congress

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Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Bethune, John, Surveyor General. A map of that part of Georgia occupied by the Cherokee Indians, taken from an actual survey made during the present year , in pursuance of an act of the general assembly of the state: this interesting tract of country contains four millions three hundred & sixty six thousand five hundred & fifty four acres, many rich gold mines & many delightful situations & though in some parts mountainous, some of the richest land belonging to the state. Milledgeville, Ga.: John Bethune, 1831. Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/2004633028/.

APA citation style:

Bethune, J. (1831) A map of that part of Georgia occupied by the Cherokee Indians, taken from an actual survey made during the present year , in pursuance of an act of the general assembly of the state: this interesting tract of country contains four millions three hundred & sixty six thousand five hundred & fifty four acres, many rich gold mines & many delightful situations & though in some parts mountainous, some of the richest land belonging to the state. Milledgeville, Ga.: John Bethune. [Map] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2004633028/.

MLA citation style:

Bethune, John, Surveyor General. A map of that part of Georgia occupied by the Cherokee Indians, taken from an actual survey made during the present year , in pursuance of an act of the general assembly of the state: this interesting tract of country contains four millions three hundred & sixty six thousand five hundred & fifty four acres, many rich gold mines & many delightful situations & though in some parts mountainous, some of the richest land belonging to the state. Milledgeville, Ga.: John Bethune, 1831. Map. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2004633028/>.

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A map of that part of Georgia occupied by the Cherokee Indians, taken from an actual survey made during the present year 1831, in pursuance of an act of the general assembly of the state : this interesting tract of country contains four millions three hundred & sixty six thousand five hundred & fifty four acres, many rich gold mines & many delightful situations & though in some parts mountainous, some of the richest land belonging to the state

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Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate. Bethune, John, Surveyor General.

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After Benjamin Wilson, "The Repeal, or the Funeral Procession of the Stamp Act"

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After Benjamin Wilson, "The Repeal, or the Funeral Procession of the Stamp Act"

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After Benjamin Wilson (1721-1788), The Repeal, or the Funeral of Miss Americ-Stamp, 1766. BM 4140 copy B. Engraving with etching and contemporary hand coloring. Graphic Arts GA 2010. in process.

The Stamp Act of 1765 generated intense opposition with the American colonists, who called for a boycott of British imports. Needing the revenue from American trade, the British Parliament voted to repeal the Stamp Act in 1766.

The Marques of Rockingham, only recently named Prime Minister, had the difficult job of convincing Parliament of the benefits of this repeal. To help sway public opinion, he commissioned the artist Benjamin Wilson (1721-1788) to draw two satirical prints. The first, published in February 1766, was titled The Tombstone and showed leading "hard liners" dancing on the tomb of the Duke of Cumberland. The second, seen here, was published on March 18, the day Parliament voted the repeal.

The main focus of the print is a funeral procession of Stamp Act supporters carrying a child's coffin (the Act was only four months old). At the lead is William Scott or Anti-Sejanus, who reads from a sermon. Scott is followed by Solicitor-General Wedderburn and Attorney General Fletcher Norton, carrying flags that display the vote against the repeal; then George Grenville, Lord Bute, Lord Temple, Lord Halifax, and Lord Sandwich. They walk along a harbor that represents the Rockingham ministry with three ships labeled "Conway," "Rockingham," and "Grafton."

Benjamin Franklin was a friend of Wilson and when he received a copy of the print, Franklin wrote, "I think he was wrong to put in Lord Bute, who had nothing to do with the Stamp Act. But it is the Fashion to abuse that Nobleman, as the Author of all Mischief."

The Repeal quickly became "the most popular satirical print ever issued" according to R.T. Haines Halsey, "Impolitical Prints," Bulletin of the New York Public Library 43, no.11 (Nov. 1939). Within three days the publisher issued an advertisement requesting patience because he could not keep up with all the orders he had received. Within the week other print sellers were issuing their own versions of Wilson's scene.

According to the Dictionary of National Biography's entry on Wilson, the print was titled " The Repeal; or, the Funeral of Miss Ame-Stamp. It was sold for one shilling and brought Wilson 100 pounds in four days. On the fifth day it was pirated, and two inferior versions produced at six-pence." The British Museum's catalogue identifies the original etching and six variant editions, A-F.

Graphic Arts recently acquired an excellent impression of copy B, a reduced, chiefly engraved version of Wilson's print. Processional figures are reproduced on the same scale as the original but the background buildings and ships are altered to fit on a smaller sheet. A descriptive text, once sold separately, is here engraved below the image along with a slightly altered title, now "Americ-Stamp".

See a copy of [An act for granting and applying certain stamp duties] (London: Printed by Mark Baskett, 1765). Rare Books, William H. Scheide Library (WHS) 16.5.9

E.P. Richardson, "Stamp Act Cartoons in the Colonies," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 96, no. 3 (July 1972).

Here are the complete texts (spelling is transcribed as engraved):

[Above the vault] Within this Family Vault, Lie Interred, it is to be hoped never to rise again, The Star Chamber Court Ship Money Excise Money & all Imposts without Parliament. The Act de Haeritico Comburendo Hearth Mon Gener Warrants And which tended to alienate the Affections of Englishmen to their Country.

[The text below the print] The Repeal. Or the Funeral Procession, of Miss Americ-Stamp. Over the Vault are placed two Skeleton Heads. Their elevation on Poles, and the dates of the two Rebellion Years, sufficiently shew what Party they espoused, and in what cause they suffered an ignominious Exit.

The reverend Mr.Anti-Sejanus (who under that signature hackney'd his pen in support of the Stamps) leads the procession as officiating Priest, with the burial service and funeral sermon in his hands.

Next follow two eminent Pillars of the Law, supporting two black flags, on which are delineated the Stamps with the White Rose and Thistle interwoved, an expressive design, supposed to have been originally contrived on the 10 of June. The significative motto Semper Eadem is preserved, but the Price of the Stamp is changed to three farthings, an important sum taken from the Budget. The numbers 122 and 71 declare the minority which fought under these Banners.

Next appears the honourable Mr. George Stamp, full of Grief and dispair, carrying his favourite Childs Coffin, Miss Americ Stamp, who was born in 1763 and died hard in 1766.

Immediately after, follows the chief Mourner Sejanus.

Then his Grace of Spital Fields, and Lord Gawkee.

After these Jemmy Twitcher, with a Catch, by way of funeral anthem, & by his side his friend and partner Mr. Falconer Donaldson of Halifax.

The rear is brought up by two right reverend Fathers of the Church.

These few mourners are seperated from the joyful scene which appears on the River Thames, where three first rate ships are riding. VIZ. the Conway, Rockingham, and Grafton. Along the opposite Shore, stand open Warehouses, for the several goods of different manufactoring towns from which Cargoes are now shipping for America. Among these is a large Case containing the Statue of Mr. Pitt, which is heaving on board a Boat No. 250, there is another boat taking in goods nearer the first Rates, which is No. 105. These Numbers will ever be held in esteem by the true SONS of LIBERTY.

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The Repeal, or The Funeral Procession of Miss Americ-Stamp

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After Benjamin Wilson (1721-1788), The Repeal, or the Funeral of Miss Americ-Stamp, 1766. BM 4140 copy B. Engraving with etching and contemporary hand coloring. Graphic Arts GA 2010. in process. The Stamp Act of 1765 generated intense opposition with the American colonists, who called for a boycott of British imports.

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Virtual Group Tours

By reservation
Online via Zoom

Since we can't get together in person, let's meet up remotely! The National Portrait Gallery is now offering docent-led group tours for adults online. Tours on the following topics will be available by registration:

Highlights of the National Portrait Gallery Permanent Collection

America's Presidents

Docent's Choice of the National Portrait Gallery's Exhibitions and Collections

Every Eye Is Upon Me: First Ladies of the United States

Her Story: A Century of Women Writers

Thematic Docent's Choice Tours

Reservations must be made three weeks in advance of the desired tour date. To receive a tour request form, e-mail NPGAdultTours@si.edu or click here to request online. All tours are subject to availability; last-minute cancellations may occur.

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Virtual Group Tours By reservation Online via Zoom Since we can't get together in person, let's meet up remotely! The National Portrait Gallery is now offering docent-led group tours for adults online.

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The Making of Presidents' and First Ladies' Portraits

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From the moment of their unveiling at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in February 2018, the museum's official portraits of President Barack Obama and Mrs. Michelle Obama have become iconic. Kehinde Wiley's portrait of President Obama and Amy Sherald's portrait of the former First Lady have inspired unprecedented responses from the public.

The Obama Portraits Tour, organized by the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, will travel to five cities across the U.S. from June 2021 through May 2022 and is expected to reach millions of people who might not otherwise have an opportunity to view these remarkable paintings. In addition to the artworks themselves, The Obama Portraits Tour will feature audio-visual elements, educational workshops, and curatorial presentations. A richly illustrated book entitled The Obama Portraits (2020), co-published by the National Portrait Gallery and Princeton University Press, and select merchandise will also be available. This special presentation will exchange the conversations surrounding the power of portraiture and its potential to engage communities.

Tour locations include:

The Art Institute of Chicago; Chicago-June 18, 2021-Aug. 15, 2021

Brooklyn Museum; Brooklyn, New York-Aug. 27, 2021-Oct. 24, 2021

Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Los Angeles-Nov. 7, 2021-Jan. 2, 2022

High Museum of Art; Atlanta-Jan. 14, 2022-March 13, 2022

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Houston-March 27, 2022-May 30, 2022

The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery recognizes the lead donors to the Obama portraits: Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg; Judith Kern and Kent Whealy; Tommie L. Pegues and Donald A. Capoccia; Clarence, DeLoise and Brenda Gaines; The Stoneridge Fund of Amy and Marc Meadows; Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker; and Catherine and Michael Podell.

The Obama Portraits Tour is organized by the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. Support for the national tour has been generously provided by Bank of America.

Follow along on social media @smithsoniannpg, #ObamaPortraitsTour.
Read more about these portraits: The National Portrait Gallery is grateful to the generous donors who made these commissions possible and proudly recognizes them on the pages above.
Images: (L) Barack Obama by Kehinde Wiley, 2018, oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. © 2018 Kehinde Wiley. (R) Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (detail) by Amy Sherald, 2018, oil on linen, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

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This five-city tour will travel the country and is expected to reach millions of people who might not otherwise have an opportunity to view these remarkable paintings.

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The Met: "Sojourner Truth, "I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance" 1864

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The Met: "Sojourner Truth, "I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance" 1864

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Photography and the American Civil War," April 2, 2013-September 2, 2013.

Gibbes Museum of Art. "Photography and the American Civil War," September 27, 2013-January 5, 2014.

New Orleans Museum of Art. "Photography and the American Civil War," January 31, 2014-May 4, 2014.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "African American Portraits: Photographs from the 1940s and 1950s," June 26, 2018-November 6, 2018.

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Unknown | Sojourner Truth, "I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance" | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Photography and the American Civil War," April 2, 2013-September 2, 2013. Gibbes Museum of Art. "Photography and the American Civil War," September 27, 2013-January 5, 2014. New Orleans Museum of Art. "Photography and the American Civil War," January 31, 2014-May 4, 2014. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Teacher Lesson: Kathryn Koa, "Western Expansion Infographic Lesson"

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Teacher Lesson: Kathryn Koa, "Western Expansion Infographic Lesson"

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Business Insider, "How Elon Musk'ss 700 MPH Hyperloop Concept Could Become The Fastest Way To Travel" 

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Business Insider, "How Elon Musk'ss 700 MPH Hyperloop Concept Could Become The Fastest Way To Travel" 

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How Elon Musk's 700 MPH Hyperloop Concept Could Become The Fastest Way To Travel

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The joining of the rails at Promontory Summit on May 10, 1869, marked the beginning of a new era for the nation, the West, and for Utah. These resources for teaching the Transcontinental Railroad explore this rich history and the many ways the railroad transformed life in Utah.

Lesson Plans General Resources Places to Visit Videos

Please share your feedback on these lessons here.

The Great Race to Promontory
An interactive website illustrating the journey through 46 communities profoundly impacted by the railroad.

Spike 150 Celebration - May 10, 2019
Experience the celebration at Promontory Summit honoring the 150th anniversary of the Golden Spike ceremony, which marked the 1869 completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in Utah.

The Transcontinental Rail Network, 1878
Using a general map of U.S. railroads in 1878, students examine the geographic, political, and economic factors that influenced the growth of this network. (Grades K-12)

Transcontinental Telegraph and Railroad
Grades K-5 and Grades 6-8
Lessons, activities and resources to help students discover the engineering triumphs that propelled westward expansion.

General Resources

( Article: Golden Spike National Historic Site
This Utah History To Go article provides many details about Promontory, the location where the transcontinental railroad was completed. Utah History to Go is a Division of State History product.)

Article: Railroads in Utah
This article from the Utah History Encyclopedia describes the impact that all rail lines, not just the Transcontinental Line, had on Utah.

Places to Visit

Videos

Promontory

Promontory is a documentary by Ken Verdoia that answered the question, "Why wasn't Brigham Young at Promontory on May 10, 1869?" The program was first broadcast on PBS Utah, Channel 7, in May 2002 .

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The joining of the rails at Promontory Summit on May 10, 1869, marked the beginning of a new era for the nation, the West, and for Utah. These resources for teaching the Transcontinental Railroad explore this rich history and the many ways the railroad transformed life in Utah.

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Lunarable USA Tapestry, Black and White Style United States of America Map with Written State Names, Fabric Wall Hanging Decor for Bedroom Living Room Dorm, 30" X 45", Charcoal Ecru

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Lunarable USA Tapestry, Black and White Style United States of America Map with Written State Names, Fabric Wall Hanging Decor for Bedroom Living Room Dorm, 30" X 45", Charcoal Ecru

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Lunarable USA Tapestry, Black and White Style United States of America Map with Written State Names, Fabric Wall Hanging Decor for Bedroom Living Room Dorm, 30" X 45", Charcoal Ecru

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Buy Lunarable USA Tapestry, Black and White Style United States of America Map with Written State Names, Fabric Wall Hanging Decor for Bedroom Living Room Dorm, 30" X 45", Charcoal Ecru: Home Décor Products - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases

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Donner Party - Survivors, Timeline & Facts | HISTORY

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The Donner Party was a group of 89 emigrants from Illinois who purportedly turned to cannibalism to survive after getting trapped by snowfall while on a westward journey in 1846. Forty-two members of the party died.

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Stanford History Education Group (SHEG), "The Gold Rush and San Francisco"

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Stanford History Education Group (SHEG), "The Gold Rush and San Francisco"

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This lesson opens with three nineteenth-century illustrations of San Francisco. Students analyze the images and consider how depictions of the city changed over time. Next, students read two firsthand accounts and compare these narratives with the illustrations to explore how the Gold Rush affected San Francisco.

Download Materials

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The Gold Rush and San Francisco | Stanford History Education Group

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This lesson opens with three nineteenth-century illustrations of San Francisco. Students analyze the images and consider how depictions of the city changed over time. Next, students read two firsthand accounts and compare these narratives with the illustrations to explore how the Gold Rush affected San Francisco.

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Edutopia, "A Framework for Whole-Class Discussions"

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Edutopia, "A Framework for Whole-Class Discussions"

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Philosophical Chairs is an exercise that fosters careful listening and encourages every student to contribute their thoughts.

An exercise called Philosophical Chairs is a versatile way to get students speaking and listening to one another. It's a student-centered strategy that can be used in any content area around a multitude of topics. It's set up like a debate-and one explicit objective is for students to be open to changing their minds.

The other objectives-which can be tied to standards-are for students to practice respectful dialogue, provide evidence for claims using prior knowledge, organize their thinking and logical reasoning, and avoid disputable statements. The exercise also provides a venue to challenge students' assumptions.

Getting Set Up

The teacher or a student presents a statement for the class to consider;

All students spend three minutes writing their ideas about the statement;

They decide which position they'll take on the statement (yes, no, undecided);

They discuss their ideas and positions for about 10 to 15 minutes; and

They write a reflection that includes the comment that most challenged their thinking; whether they changed their mind or not; and how open-minded they were at the start of the conversation.

The basic outline of Philosophical Chairs is this:

One person speaks at a time;

Look at the speaker and use body language that shows you're listening;

Restate what the person before you said;

Let three people on your side speak after you before you speak again; and

Gently and quietly remind others if they're not following the norms.

Before starting any speaking and listening activity, it's important to have discussion norms. In my class, the norms generally include:

I provide students with a sheet of sentence stems for politely disagreeing, adding on to someone else's comments, and redirecting the conversation back to the topic. We use these for the first few discussions, but after that students generally don't need them.

An In-Depth Look

A more detailed explanation of Philosophical Chairs goes something like this. A statement about a topic is presented to the class by the facilitator-it can be either teacher- or student-generated.

It's a statement that doesn't have a right or wrong answer, but is relevant to the content. For example, in a health class, Philosophical Chairs could begin with this: "Tobacco products should be allowed for ages 12 and up if monitored by an adult." In math class: "Using a car-sharing service makes more financial sense than owning a car."

I like to give students at least five statements to ensure that we have some with sufficient disagreement to generate a good discussion, and they spend a few minutes writing their responses to each one-yes, no, or undecided-and providing a rationale. I quickly poll the class before we begin to ensure there's a fair division of opinion-if there is not enough for a robust discussion, I'll drop a statement, or participate with the side that has less advocates, but otherwise I'm an observer.

After students write their initial responses and thoughts, they move to sit or stand in a yes row and a no row facing each other. Undecided students stand at the end of the two rows, facing them.

A student facilitator moderates the discussion. They read the statement, call on students to speak, and gently remind students to stay focused on the topic. I coach facilitators ahead of time, teaching them how to ask clarifying questions, and asking them to call on those who seem like they have something to say but are not raising their hand.

The two sides alternate speaking at first. But as the year goes on, and the class gets better at listening and respecting each other, it's normal for students to relax about the order-everyone still contributes.

I give the facilitator a roster so they can mark off who they've called on, in an effort to broaden the number of students who talk at least once. Students are not required to speak. I ask for everyone to show that they're listening respectfully, but it's important to let kids not talk. Eventually they will-I've never had a student who never speaks, because their classmates eventually prompt them, and they do share their thoughts.

As the discussion begins, the first person to speak gives a clear rationale for their belief. The next student must then summarize what that person said before they share their own thoughts.

Students are allowed to switch sides at any time. They don't give an explanation-they just move. They frequently speak up soon after moving to share what point changed their mind, and then add their thoughts.

Students who are undecided never have to pick a side, but they do have to share what they see as the strongest points from either side and say why they thought those points were the most compelling, even it they were not ultimately convinced. The facilitator shares their opinion at the end of the discussion.

Occasionally, when I sense that both sides are not being open-minded about a statement, I'll have them do something I call a Lincoln Debate-everyone has to switch sides and argue for the opposing position. This challenges students' thinking and pushes them to see other perspectives.

I think it's important to praise students for open-mindedness, and not for their excellent points. They get a lot of positive feedback on zingers, but how often do we acknowledge open-mindedness as a skill we want to cultivate?

It's illuminating for me to listen to the insightful commentary my students share. But the best part is reading their reflections, and seeing the growth on the page: "I changed my mind because...," or "I didn't change my mind because..., but I learned that...." I can see their growth in their own words.

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Philosophical Chairs is an exercise that fosters careful listening and encourages every student to contribute their thoughts. An exercise called Philosophical Chairs is a versatile way to get students speaking and listening to one another. It's a student-centered strategy that can be used in any content area around a multitude of topics.

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John Everson Paints the National Anthem, YouTube

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John Everson Paints the National Anthem, YouTube

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Joshua Rothman, "The Ledger and the Chain"

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Joshua Rothman, "The Ledger and the Chain"

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Editorial Reviews

★ 02/22/2021

University of Alabama history professor Rothman ( Flush Times and Fever Dreams) delivers a harrowing portrait of how the domestic slave trade "helped define the financial, political, legal, cultural, and demographic contours" of 19th-century America. Focusing on three business partners-Isaac Franklin, John Armfield, and Rice Ballard-who ran the largest slave-trading operation in the country, Rothman explains how Congress's 1808 ban on the importation of enslaved people "effectively creat a federally protected internal market for human beings." When Natchez, Miss., banned slave-trading in 1833 in large part because Franklin had been caught dumping diseased corpses into a ravine, he simply moved his operation a mile outside of the city and continued receiving and reselling thousands of slaves bought by Armfield and Ballard from declining tobacco plantations in Maryland and Virginia. Rothman delineates the links between the domestic slave trade, the forced removal of Native Americans from the Southeast, the growth of the American banking system, and the establishment of national transportation networks. Through meticulous archival research, he debunks the myth that slave traders were social outcasts and tracks how their brazen advertisements and abusive treatment of captive men, women, and children were used by abolitionists to stoke public outrage. This trenchant study deserves a wide and impassioned readership. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"Accounts of American slavery often overlook the central role of the traders who profited. Rothman's history focuses on three of the biggest."—New York Times Book Review

"Tremendous...[The Ledger and the Chain] intertwines a careful biography of a very successful business with unflinching attention to the monstrosity that business was built upon."—Slate

"Amazing, disturbing...a stunning, unsettling account of a guilt shared more widely and more enthusiastically than many Americans like to think."—Christian Science Monitor

"Slave traders aren't often called out by name, and therefore are subjected to little accountability. But Rothman shines a light on how these human traffickers were responsible for crimes against humanity, the sale of over half a million enslaved people among them."—Fortune

"Rothman employs his wide breadth of knowledge about the era to vividly depict the human and economic impacts of the domestic slave trade as it burgeoned in the early 19th century...An excellent work of vast research that hauntingly delineates the 'intimate daily savageries of the slave trade.'"—Kirkus

"Through meticulous archival research, Rothman debunks the myth that slave traders were social outcasts and tracks how their brazen advertisements and abusive treatment of captive men, women, and children were used by abolitionists to stoke public outrage. This trenchant study deserves a wide and impassioned readership."—Publisher's Weekly

"Antebellum America was simultaneously a robust marketplace of strivers and a landscape of horror for the millions who were enslaved. In this groundbreaking work, Joshua Rothman reveals the intimate connection between the two. His study of the under-examined slave trade shows how it was integral to the rise of interstate commerce, the flow of credit, and the establishment of new transportation routes. He also underscores its systematic cruelty, in which men gloried in rape and casually sold children from parents yet stood as respected members of the community. The Ledger and the Chain is detailed, incisive, and devastating."—T. J. Stiles, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The First Tycoon and Custer's Trials

"The story of the international slave trade is well known to many. Much less known are the workings of the domestic slave trade in the United States that sent tens of thousands of enslaved African Americans from the Upper South to the cotton and sugar fields in the Deep South. With exhaustive research and piercing insight, Joshua Rothman's The Ledger and the Chain brings that history alive through the stories of three men who sat at the nexus between Southern cotton producers and Northern financial institutions. As the tragic legacies of these men are still with us, this book should be read by all who are interested in our current racial predicament."—Annette Gordon-Reed, coauthor of Most Blessed of the Patriarchs

"We are sometimes told that the quintessential American story is the tale of the small business that makes it big. If that's the case, there's no more American story than The Ledger and the Chain, Joshua Rothman's brilliant new history of the slave-trading entrepreneurs Isaac Franklin, John Armfield, and Rice Ballard."—Edward E. Baptist, author of The Half Has Never Been Told

"Joshua Rothman carefully and empirically builds from a forensic accounting of the lives and practices of those Frederick Douglass termed the 'man-drovers' and others called the 'soul drivers' to a social autopsy of the whole of American slavery in the nineteenth century. Essential."—Walter Johnson, author of The Broken Heart of America

From the Publisher

03/01/2021

Between 1800 and 1860, slavers transported roughly one million Black people within the American South and between states. Award-winning author Rothman (history, Univ. of Alabama; Flush Times and Fever Dreams) brings to life the enormity of the lucrative interstate and intrastate merchandising of brutalized Black bodies as instruments of capital and exchange in an American commerce bottomed on instruments of torture like the shackle and whip. He reconstructs the lives of Isaac Franklin (1789-1846), John Armfield (1797-1871), and Rice Ballard (1800-60), principals of the largest U.S. slave trading business: Alexandria, VA-based Franklin & Armfield. This wide-ranging and meticulously documented study interweaves biography, family dynamics, business contours and networks, and local and national developments to show how slavery and capitalism were always intertwined. Rothman carefully details how the success of Franklin & Armfield was aided by innovations in technology, infrastructure, information, and finance. To conclude, he underscores how these actions facilitated slave trafficking, leading to the permanent separation of families. VERDICT Explaining how trafficking in slaves advanced private and public priorities as it produced great wealth and promoted national growth, Rothman displays the ever-present and impoverishing cost to the enslaved. A must-read account that sheds light on the interdependence of slavery and capitalism in the United States. -Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe

Library Journal

★ 2021-02-10
A chilling account of the metastatic growth of America's internal slave trade in the early 1800s.

Rothman, the chair of the history department at the University of Alabama and author of two previous books on slavery in the U.S., employs his wide breadth of knowledge about the era to vividly depict the human and economic impacts of the domestic slave trade as it burgeoned in the early 19th century. Digging deeply into the horrific details of the hugely profitable slave-trafficking business of Isaac Franklin, John Armfield, and Rice Ballard in Natchez, Mississippi, and Alexandria, Virginia, where they based their operations from the mid-1820s, the author clearly shows the mechanics behind the exponential growth of slavery in the South as it rose to meet the demands of a growing nation, financially, politically, geographically, and demographically. "Their America incentivized entrepreneurialism, financial risk, and racial slavery, and no one made more of the junction among those things than they did," writes Rothman in this meticulously documented history. "They became some of the richest men in the country as a result." Expanding from the successful model of slave trader Austin Woolfolk, who worked out of Baltimore, Franklin, Armfield, and Ballard took out ads, bargained in taverns, and bought enslaved people and took them to New Orleans, Charleston, and other cities in order to sell them for a profit. During the presidency of Andrew Jackson, the clearing of Native peoples from their lands allowed for a massive increase in the production of cotton and sugar as well as the proliferation of banks and technological advances like the cotton gin-all of which required a seemingly "bottomless" supply of free labor. As they grew their businesses, these men "helped foster something resembling a national market in commoditized human beings that paralleled the development of national markets in an array of other goods."

An excellent work of vast research that hauntingly delineates the "intimate daily savageries of the slave trade.

Kirkus Reviews

Read More

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The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America|Hardcover

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★ 02/22/2021 University of Alabama history professor Rothman ( Flush Times and Fever Dreams) delivers a harrowing portrait of how the domestic slave trade "helped define the financial, political, legal, cultural, and demographic contours" of 19th-century America.

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Stephanie Jones Rogers, "They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South"

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Stephanie Jones Rogers, "They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South"

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White Women as Slave Owners in the American South

Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers

Format: Hardcover View Inside
Price: $30.00

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Paper

Out of Print

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History A bold and searing investigation into the role of white women in the American slave economy "Compelling."-Renee Graham, Boston Globe "Stunning."-Rebecca Onion, Slate "Makes a vital contribution to our understanding of our past and present."-Parul Sehgal, New York Times
Bridging women's history, the history of the South, and African American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers draws on a variety of sources to show that slave-owning women were sophisticated economic actors who directly engaged in and benefited from the South's slave market. Because women typically inherited more slaves than land, enslaved people were often their primary source of wealth. Not only did white women often refuse to cede ownership of their slaves to their husbands, they employed management techniques that were as effective and brutal as those used by slave-owning men. White women actively participated in the slave market, profited from it, and used it for economic and social empowerment. By examining the economically entangled lives of enslaved people and slave-owning women, Jones-Rogers presents a narrative that forces us to rethink the economics and social conventions of slaveholding America.

Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers is associate professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the winner of the 2013 Lerner-Scott Prize for best doctoral dissertation in U.S. women's history.

" They Were Her Property casts brilliant, unsparing light on the history of slaveholding women and the terrible oscillation of domination and dependence that defined identities-as wives, as mothers, as mistresses-purchased in the slave market."-Walter Johnson, author of River of Dark Dreams

"Taut and cogent . . . . They Were Her Property joins a tide of recent books-among them, Sven Beckert's Empire of Cotton, Edward Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told, Walter Johnson's River of Dark Dreams and Caitlin Rosenthal's Accounting for Slavery-that examine how slavery laid the foundation of American capitalism."-Parul Sehgal, New York Times

"This is an important work that changes the way scholars and the public will view the role of white women during antebellum slavery. This book challenges the notion of southern white women as silent beneficiaries of the peculiar institution and suggests that they played a more dominant role in shaping the social and economic structures of plantation life."-Lonnie G. Bunch III, Founding Director, National Museum of African American History and Culture, Evoke.org

"Ought to dispel the myth of the Southern belle for good."-Soraya Mcdonald, TheUndefeated.com

"Jones-Rogers's They Were Her Property delivers an unsparing look at the white women who wielded power "in their own right" as owners of enslaved people"-Amy Murrell Taylor, Times Literary Supplement

"A bold reinterpretation of the relationship between slavery and slave-owning women in the nineteenth-century South. The prose in They Were Her Property is strong and clear."-Jeff Forret, Southwestern Historical Quarterly

"Only a handful of books are published each year that promise to help elevate our national consciousness to topics that should immediately command the attention of every citizen. Stephanie E. Jones-Roger's They Were Her Property is one of these books. . . . Jones-Rogers has written a book that effectively lays to rest the debate over the many privileges, and the extent of the power, that slave-owning women enjoyed."-Keri Leigh Merritt, Labor

Shortlisted for the 2019 Stone Book Award, given by the Museum of African American History

Winner of the 2020 Merle Curti Social History Award sponsored by the Organization of American Historians

Winner of the 2020 Harriet Tubman Book Prize, sponsored by The Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Selected for Choice's 2019 Outstanding Academic Titles List

Finalist for the 2020 Lincoln Prize, sponsored by Gettysburg College and the Gilder Lehrman Ins. of American History

Winner of the L.A.Times Book Prize, history category, sponsored by the L.A.Times.

Finalist for the 2020 Frederick Douglass Book Prize, sponsored by The Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale University

ISBN: 9780300218664
Publication Date:

320 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
9 b/w illus.

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White Women as Slave Owners in the American South Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers Format: Hardcover View Inside Price: $30.00 Our shopping cart only supports Mozilla Firefox. Please ensure you're using that browser before attempting to purchase.

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Article: Slaves Waiting for Sale: Richmond, Virginia (1861)

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Article: Slaves Waiting for Sale: Richmond, Virginia (1861)

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Medium: oil

Size: 20¾ x 31½ inches

Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1861; 'Black Victorians' exhibition, Manchester and Birmingham, 2005-2006

Current owner: Heinz Collection, Washington D.C., U.S.A. (private)

Inspired and outraged by a visit he made to slave auction rooms in Richmond, Crowe commemorated the subject first in an engraved sketch which appeared in the Illustrated London News on 27 September 1856 ( Slave Auction at Richmond, Virginia), and then by this oil painting which was exhibited at the British Academy in 1861. The original sketch for Slaves Waiting for Sale, made on 3 March 1853, was published by Crowe in his book With Thackeray in America.

The appearance of the oil painting at the Royal Academy exhibition in May 1861 was marked by positive contemporary reviews. The reviewer in the Athenaeum of 11 May 1861 considered that 'Mr. Eyre Crowe will advance his reputation considerably by No. 328, 'Slaves waiting for Sale, Virginia' [sic]... all [the figures are] remarkable for character and expression'.

The verdict of The Times (13 May 1861) was that 'the stout, middle-aged negro to the right, looking eagerly, as if he scented a buyer in one of the loungers at the door, is particularly good in expression. These are truths of negro life'. The reaction of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (August 1861), was slightly less favourable: 'Mr Crowe gives us another form of genre, capital in its way. "Slaves Waiting for Sale in Virginia", broad in marked character, awkward in attitude, truth pushed to the verge of the grotesque.' However, it was the Art Journal (New Series, Vol VII, 1861, p. 165) which gave greatest coverage to the painting:

An artist, hitherto comparatively unknown, has produced one of the most important pictures in the exhibition, and certainly the most promising work of the season, from among those that can be looked on as the apparently coming men of English Art. The subject of Mr. E. Crowe's picture, No. 328, is 'Slaves waiting for Sale, Richmond, Virginia', and the appalling guilt of that accursed system was never more successfully depicted... [the expressions on the slaves' faces] are powerful examples of a rare power in Art - that of successfully and discriminately representing the inward actuality and outward expression of phases of mental thought and human passion. This success Mr. Crowe has undoubtedly achieved, and he has also achieved another, although of mere secondary importance - the power of representing with facility and fulness feelings which he comprehends with distinctness... This quality of clear-sightedness Mr. Crowe has displayed in an eminent degree... and we leave this picture, with the confident expectation that the artist, although hitherto all but unknown, is able, if he will it, to make for himself a position in what Bacon called "the garden of great intellects".

Looking back on the painting in the Art Journal in June 1864 ('British Artists: their Style and Character - No. LXXIII - Eyre Crowe', p.206), the reviewer considered that, 'however skilfully painted such pictures may be, the subjects do not commend themselves either to the eye or the mind. Neither the colour not the features of the negro race can be associated with European notions of aesthetic beauty; and the system of slavery is too abhorrent to Englishmen to render a representation of it, especially in its most objectionable forms, acceptable'. He was unaware whether the painting, or any others of the slave paintings produced by Crowe, had been sold, but noted that he had since turned his paintbrush and his thoughts back to 'their wonted channels': scenes showing noted historical figures.

Slaves waiting for Sale is now held in the Heinz private collection in Washington D.C., United States, and has been cited in a number of recent books and exhibitions, among which are:

Hills, Patricia. The Painters' America: Rural and Urban Life, 1810-1910 (Praeger Publishers in association with the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1974)

Johns, Elizabeth. American Genre Painting: the Politics of Everyday Life (Yale University Press, 1991)

Lubin, David M. Picturing a Nation: art and social change in 19th century America (Yale University Press, 1994)

McElroy, Guy C., Facing History: the Black Image in American Art, 1710-1940 (Bedford Arts, Publishers, in association with the Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1990); and in a review of this exhibition by Robert Hughes in Time magazine, 29 Jan 1990, p.51

Marsh, Jan (ed.), Black Victorians: Black People in British Art, 1800-1900 (Lund Humphries, in association with Manchester Art Gallery, 2005)

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Slaves Waiting for Sale: Richmond, Virginia (1861)

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Medium: oil Size: 20¾ x 31½ inches Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1861; 'Black Victorians' exhibition, Manchester and Birmingham, 2005-2006 Current owner: Heinz Collection, Washington D.C., U.S.A. (private) Inspired and outraged by a visit he made to slave auction rooms in Richmond, Crowe commemorated the subject first in an engraved sketch which appeared in the Illustrated London...

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About the Brown Bookshelf - The Brown Bookshelf

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The Brown Bookshelf is designed to push awareness of the myriad Black voices writing for young readers. Our flagship initiative is 28 Days Later, a month-long showcase of the best in Picture Books, Middle Grade, and Young Adult novels written and illustrated by Black creators. You can read more abou…

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When professor and children's book critic Michelle Martin announced that she wanted to move to California to pursue outdoor education, her mother was skeptical. "She was like, 'Black people have been trying to get out of the woods for generations. Why are you going into the woods? It's not a safe place,'" Martin recalls. In the days of slavery, the men and women who set out north for freedom were stalked by terror, death, and dogs. (John Muir, by contrast, walked from Indiana to Florida on a lark just two years after Appomattox.) This year, when Amy Cooper called the police on Black birder Christian Cooper in Central Park, the age-old message was clear: you don't belong here.

Despite her mom's concern, Martin went west anyway in the late eighties. She'd felt at home in nature since she was a little girl, collecting toads with her cousins in the red clay of the South Carolina Midlands. Today, as a professor at the University of Washington's Information School, she researches and draws attention to the dearth of Black protagonists in children's books about nature. Children's literature scholar Rudine Sims Bishop famously wrote that books serve as "windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors." They let young readers understand others, see themselves, and escape into other worlds as they build an identity and locate themselves in our planet's tangle of life. "If you have a diverse diet of books that introduce you to all kinds of different ways of being," Martin says, "you develop more empathy. It prepares you to be a better citizen of the world."

After children's literature researcher Andrea Breau read about Martin's work in The Atlantic last year, she dug into the data. Breau is a project coordinator at Diverse BookFinder, an organization dedicated to collecting, researching, and promoting children's books with diverse characters. "I was not surprised but definitely disappointed," she says. Her survey identified just 16 books-out of more than 3,000 in Diverse BookFinder's collection of diverse picture books-in which Black children "actively explore the outdoors with no purpose other than to convene with nature." (She excluded stories about slavery or outdoor labor.) Only four of the books Breau identified qualify as #ownvoices, a hashtag coined by YA author Corinne Duyvis to identify kids' books "about diverse characters written by authors from that same diverse group." More disturbingly, when Breau analyzed the narratives, she found that even when the child's own parents feature in the story, it's white characters who often introduce the child to nature or facilitate their experience in the outdoors. Of the nine books she found that feature Black families, Breau wrote, only three "portray Black parents who actively foster the relationship between their child and nature."

Whether books with Black protagonists are a mirror or a window for your child, parents can help kids make the leap from the pages to real life. For example, Breau suggests pairing relevant reading with candid discussions about the national parks' racist history. For a while, Blueberries for Sal was Martin's daughter's favorite book. "We probably wouldn't have thought about going to the country to pick blueberries if it hadn't been for that book," Martin says. "It's the same thing with being outdoors. If it's not portrayed as a possibility, then it makes it harder for you to see yourself doing that."

The statistics are dismal, but diversifying your bookshelf is a first step toward change. Here are some of Breau and Martin's favorite books about Black children in nature.

'We Are Brothers,' by Yves Nadon, illustrated by Jean Claverie

This story of two brothers, featuring gorgeous illustrations, is a favorite among the Diverse BookFinder team. A boy is determined to follow his big brother in a beloved summer tradition at a swimming hole. In his quest, he discovers new kinship not only with his sibling but with the natural world.

'Hiking Day,' by Anne Rockwell, illustrated by Lizzy Rockwell

When Martin received this book to review, she thought, Why is this amazing? "And I couldn't think of any other book where a Black family goes outside," she says. In fact, they don't go far. For the first time, the family hikes a mountain they can see from their house. The author and illustrator, a mother-daughter team, let readers share the little girl's awe as she summits the peak and discovers that adventure can be just around the corner.

'A Beach Tail,' by Karen P. Williams, illustrated by Floyd Cooper

After Gregory loses track of his father, he finds himself alone on the beach-an anxious moment that quietly echoes the feelings of loneliness and fear that recur throughout life. As Gregory retraces his steps to reunite with his dad, acclaimed illustrator Floyd Cooper takes us down the shoreline through the boy's eyes.

'The Hike,' by Alison Farrell

When three girls set out to explore their local woods, they discover that hikes can be unpredictable. They spot wildlife, take detours, and get worn out. Along the way, the illustrations feature plenty of plant and animal labels, and a glossary of scientific terms prepares young armchair adventurers to mount their own expedition.

'The Snowy Day,' by Ezra Jack Keats

This award-winning 1963 classic follows Peter around the big city as he revels in the wonder of a first snowfall. When Martin was growing up, this picture book was one of the few that featured a character that looked like her-and she wasn't the only one enchanted with it. A perennial favorite, it has been checked out of the New York Public Library more than any other book. In The Atlantic, Martin attributed the story's popularity to its quiet, universal appeal and Keats's stunning illustrations, which see the world from a child's point of view.

'Where's Rodney?,' by Carmen Bogan, illustrated by Floyd Cooper

This tale illustrates a common situation, Martin says: "AnAfrican American boy in a class with a teacher who really doesn't get him. And he's acting out." When the teacher threatens to take away his field trip to the park, Rodney isn't concerned. He knows all about the park, which he passes every day. But Rodney's field trip is to a type of park he's never visited before. He finds more room to play than he ever imagined and a space where he can be himself. (Keep an eye out for Bogan's forthcoming picture book about a girl in Rodney's class. She doesn't feel included among her classmates on the playground, but she begins to break down those barriers-with the help of a turtle.)

Buy Now ​​​​​​​

'The Camping Trip,' by Jennifer K. Mann

While car camping with her aunt and cousin, a little girl explores the edge of her comfort zone in the great outdoors. Ernestine's trip to the lake is full of unexpected delights, and campers of any age can relate to her frustration as she wrangles a tent for the first time. Martin says that this story, which features a single dad helping his daughter prepare for adventure, is a favorite in her stack of new releases, adding that the final pages are especially poignant, "I teared up at the end of this one," she says.

Buy Now ​​​​​​​

'Hike,' by Pete Oswald

Published earlier this year, this quiet story follows a father and child on a day hike, and while the characters are not explicitly African American, they are people of color. Near the summit, the pair don climbing gear and scramble to the top, where they plant a seedling to help ensure the forest will be there for future fathers and children out adventuring together. Oswald's expansive illustrations take precedence over words here, inspiring close observation and thoughtful reflection.

Buy Now ​​​​​​​

Keep Exploring

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Our Favorite Books that Feature Black Kids in the Outdoors

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When professor and children's book critic Michelle Martin announced that she wanted to move to California to pursue outdoor education, her mother was skeptical. "She was like, 'Black people have been trying to get out of the woods for generations. Why are you going into the woods?

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YA Books w/Black Characters (minus Black trauma)

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YA Books w/Black Characters (minus Black trauma)

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TBR: Tailored Book Recommendations.
I read an interesting article by author L.L. McKinney where she pointed out that Black authors should not be only valued by the amount of Black trauma they can produce in the publishing industry. Over the summer we saw the number of anti-racist books that made the New York Times Best Seller lists and while I am happy that more Black authors got their recognition, I knew that kind of support would be performative for many. While I want people to support anti-racism books and theories, I also want people to recognize that being Black doesn't mean you should only consume our stories if they illustrate us in a constant state of pain.

Black pain is profitable, without a doubt. Our deaths and pain turn into popular song lyrics, jewelry, social events, and T-shirts. While the Black experience varies and isn't linear, where is the same support for authors who are writing stories that capture Black joy? There are some quality stories about Black joy, and definitely a lot more than what's listed here. I'd like to see the same energy given to these titles and titles like them.

Are people comfortable reading books where Black people aren't targeted or traumatized for being Black? Can non-Black people relate to books where the default is Black and they just exist?

I'm also thinking about young, Black readers. They need escapism, especially while we still remain in quarantine. They need corny love stories, adventure, and fantasy where they can see themselves as heroes and heroines without having it be about state-sanctioned violence as well. So while you are seeking to diversify your bookcase and fulfilling the 2021 Read Harder Challenge, please remember to include books where Black teens can be happy or solve problems without being inflicted with an unfair level of pain to explain their Black experience.

Smash It! by Francina Simone

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Read Harder 2021: An Own Voices YA Book With a Black Main Character That Isn't About Black Pain

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TBR: Tailored Book Recommendations. I read an interesting article by author L.L. McKinney where she pointed out that Black authors should not be only valued by the amount of Black trauma they can produce in the publishing industry.

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PBS, "The Black Church: This is Our Story, This Is Our Song" with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

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PBS, "The Black Church: This is Our Story, This Is Our Song" with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

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An intimate four-hour series from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

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subscribe to Code Switch podcast

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In August of 1619, a British ship landed near Jamestown, Virginia with dozens of enslaved Africans - the first black people in the colonies that would be come the United States. Four hundred years later, some African Americans are still looking to Jamestown in search of home and a lost history.

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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In August of 1619, a British ship landed near Jamestown, Virginia with dozens of enslaved Africans - the first black people in the colonies that would be come the United States. Four hundred years later, some African Americans are still looking to Jamestown in search of home and a lost history.

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History Hunters: Youth Reporting Program

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History Hunters: Youth Reporting Program

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The History Hunters Youth Reporter Program is an exciting, literacy-based educational program that takes students to five exceptional historic sites during the school year. Students in the program will become investigative reporters, writing about their experiences with the history, buildings and artifacts of their community.

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BRING HISTORY TO LIFE IN YOUR CLASSROOM!

Why Participate in History Hunters?

By participating in the History Hunters program, students will explore how early settlers and Native Americans interacted, how one house in Germantown became the center of a fierce battle during the American Revolution, how children lived long ago, and what it might have been like to escape from slavery on the Underground Railroad.

Join the Hunt for History in your own backyard!

HISTORY HUNTERS is proudly supported by Historic Germantown, a partnership of eighteen extraordinary Philadelphia houses, destinations and museums. Historic Germantown tells the stories of American Liberty and the everyday people who fought for it, reflecting a neighborhood of independence-seekers, community-builders, and American Dreamers.

United by a common mission to celebrate the community's fascinating cultural heritage, Historic Germantown provides knowledge and resources to preserve Germantown's historic sites, interpret them to visitors and incorporate them into the life of the local community.

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The History Hunters Youth Reporter Program is an exciting, literacy-based educational program that takes students to five exceptional historic sites during the school year. Students in the program will become investigative reporters, writing about their experiences with the history, buildings and artifacts of their community. ​ BRING HISTORY TO LIFE IN YOUR CLASSROOM!

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Clint Smith on Gilder Lehrman's Book Breaks, August 1, 2021

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Clint Smith on Gilder Lehrman's Book Breaks, August 1, 2021

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Description

Gilder Lehrman Book Breaks features the most exciting history scholars in America discussing their books with host William Roka live, followed by a Q&A with home audiences.

Join us online on Sunday, [Date] from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. ET (11: 00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. PT) with Clint Smith, as he discusses his book "How the Word Is Passed:
A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America."

Beginning in his own hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader through a tour of monuments and landmarks-those that are honest about the past and those that are not-that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history.

It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving over 400 people on the premises. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it.

In this exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country's most essential stories are hidden in plain view-whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods-like downtown Manhattan-on which the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women and children has been deeply imprinted.

Purchase books for Book Breaks at https://bookshop.org/lists/book-breaks.
All purchases support the Gilder Lehrman Institute and independent bookstores.

Everyone who registers will be sent a Zoom meeting link and instructions in the confirmation email.

For more information, please contact us at bookbreaks@gilderlehrman.org or visit us at gilderlehrman.org/bookbreaks.

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Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Book Breaks with Clint Smith and "How the Word Is Passed". After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.

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Gilder Lehrman Book Breaks features the most exciting history scholars in America discussing their books with host William Roka live, followed by a Q&A with home audiences. Join us online on Sunday, [Date] from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. ET (11: 00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

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Code Switch, "Finding A Way Home Through 'The Door Of No Return'"

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Code Switch, "Finding A Way Home Through 'The Door Of No Return'"

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subscribe to Code Switch podcast

So the family lore goes something like this: My mother was getting a checkup and some shots before a trip to Ghana with her boyfriend, who was from Accra. Then her doctor told her she was pregnant. Then more tests and more news: She was pregnant with twins. She would have to cancel her long-anticipated sojourn to the Motherland.

I was in my early 20s the first time my mother told me any of this, just a few days before she finally got around to her trip to Ghana. I was in my feelings as she casually shared this story. For decades, she'd put much of her life on hold for my sister and me - the twins. I was happy for her and felt a little sentimental about it.

I said nothing about the passing mention of her old boyfriend, my father.

A few weeks ago, my girlfriend and I landed in Accra for the wedding of one of my closest friends. It was my first time there.

When we got off the plane, we were shaken down by a short, imperious airport employee named Edith who insisted that there was something wrong with my immunization paperwork. She said if we gave her some money (at our discretion, wink, wink) she would let us pass.

So I was already irritated as I waited for the customs officer to leaf through my passport.

"Welcome back, Mr. Afum," he said, and looked up at me with a smile.

His skin was a little darker than mine and much smoother. He called me by the second part of my last name, the one after the hyphen, the one I never use or think about except when I'm filling out official paperwork. My father's name. It was right there in my passport information. Gene Demby-Afum. The customs agent had taken me for a Ghanaian.

"Oh, I've never been here before," I said.

He seemed incredulous.

"You don't have any family here in the city?"

I told him no. But that probably wasn't true. Accra was once my father's home; I almost certainly had uncles or aunts or cousins - hell, maybe even half-siblings - who lived somewhere near there.

The agent handed back my passport.

"Enjoy your stay," he said with a smile. Then we headed into the city.

This will sound hard to believe, I know, but I hadn't really thought about the familial connection I had to Accra until then. Was there something distinctive about Afums? Was it just the Ghanaian equivalent of Jackson or Jones? This Afum business irritated me.
About that "crisis of the black family"
OK, cards on the table: I hate talking about my father. And I hate it not because of any particular feelings I have about him but because of all the ways the story of black fatherlessness has been warped and weaponized.
How does it make you feel? You know, to not have a father? Don't you want to know about his family? Do you wonder what your life would be like if your dad was around?
You will feel a vague annoyancewhenever people pose a question to you like that - and many otherwise smart, courteous people will ask these things way more often than you might think. They've seen that misunderstood fact that 72 percent of black children are born out of wedlock. And they wonder how you fared, because of, you know, The Crisis. And you will bristle at the implication that there's a kind of melancholy and yearning they want to hear expressed, a familiar template for brokenness that they want to see performed.

And by "you," I mean me.
How are you faring, black man, in the daunting personal project of crafting your masculinity out of thin air?
I know I sound defensive, which is why I don't like talking about it. But let's back up a bit. In the Moynihan Report in 1964, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an official in Lyndon Johnson's administration, sounded an alarm about the deteriorating economic condition of black folks in America. At the core, he wrote, was the rising rate of absent black fathers, which led to "the weakness of the family structure."

His idea about black fatherlessness is now one of our most well-worn tropes: that it foments "aberrant, inadequate, or antisocial behavior that ... now serves to perpetuate the cycle of poverty and deprivation." It's the kind of thing that gets repeated so often that its invocation, without interrogation, informs today's lexicon of pathology: "Black-on-black violence," "the achievement gap," mass incarceration.

And because I write about race, I get to read all the ways this explanation can stretch into the absurd. Did you know that the paltry number of black baseball players in the major leagues is a byproduct of absent black fathers? That specious-but-popular idea was the headline of a press release I got in my email from a think tank as I was writing this essay. When I wrote a piece about the persistent phenomenon of white folks out-earning black folks, an exasperated reader emailed to tell me that the major reason for the racial wage gap was obviously the rate of black children born to unwed mothers. You know, black children like me.

Accra is a crowded place. Its population is about the same as Houston's, but it's packed into an area one-seventh the size. The traffic is awful. There were men and women carrying heavy loads on their heads in the sweltering heat as our small American contingent rode by them. The tro tros, vans that folks use as shared taxis, boasted inspirational phrases on their windshields like God Is the Way. Malik, a large, gregarious dude from Virginia, quipped to no one in particular: "Soooo, this is exactly what I imagined Africa would be like."

There's this thing that happens a lot when black folks from the States visit West Africa. In the retelling of the trip, the excursion takes on the language of pilgrimage - of finally going home. I think that's especially true for folks who travel to Ghana, the birthplace of the pan-Africanist movement - a place some black Americans see as a kind of ancestral homeland for the diaspora. That feeling makes sense, even if it requires an oversimplification of what we share: this universal blackness.

As our group walked down a teeming, dusty street that afternoon, our American-ness wafted off of us. Folks in cars craned their necks to look us over. We were being shepherded by a wiry, charismatic local dude named - no joke - Prince Versace. He knew everyone, and when we asked about his life, he offered each of us a different backstory. He was a former professional soccer player. Attorney. Carpenter. Whatever he thought we wanted to hear. People hawked their wares, calling them cultural - as in, the inscription on this bracelet is cultural and has special meaning. They were trying to sell us authenticity, some real, pure African shit.

I wasn't trying to divine from the faces at the market or on the street any semblance of my father - hell, I couldn't if I wanted to, since I only vaguely remember what he looks like. Here's what I can remember. He had an accent. He worked as a janitor in a hospital in Center City, Philadelphia. The last time I saw him I was maybe 13. How could I have recognized his face in the people around me?

But maybe someone else might recognize something familiar in my face. Maybe a telltale tilt in my walk. There are a million ways that that was ludicrous, I know. But I still felt something vaguely like disappointment.
How it really worked in my fatherless family
Family isn't merely lineage, but lived experience. Here, then, was what my lived experience was like growing up in South Philadelphia: My mom worked and fed us and tied my ties; my grandmother, who lived a little over a mile away, watched us after school and picked me up from Cub Scouts; my aunt fussed at me about my grades, and my cousin, her daughter, taught me how to shoot free throws. There were other relatives and play-cousins in the mix, too, but, this is how my family looked and worked - how nearly all the families around us looked and worked. It did not occur to me that all that fawning and fussiness and guidance was "weakness" in our family structure until other people labeled it that way.

My friend, the bride-to-be, gave a trigger warning to the busload of her American wedding guests ahead of our day trip to the Elmina slave castle.

It's going to be a lot, she said.

The 500-year-old fortress sits on the Gulf of Guinea, and for centuries it was a major hub of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. I had heard stories from other black Americans about how traumatic these tours could be. Still, I told myself that I would not become some blubbering American cliche, that I could approach it with respectful remove. I knew this history. I was sure I'd be ready for it.

I was not.

It didn't hit me all at once. I felt a rising disquiet almost as soon as the guide, a bald man who spoke too quietly, started to lay out the rough history of the castle. He took us to a courtyard.
This is where the Portuguese governor who oversaw the castle would line up the captive African women and choose one to rape.
I tried to camouflage my growing panic as we were led to several barely ventilated dungeons that were the sites of routine torture and deprivation. The Europeans who once ran the castle wanted to starve and cull the Africans they considered weak. I lingered outside each station for as long as I could before joining the rest of the group.

We ducked our heads as we went through a dark passage to reach the "Door of No Return" - a glorified hole in the castle's stone wall that led countless captive Africans to enslavement or death.

And then we came to a dungeon with no windows, with the painting of a skull above its door. The guide told us that this was where people who tried to revolt or escape were sent to rot. A few centuries ago, this was hell. Our guide closed the door and we stood there in total darkness. He asked us to bow our heads as he recited a prayer for the thousands of people who died on the castle grounds. I didn't hear what he was saying. I was crying.

I felt none of Ghana, the genealogical fact of it, in me in the castle that day. I felt linked to different forebears. Not to my absent father, but to the people who were wrenched from that part of the African coast, crammed into the hulls of ships and sold on another continent like livestock. Those people from far-flung tribes and villages who arrived in their new land and cobbled together families that slavers and slave masters tried to shatter centuries before anyone sounded an alarm about the "weakness of the family structure."

I felt the pull of this shared story, horrifying and beautiful, that shaped the lives of millions of Americans, including a black woman, her daughter and me.

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Finding A Way Home Through 'The Door Of No Return'

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subscribe to Code Switch podcast So the family lore goes something like this: My mother was getting a checkup and some shots before a trip to Ghana with her boyfriend, who was from Accra. Then her doctor told her she was pregnant. Then more tests and more news: She was pregnant with twins.

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Clint Smith, "How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America"

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Clint Smith, "How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America"

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One of John Green's Two Favorite Books of the Year
Washington Post Best Book to Read in June
Time Best Book of Summer 2021
The Root's Book You Have to Read This Summer
A Goodreads Hottest New Book of the Season
One of Buzzfeed's New Books to Add to Your Summer Reading List ASAP

"Sketches an impressive and deeply affecting human cartography of America's historical conscience...an extraordinary contribution to the way we understand ourselves." --Julian Lucas, New York Times Book Review
"Part of what makes this book so brilliant is its bothandedness. It is both a searching historical work and a journalistic account of how these historic sites operate today. Its both carefully researched and lyrical. I mean Smith is a poet and the sentences in this book just are piercingly alive. And it's both extremely personal--it is the author's story--and extraordinarily sweeping. It amplifies lots of other voices. Past and present. Reading it I kept thinking about that great Alice Walker line 'All History is Current'."--John Green, New York Times bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed
"The summer's most visionary work of nonfiction is this radical reckoning with slavery, as represented in the nation's monuments, plantations, and landmarks."--Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire
"The detail and depth of the storytelling is vivid and visceral, making history present and real. Equally commendable is the care and compassion shown to those Smith interviews -- whether tour guides or fellow visitors in these many spaces. Due to his care as an interviewer, the responses Smith elicits are resonant and powerful. . . . Smith deftly connects the past, hiding in plain sight, with today's lingering effects."--Hope Wabuke, NPR
"What [Smith] does, quite successfully, is show that we whitewash our history at our own risk. That history is literally still here, taking up acres of space, memorializing the past, and teaching us how we got to be where we are, and the way we are. Bury it now and it will only come calling later." --USA Today
"Raises questions that we must all address, without recourse to wishful thinking or the collective ignorance and willful denial that fuels white supremacy." --Martha Anne Toll, The Washington Post
"This isn't just a work of history, it's an intimate, active exploration of how we're still constructing and distorting our history." --Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"The power of an itinerant narrator--Smith journeys to Monticello, Angola Prison, Blandford Cemetery, and downtown Manhattan--is that it reveals slavery's expansive, geographical legacy. Smith tells his stories with the soul of a poet and the heart of an educator." --The Millions
"Both an honoring and an exposé of slavery's legacy in America and how this nation is built upon the experiences, blood, sweat and tears of the formerly enslaved."--The Root

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How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

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Instant #1 New York Times bestseller. "The Atlantic writer drafts a history of slavery in this country unlike anything you've read before" (Entertainment Weekly). Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks--those that are honest about the past and those that are not--that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves.

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Ed Baptist, "The Half Has Never Been Told: Slaver and the Making of American Capitalism"

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Ed Baptist, "The Half Has Never Been Told: Slaver and the Making of American Capitalism"

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"It taught me so much about slavery and how slavery enabled America to become America. Every time I left my house after reading, I saw the world differently. I saw the legacy of human misery underpinning it all."--
"You cannot understand the economy of the U.S. - or even of the world -without an understanding of how its development was driven by 19th century slavery. This book gives you that, in a stunningly readable, heartbreaking form. Genius."--Mark Bittman, Omnivoracious
"Baptist has a fleet, persuasive take on the materialist underpinnings of the 'peculiar institution.'"--Colson Whitehead, Mashable
"The overwhelming power of the stories that Baptist recounts, and the plantation-level statistics he's compiled, give his book the power of truth and revelation."
--
"Thoughtful, unsettling.... Baptist turns the long-accepted argument that slavery was economically inefficient on its head, and argues that it was an integral part of America's economic rise."--
"Wonderful.... Baptist provides meticulous, extensive, and comprehensive evidence that capitalism and the wealth it created was absolutely dependent on the forced labor of Africans and African-Americans, downplaying culturalist arguments for Western prosperity."--
"By far the finest account of the deep interplay of the slave trade...and the development of the U.S. economy."--Stephen L. Carter
"Baptist has a knack for explaining complex financial matters in lucid prose.... The Half Has Never Been Told's underlying argument is persuasive."--
"Baptist's real achievement is to ground these financial abstractions in the lives of ordinary people. In vivid passages, he describes the sights, smells and suffering of slavery. He writes about individual families torn apart by global markets. Above all, Baptist sets out to show how America's rise to power is inextricable from the suffering of black slaves."--
"The Half Has Never Been Told is a true marvel. Groundbreaking, thoroughly researched, expansive, and provocative it will force scholars of slavery and its aftermath to reconsider long held assumptions about the 'peculiar institution's' relationship to American capitalism and contemporary issues of race and democracy. Engagingly written and bursting with fresh, powerful, and provocative insights, this book deserves to be widely read, discussed, and debated."-- Peniel Joseph,
"This book, quite simply, offers the fullest and most powerful account we have of the evolution of slavery in the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War. Edward Baptist's account is eloquent, humane, passionate, and necessary."-- Edward Ayers,
"This book reveals a dirty secret about American business and how commerce first boomed before the Civil War. Baptist unearths a big, nasty story: in the North and the South, slavery was the tainted fuel that kindled the fires of U.S. capitalism and made the country grow."-- Edward Ball,
"Edward Baptist's book belongs on the very short shelf of field-defining histories of slavery. It will be read and debated for a long time to come."-- Thomas J. Sugrue,
"A myth-busting work that pursues how the world profited from American slavery.... This is a complicated story involving staggering scholarship that adds to our understanding of the history of the United States."--

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The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

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A groundbreaking history demonstrating that America's economic supremacy was built on the backs of slaves Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution -- the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy.

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Sweet Honey in the Rock singing "Wade in the Water"

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Sweet Honey in the Rock singing "Wade in the Water"

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Sweet Honey in The Rock - Wade in the Water

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Teacher Resources for Edward Ayers' "Southern Journey"

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Teacher Resources for Edward Ayers' "Southern Journey"

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Common Core:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.7
C3 Framework: D2.His.3.6-8. Use questions generated about individuals and groups to analyze why they, and the developments they shaped, are seen as historically significant. D2.His.3.9-12. Use questions generated about individuals and groups to assess how the significance of their actions changes over time and is shaped by the historical context. D2.His.12.6-8. Use questions generated about multiple historical sources to identify D2.His.6.9-12. Analyze the ways in which the perspectives of those writing history shaped the history that they produced. D2.His.12.6-8. Use questions generated about multiple historical sources to identify further areas of inquiry and additional sources D2.His.12.9-12. Use questions generated about multiple historical sources to pursue further inquiry and investigate additional sources. D2.Geo.7.9-12. Analyze the reciprocal nature of how historical events and the spatial diffusion of ideas, technologies, and cultural practices have influenced migration patterns and the distribution of human population. National Council for Social Studies:
Theme: Time, Continuity, Change
National Geography Standards:
Standard 4. The physical and human characteristics of places.

Standard 6. How culture and experience influence people's perceptions of places and regions.

Theme: Culture

Theme: People, Places, and Environments

Integrate visual information (e.g., in charts, graphs, photographs, videos, or maps) with other information in print and digital texts.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.7

Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, as well as in words) in order to address a question or solve a problem.

Teacher Tip: Think about what students should be able to KNOW, UNDERSTAND and DO at the conclusion of this learning experience. A brief exit pass or other formative assessment may be used to assess student understandings. Setting specific learning targets for the appropriate grade level and content area will increase student success.

Suggested Grade Levels: Middle School/High School

Suggested Timeframe: Three 90 minute class periods/blocks

Suggested Materials: Internet access via laptop, tablet or mobile device, or projector and screen for viewing video segments as a whole group if providing face to face instruction. Access to video conferencing if providing instruction via remote learning or hybrid teaching models.

Cartographer - a mapmaker, a person who draws or produces maps

Census - an official count or survey of a population, typically recording data about individuals used for government planning and research

Cessions - The assignment of property to another entity. In international law, it commonly refers to land transferred by treaty.

Commerce - the activity of buying and selling, especially on a large scale

Expulsion - the process of forcing someone to leave a place, especially a country, the forced removal of people from a location

Geospatial - relating to data that is associated with a particular location.

Indigenous - originating or occurring naturally in a particular place; native

Human settlement - A location where people have built structures to use as permanent or temporary living areas

Incursion - an invasion or attack, especially a sudden or brief one

Migration - movement of people to a new area or country in or to find work or better living conditions

Movement: Over time, physical and human phenomena change locations on the Earth's surface
Teacher Tips:
Out-migration - the action of leaving one place to settle in another, especially within a country.

Parish - a church district, the members of a particular church or a county-type division in Louisiana

Population - all the inhabitants of a particular town, area, or country

Population Density - the number of people per square mile of land area

Spatial: Pertains to space and spatial relationships on Earth's surface

Storymap - a web-based map integrating maps, legends, text, images, and multimedia elements to help users explore content and visualize data.

At the time this Learning Resource was published, the COVID-19 global pandemic was impacting schools and communities around the world. Keeping this in mind, the team at New American History embedded language in the body of the text to help adapt to a variety of educational settings, including remote learning environments, face to face instruction, and blended learning.

If you are teaching remotely, consider using videoconferencing to provide opportunities for students to work in partners or small groups. Digital tools such as Google Docs or Slides, Padlet, or Jamboard may also be used for collaboration. Rewordify helps make a complex text more accessible for those reading at a lower Lexile level while still providing a greater depth of knowledge. This tool is useful for students when reading excerpts in Bunk or analyzing quotes.

This Learning Resource is one of a three-part series developed in collaboration with the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond, based on the ESRI StoryMap, Southern Journey, a companion digital humanities project created by the authors of Southern Journey: The Migrations of the American South, 1790-2020. For more information about the forced migration of enslaved Africans, you may wish to have students analyze the American Panorama map, Forced Migration in the American South, in more depth before this lesson. For more information about StoryMaps, visit the ESRI website and register for a free educator account.

Project Zero, from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, developed a series of Thinking Routines to activate critical thinking. This learning resource includes their visible thinking routine, I Used to Think, But Now I Think... which may be shared with students as a graphic organizer. Reciprocal teaching strategies build students' reading comprehension when encountering a challenging piece of text, such as a primary source document or historical quote. Students may use this graphic organizer to help them when predicting, questioning, clarifying, or summarizing.

These Learning Resources follow a variation of the 5Es instructional model, and each section may be taught as a separate learning experience, or as part of a sequence of learning experiences. We provide each of our Learning Resources in multiple formats, including web-based and as an editable Google Doc for educators to teach and adapt selected learning experiences as they best suit the needs of your students and local curriculum. You may also wish to embed or remix them into a playlist for students working remotely or independently.

What lessons might we learn by visualizing migration patterns of our nation's beginnings?

The maps you will be analyzing in this learning experience are from the Southern Journey: ONE Creating the American South, 1790-1860 StoryMap, and are unlike any other you may have seen before. They were created using Census data and an online geospatial technology platform is known as ArcGIS online and is presented in the form of a StoryMap. As you scroll through the maps, you will see a variety of tools and digital mapping techniques used by the cartographers to enhance the storytelling capabilities of the maps. The scroll bar or down arrow key may be used to advance through the StoryMap, but we advise you to go slowly, as the maps show subtle changes that may not be observed if moving too quickly or not given enough time to load. In some cases, you will notice a time slider tool that will enable you to compare and contrast two maps. Other maps may appear as pop-out maps for closer examination of their details, or as animations that move slowly to show changes in population patterns.

Take some time to explore the StoryMap, Southern Journey, "ONE: Creating the American South, 1790-1860."

After you spend 10-15 minutes exploring the StoryMap on your own, turn and talk to a partner, or if working in a remote learning environment, your teacher may allow you to use the chat feature, a breakout room, or collaborative document to share your thoughts and ideas.

What do you notice about these maps?

How do the maps help tell a story about the people who lived and migrated across the American south during this time?

What populations are represented in the maps?

How does the use of color help the viewer understand the data shown on the maps?

What surprised you about the content on the map?

Your teacher may ask you to record your answers on an exit ticket.
Who were the first people who populated the American south in its early days?

Now that you have taken time to explore the StoryMap and become familiar with the way a StoryMap visualizes data to share historical narratives, let's explore the first peoples who populated the American south towards the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century. Take a few minutes to explore these maps of the Indigenous peoples of the American South.

Compare this map to the animation of "The Cessation of Indigenous Lands" on the StoryMap. You will need to take time to watch the entire animation, noting how the map changes, to gain a better understanding of how the Native populations interacted with Spanish, Caribbean, and white European settlers at the turn of the century.

How are symbols or colors used to indicate the movement of people, goods, and ideas?

What patterns emerge as you view the animation?

What does the term Cession mean, as included in the title of the map?

How does the word Cession relate to the phrase, "generations of white incursions on their lands," as included in the description of the map?

What does this tell us about the relationship between Native Americans and other populations during this time?

Scroll down to the beginning of this animation on the StoryMap.

Next, take a few minutes to examine this population density map from 1830.

How does the overall population density of the United States compare to the areas inhabited by Native peoples?

Compare the maps you previously viewed with this map (as viewed in the live StoryMap), paying careful attention to the lands inhabited by Indigenous peoples v. the white population.

Turn and talk to an elbow partner, or if working remotely, use the chat or a collaborative doc or tool such as a Jamboard to share your completed thoughts on the following statements about Indigenous populations in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Your teacher may ask you to complete this graphic organizer as an exit ticket.
Where do we see patterns of migration of enslaved people across the South during the late 18th and early 19th centuries?

In addition to the original Native populations who inhabited the South, the largest group of people who were moving were those brought to the Americas in the early 17th century who did not come voluntarily. Take a few minutes to explore this map, as linked into the StoryMap, and examine The Forced Migration of Enslaved People.

The map includes detailed data on the relocation of approximately 850,000 enslaved men, women, and children, some moved as their owners settled into western territories formerly occupied by Indigenous peoples, and other bought and sold, forcibly uprooted from their homes, separated from their families as they were moved through the American slave trade and the migration of planters from 1810 to 1860.

This graphic helps interpret the map:

Use each of these 4 features to explore the map.

In which decade did the data show the greatest out-migration of enslaved Africans?

From which state did you notice the greatest outmigration?

Select one or more of the narratives from one of the states with a large number of outmigrations. What do these narratives tell you about the migration patterns of enslaved Africans in the 1800s?

As you study the timeline slider tool, what new information does this map share about the migration patterns of the Indigenous peoples as shared in the StoryMap, in comparison to the enslaved Africans?

How does this new information change the way you previously studied or thought about the forced migrations of both groups?

Now return to the StoryMap, Southern Journey, "ONE: Creating the American South, 1790-1860."

Take a few minutes to locate and analyze these graphs and maps and compare them to the information you learned from The Forced Migration of Enslaved People map. You will need to locate each as presented in the StoryMap, as they include detailed captions and some animations you will want to analyze.

Revisit the "I Used to Think... Now I Think ..." graphic organizer. Complete a second copy, crafting all-new statements, including the information you have gained by exploring this second map of Forced Migration and comparing it to new information you learned using the StoryMap.

Your teacher may ask you to record your answers on the graphic organizer as an exit ticket, or if working remotely, share using a collaborative tool such as Google Slides or a Jamboard.

Which group of people hold the most power in terms of controlling land ownership and commerce during this time in comparison to others, and why?

This StoryMap contains numerous maps comparing and contrasting the White population and Black population of the United States from 1790 to 1860. Some are presented as individual maps which may also be examined in closer detail as pop out maps, while others use a vertical time sliding tool for comparison. You will spend the majority of your time in this portion of the Learning Resources analyzing these maps, comparing and contrasting the patterns you see between both population subgroups. Remember to slow down and take your time as you scroll through each map. Take time to read the captions for each map. Pay close attention to the use of color on the maps. The maps show clear and striking patterns: shades of copper in the places where the number of people increased and those in blue where they declined. The brighter the colors, the greater the change. The captions describe the most important patterns in each map. (Note, the gallery images below only represent a portion of the maps you will need to view, be sure to locate and analyze all of the maps which appear with the black, copper and blue color scheme.)

As you scroll though the StoryMap, analyzing the population patterns, think carefully about the previous maps you viewed about economic development, transportation and the buying and selling of enslaved people.

How do the migration patterns on these maps relate to the shift from planters in the coastal areas to white and Black populations moving west?

Where do you see new population growth?

What might explain these shifts in terms of economic growth?

How does the StoryMap or the narratives you read earlierin the Forced Migration map help tell the human side of this time period from the perspective of enslaved people?

To gain some perspective, we will revisit the earlier map we studied on forced migration by looking at some Bunk Connections.

Select an excerpt to view from those connected to the map. Use the right arrow underneath the stack of cards to select an excerpt you are interested in exploring. As you read, you will want to refer back to the map of Forced Migration of Enslaved People as linked into Bunk. Some of the excerpts you select may be a bit challenging for you to read. Don't be afraid to push yourself - the Rewordify tool may be helpful as you follow along with the text.

Share the link to the connection between the map and the excerpt you selected using the Share Connection button below the images. Your teacher may have you share your connection via a collaborative doc such as Google Slides or a Jamboard. Explain how the map and excerpt you shared relate to the migration maps you viewed in the Southern Journey Storymap.
Your teacher may ask you to share your Bunk Connection as an exit ticket.
What predictions might you make for exploring Part TWO of the Southern Journey StoryMap, and what evidence might you cite to support your ideas?

If you and your classmates have been exploring the Southern Journey StoryMap using all 5 of the "Es" in this Learning Resource, or even if you only explored one or two, you are well on your way to understanding how StoryMaps help us visual data, compare and contrast patterns and look for evidence to support our understandings of the human stories behind maps, graphs and charts like to ones we often find in history textbooks or digital scholarship like the maps you have explored here. Maps can also help us synthesize information, and make historical predictions.

Read this quote from Southern Journey: The Migrations of the American South, 1790-2020, the book upon which the StoryMap is based.

"Migration created the anomalies that defined the slave South. Slavery concentrated on the richest land and yet spread everywhere in the region. Most white southerners did not own enslaved people, yet the institution went everywhere white settlers went. It benefited nonslaveholders little, and yet the migration of nonslaveholders allowed the slave South to expand as fast as the North. The place of slavery in the territories held little practical consequence for the white majority of southerners, and yet they went to war to defend that expansion. Only migration can explain these puzzles. "

Use the graphic organizer provided by your teacher to help you analyze the quote and make predictions about what you might see or learn about in the second and third parts of the StoryMap, or by reading the book.

We would love to hear about your predictions or thoughts on the Southern Journey StoryMap or book. Feel free to share them with us via Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest if your teacher or grownups allow, or have them email us!

Check your school or local library and request a copy of Southern Journey: The Migrations of the American South, 1790-2020. We " Mapsolutely " recommend it!
Your teacher may ask you to share your graphic organizer as an exit ticket.

Download this learning resource as a Google Doc

Citations: Ayers, Edward L., Justin Madron, and Nathaniel Ayers. "Creating the American South, 1790-1860." ArcGIS StoryMaps. American Panorama/Digital Scholarship Lab, University of Richmond via Esri, November 9, 2020. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/34e0e42dc461499f85b369b43f9e44f6. Ayers, Edward L., Justin Madron, and Nathaniel Ayers. Southern Journey the Migrations of the American South, 1790-2020. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2020. Ayers, Edward L., Justin Madron, Robert K. Nelson, and Nathaniel Ayers. American Panorama - Forced migration in the American south. Digital Scholarship Lab, University of Richmond, November 9, 2020. https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/forcedmigration/.

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