From Sundown to Sunup: The Making of the Black Community

by Che Rawick

George Rawick's From Sundown to Sunup is by far the most successful recent book about slave culture. . . . As impressive as Rawick's analysis of slave life is his interpretation of American racism. Eric Foner, University Review

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Book Club

208 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 1973

Reviews

[Sam Whitehill · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you have only one book to read about the history of slavery and racism in the US, this one would do. I can’t speak highly enough of it. Rawick paints a very nuanced portrait of slave life as one full of rich complexities and contradictions, with resistance in many forms. He discusses the roots of racism in the Protestant work ethic (and it’s accompanying repression) and the necessity for a united and multiracial working class. He also dismisses economic arguments explaining the persistence of slavery in the US, instead characterizing the peculiar institution as an inefficient and reactionary form of social control. Seriously, there is so much good stuff in this one, I can’t even begin to touch on it all.