What do you think?
Rate this book
Africans in America: America's Journey Through Slavery
This extraordinary book--the accompanying volume to the PBS series--looks at the history of slavery in the United States with an honesty that reveals both horror and heroism in the common humanity of all Americans. Uncovering the indigenous history of African slavery and the involvement of Arab and European nations, it then traces the journey of enslaved Africans across the "Middle Passage" of the Atlantic to the Caribbean and America. Charles Johnson's spellbinding fictional narratives beautifully evoke the feeling of times and places, such as the Haitian revolution or the plantation slave society. In "The Transmission," two captives in the bottom of a slave ship try to preserve their heritage. "Oboto quietly sang to his brother--in a language their captors could not understand--how their people long ago had navigated the New World ... on and on like a tapestry, Oboto unfurled their past, rituals, and laws in songs and riddles..."
Poet/journalist Patricia Smith's historical anecdotes and references to legendary African American heroes (including Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Tubman, and Frederick Douglass), juxtaposed with rare documents, letters, slave advertisements, slave-ship cargo diagrams, and paintings, provide evidence of the African American fight for freedom, from the black soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War to the Underground Railroad to the return to combat in the Civil War. When emancipation finally came, Smith writes, "the newly liberated slaves sang for themselves, for their new country, and for the thousands upon thousands of Africans ripped from the clutches of home." --Eugene Holley Jr.
494 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1998
14 people are currently reading
516 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
August 30, 2021
This by far is the most important book I have ever read.
Highly recommended
Highly recommended
July 28, 2011
A poignant story that moves along briskly through the checkered past of this great nation. Indeed, for this democracy to live with so much hypocrisy for as long as it did will always be as mind-boggling as is the victory with which African-American people have beaten the odds in order to endure and survive. I wish everyone would be aware that the wealth of this nation was built on the sacrificial backs of entire peoples.
April 3, 2008
Everything I was taught about Jefferson was a lie(realized this after reading this book)
August 10, 2020
I began this season of my Social Passion reading (which would be civil rights/BLM) with some history. I began this way for a few reasons. I enjoy reading history. This book was already on my shelves. And I wanted to begin somewhere in a less disputed territory, on a less of-the-moment and less inflamed book. I will eventually read some of the more urgent titles (like The Next Jim Crow, Black Skin White Masks, How to Be an Antiracist, etc.) but I also want to read a little wider in this area, from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings to The Invisible Man to Making Sense of Human Rights.
But Africans in America, a 1998 book by Charles Johnson, Patricia Smith, and the WGBH Series Research Team in cooperation with a PBS TV miniseries, just felt right. With two lauded authors, a Peabody Award, and something like ten years of research and work, not to mention the shining reviews, I thought perhaps I could trust this ushering into the history of black slavery in America. Beginning for a moment on the shores of Africa, the hefty, almost 500 page book walks the reader through many years, events, and characters in American history—all with a focus on the African American population—up until slavery was officially illegal across the whole country. No further. Interspersed with quotes and even slightly creative narration (movie-like stories having to do with an historical event or person), I was on the edge of my seat. What an incredible, thorough job! Seriously. I was riveted.
I would love to see all students, either in high school or college, read this book. They would absorb a ton of American history along the way, but their understanding of American slavery, it’s nuances, its complications, its context, its faces, its moments of horror and its moments of celebration, would be deepened way beyond what the average student sucks up from a typical textbook. At least for me, so much of history was oversimplified and shined up for my education. Only through movies like Amistad and books like Roots did I get a little broader picture. Africans in America, on the other hand, gave me a much better understanding but also put things in their place chronologically, historically, and culturally so that there were lots of “Aha!” moments. There were also many moments when I said, “I didn’t know that!” or “I didn’t realize that!” While many of our current stories of slavery derive from either the Middle Passage or the Civil War era, there were so many other stages of slavery and so much breadth and context.
I felt a little like I was whirling around in loops while I read this book, but in a good way. Written in a voice that is both clear and informational and also engaging and authoritative (and even at times poetic), I could see what was happening like I was there and at the same time was hit by all these relevant bits of stories and history and facts that really made sense of the whole thing. There’s no dumbing down here, but there’s also a real accessibility. It’s the kind of book that makes you want to read more history and to tell everyone you meet about what you have learned. You feel richer. Richer in intelligence, in understanding, and maybe even in empathy.
I will admit that the book does end abruptly. At the beginning, we start with slavery in Africa and the interior of the country, and then move quickly to the Slave Coast and the Middle Passage. After centuries of history, we come to Abraham Lincoln. While we spent some time leading up to the Civil War, the entire Lincoln and Civil War is covered in a couple-page synopsis. I wonder if this is done because there is so much available on this time period? Even the aftermath of the war is covered in another couple pages, mostly quotes from now-ex-slaves as they ponder their new freedom. The real ending for this book is not the Emancipation Proclamation, as we anticipate, but a drawn-out scene slightly before the Civil War, where a famous, wealthy white man gets into debt and sells 429 slaves—slaves who have built a family and community over generations—in one day. It is truly heartbreaking to read and it is an interesting choice for a last, big scene.
I hate to sing too high a praise for any book, because I don’t like to set people up for disappointment. But I loved this book. It’s well-written. It’s timely. It’s important and well-done and interesting and intriguing and eye-opening and just great. If you’re the kind of person who will tolerate reading history, then you should read this book, for sure. If you’re not, then I suggest finding a copy of the PBS TV miniseries, though it can’t match the thoroughness or gravity of this tome.
AFRICANS IN AMERICA (PBS series)
This series is not easy to find. You can purchase the four videos from Amazon for more than $50, which I guess wouldn’t be that big of a deal if you were using it in a classroom year after year, but to watch it once? That’s a bit steep. You could do some looking around for streaming copies, but even PBS doesn’t have it on their subscription app (which is really weird to me). Anyhow, like I said above, if you’re not going to read this book, the least you could do is watch this series. Much of the narration, quotes, and even some images, are exactly the same as the book, but the book has so much more. If you’re looking for a teaching tool for American slavery history, then yes, this is a good one. But I really do recommend the book first and foremost, and the you don’t really need to follow it up with the series.
QUOTES
I underlined, circled, drew arrows all over this book (even though it is officially my husband’s. Whoops.) I am going to share with you some of the quotes that I either starred or put an exclamation point next to.
“’In this manner we spend the prime of youth among Negroes, scrapeing the world for money, the universal god of mankind, until death overtakes us’” (Nicholas Owens, p65).
“’I dayly perceive that many things are done here out of a Worldly and Interested principle, little for God’s sake’” (Francis Le Jau, p90).
“The travesty came to an end only with Mary Burton began accusing influential, moneyed New Yorkers” (p110).
“In Virginia, men who were not yet men could become slave owners. It was not uncommon for children to own other children” (p132).
“There was a bittersweet irony in giving birth to a child you could never really call your own” (p135).
“’Alas, what mockery it is for a slave mother to try to pray back her dying child to life! Death is better than slavery’” (Harriet Jacobs, p136).
“George escaped at nineteen and settled along the Savannah River, where he was captured by the Creek Indians and again placed in servitude” (p140).
“The colonists had become so incensed that they clearly saw themselves as slaves to the British” (p157).
“The Constitution held the respect for property at its center, and for Southerners in particular, human property was most important” (p201).
“’Deep-rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; the thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations, the real distinctions which nature had made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end…’” (Thomas Jefferson, p.203).
“The revolt was fueled by a heady mixture of anger, desperation, and voodoo mysticism” (p249).
“He believed they wouldn’t listen unless they were made to fear for their own lives” (p255).
“The Constitution had set 1808 as the first year that an end to the trade could be considered—but the lessons of St. Domingue had been well learned and the debate was greatly influenced by the specter of revolt” (p270).
“When he was sold, Charles Ball simply asked to see his family. He was told he would be able to ‘get another wife in Georgia’” (p272).
“Imagine a mother being forced to stand apart from her children, her heart straining forward, the child’s cries withering in the hot air. Imagine grown men struggling to stand motionless as they are matter-of-factly inspected—their teeth checked, their genitals poked and prodded…” (p272).
“She knew that some of her children would be taken from her, but they took all …. Before night, her children were all far away” (p273).
“Some ‘benevolent’ masters attempted to keep mothers and children together. But slave men were often regarded as having no connection whatsoever to family” (p274).
“Masters struggling with economic necessity, a smidgen of compassion, and a hefty dose of guilt still chose abuse as the most effective method of control” (p274).
“The South, in particular, was a virtual police state designed to keep blacks in their place” (p275).
“Their racism, as was not unusual, also had an economic base” (p278).
“In the eighteen years since the ban on African labor importation, hundreds of free blacks had been kidnapped into captivity. Many of them were children, considered easy to kidnap and conceal because a couple of years of wretched slave labor often rendered them unrecognizable” (p296).
“’I saw a mob dragging along… a respectable old colored minister. They had found a few parcels of shot in his house, which his wife had for years used to balance her scales. For this they were going to shoot him on Court House Green’” (Harriet Jacobs, p311).
“’The tribes which occupied the… eastern states were annihilated or have melted away to make room for the whites. The waves of population and civilization are rolling to the westward’” (Andrew Jackson, p349).
“There was hardly one of these women… who might not have been a candidate for a bed in a hospital, and they had come to me after working all day in the fields’” (Fanny Kemble, p360).
“’She said something about a swing, and in less than five minutes headman Frank had erected it for her, and a dozen young slaves were ready to swing little ‘missus.’ Think of learning to rule despotically over your fellow creatures before the first lesson of self-government is well spelled over. It makes me tremble’” (Fanny Kemble, p360).
“Lear Green shipped herself to freedom in a sailor’s chest …. Maria Wheems disguised herself as a boy …. Minty was barely seven when he ran away” (p365).
“But racism was written into the very documents that guided the country. There were jobs black people could not hold, places where they couldn’t live, schools where they were forbidden to learn” (p373).
“’You had far better all die—die immediately, than live slaves, and entail your wretchedness upon your posterity… there is not much hope of redemption without the shedding of blood’” (Henry Highland Garnet, p384).
“’Resolved, that in the language of inspired wisdom, there shall be no peace to the wicked, and that the guilty nation shall have no peace, and that we will do all we can to agitate! Agitate! AGITATE!!!” (Frederick Douglass, p385).
“Under this law, any person—black or white—could be deputized to help capture and return a runaway slave. Refusing to participate in the capture and return of the fugitive would result in imprisonment and fine. And the only testimony allowed was the testimony of the person who claimed to own the alleged fugitive” (p388).
“But for two weeks an escaped slave had been the focal point of a uniquely American drama, bringing growing regional tensions into stark relief” (p403).
“’We have come to the conclusion that the African race who came to this country, whether free or slave, were not intended to be included in the Constitution for the enjoyment of any personal rights of benefits…” (Roger B. Taney, p418).
“By a five-to-two majority, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that Scott, a slave, had never been a citizen” (p418).
“It was no longer a simple case of being free or enslaved—it was a man’s skin color, not his place in the social hierarchy, which determined his citizenship and share in the democracy” (p418).
“The decision confirmed the entire experience of black people since the founding of the nation. Only now the humiliation was official” (p419).
“’The Supreme Court of the United States is not the only power in this world…,’ he said. ‘Judge Taney can do many things, but he cannot perform impossibilities’” (p419).
“When President James Buchanan put a $250 bounty on [John Brown’s] head, Brown responded by placing a $2.50 bounty on James Buchanan” (p421).
“When Newby’s body was discovered, his wife Harriet’s love letters were nestled in his pocket. One of the townspeople had cut off his ears for a souvenir” (p428).
“Slave patriarchs sought out planters who seemed compassionate and begged them to bid for them and their families” (p436).
“’Every time a bunch of No’thern sojers would come through they would tell us we was free and we’d begin celebratin’. Before we would get through somebody else would tell us to go back to work, and we would go’” (Ambrose Douglass, p440).
***REVIEW WRITTEN FOR THE STARVING ARTIST BLOG***
But Africans in America, a 1998 book by Charles Johnson, Patricia Smith, and the WGBH Series Research Team in cooperation with a PBS TV miniseries, just felt right. With two lauded authors, a Peabody Award, and something like ten years of research and work, not to mention the shining reviews, I thought perhaps I could trust this ushering into the history of black slavery in America. Beginning for a moment on the shores of Africa, the hefty, almost 500 page book walks the reader through many years, events, and characters in American history—all with a focus on the African American population—up until slavery was officially illegal across the whole country. No further. Interspersed with quotes and even slightly creative narration (movie-like stories having to do with an historical event or person), I was on the edge of my seat. What an incredible, thorough job! Seriously. I was riveted.
I would love to see all students, either in high school or college, read this book. They would absorb a ton of American history along the way, but their understanding of American slavery, it’s nuances, its complications, its context, its faces, its moments of horror and its moments of celebration, would be deepened way beyond what the average student sucks up from a typical textbook. At least for me, so much of history was oversimplified and shined up for my education. Only through movies like Amistad and books like Roots did I get a little broader picture. Africans in America, on the other hand, gave me a much better understanding but also put things in their place chronologically, historically, and culturally so that there were lots of “Aha!” moments. There were also many moments when I said, “I didn’t know that!” or “I didn’t realize that!” While many of our current stories of slavery derive from either the Middle Passage or the Civil War era, there were so many other stages of slavery and so much breadth and context.
I felt a little like I was whirling around in loops while I read this book, but in a good way. Written in a voice that is both clear and informational and also engaging and authoritative (and even at times poetic), I could see what was happening like I was there and at the same time was hit by all these relevant bits of stories and history and facts that really made sense of the whole thing. There’s no dumbing down here, but there’s also a real accessibility. It’s the kind of book that makes you want to read more history and to tell everyone you meet about what you have learned. You feel richer. Richer in intelligence, in understanding, and maybe even in empathy.
I will admit that the book does end abruptly. At the beginning, we start with slavery in Africa and the interior of the country, and then move quickly to the Slave Coast and the Middle Passage. After centuries of history, we come to Abraham Lincoln. While we spent some time leading up to the Civil War, the entire Lincoln and Civil War is covered in a couple-page synopsis. I wonder if this is done because there is so much available on this time period? Even the aftermath of the war is covered in another couple pages, mostly quotes from now-ex-slaves as they ponder their new freedom. The real ending for this book is not the Emancipation Proclamation, as we anticipate, but a drawn-out scene slightly before the Civil War, where a famous, wealthy white man gets into debt and sells 429 slaves—slaves who have built a family and community over generations—in one day. It is truly heartbreaking to read and it is an interesting choice for a last, big scene.
I hate to sing too high a praise for any book, because I don’t like to set people up for disappointment. But I loved this book. It’s well-written. It’s timely. It’s important and well-done and interesting and intriguing and eye-opening and just great. If you’re the kind of person who will tolerate reading history, then you should read this book, for sure. If you’re not, then I suggest finding a copy of the PBS TV miniseries, though it can’t match the thoroughness or gravity of this tome.
AFRICANS IN AMERICA (PBS series)
This series is not easy to find. You can purchase the four videos from Amazon for more than $50, which I guess wouldn’t be that big of a deal if you were using it in a classroom year after year, but to watch it once? That’s a bit steep. You could do some looking around for streaming copies, but even PBS doesn’t have it on their subscription app (which is really weird to me). Anyhow, like I said above, if you’re not going to read this book, the least you could do is watch this series. Much of the narration, quotes, and even some images, are exactly the same as the book, but the book has so much more. If you’re looking for a teaching tool for American slavery history, then yes, this is a good one. But I really do recommend the book first and foremost, and the you don’t really need to follow it up with the series.
QUOTES
I underlined, circled, drew arrows all over this book (even though it is officially my husband’s. Whoops.) I am going to share with you some of the quotes that I either starred or put an exclamation point next to.
“’In this manner we spend the prime of youth among Negroes, scrapeing the world for money, the universal god of mankind, until death overtakes us’” (Nicholas Owens, p65).
“’I dayly perceive that many things are done here out of a Worldly and Interested principle, little for God’s sake’” (Francis Le Jau, p90).
“The travesty came to an end only with Mary Burton began accusing influential, moneyed New Yorkers” (p110).
“In Virginia, men who were not yet men could become slave owners. It was not uncommon for children to own other children” (p132).
“There was a bittersweet irony in giving birth to a child you could never really call your own” (p135).
“’Alas, what mockery it is for a slave mother to try to pray back her dying child to life! Death is better than slavery’” (Harriet Jacobs, p136).
“George escaped at nineteen and settled along the Savannah River, where he was captured by the Creek Indians and again placed in servitude” (p140).
“The colonists had become so incensed that they clearly saw themselves as slaves to the British” (p157).
“The Constitution held the respect for property at its center, and for Southerners in particular, human property was most important” (p201).
“’Deep-rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; the thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations, the real distinctions which nature had made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end…’” (Thomas Jefferson, p.203).
“The revolt was fueled by a heady mixture of anger, desperation, and voodoo mysticism” (p249).
“He believed they wouldn’t listen unless they were made to fear for their own lives” (p255).
“The Constitution had set 1808 as the first year that an end to the trade could be considered—but the lessons of St. Domingue had been well learned and the debate was greatly influenced by the specter of revolt” (p270).
“When he was sold, Charles Ball simply asked to see his family. He was told he would be able to ‘get another wife in Georgia’” (p272).
“Imagine a mother being forced to stand apart from her children, her heart straining forward, the child’s cries withering in the hot air. Imagine grown men struggling to stand motionless as they are matter-of-factly inspected—their teeth checked, their genitals poked and prodded…” (p272).
“She knew that some of her children would be taken from her, but they took all …. Before night, her children were all far away” (p273).
“Some ‘benevolent’ masters attempted to keep mothers and children together. But slave men were often regarded as having no connection whatsoever to family” (p274).
“Masters struggling with economic necessity, a smidgen of compassion, and a hefty dose of guilt still chose abuse as the most effective method of control” (p274).
“The South, in particular, was a virtual police state designed to keep blacks in their place” (p275).
“Their racism, as was not unusual, also had an economic base” (p278).
“In the eighteen years since the ban on African labor importation, hundreds of free blacks had been kidnapped into captivity. Many of them were children, considered easy to kidnap and conceal because a couple of years of wretched slave labor often rendered them unrecognizable” (p296).
“’I saw a mob dragging along… a respectable old colored minister. They had found a few parcels of shot in his house, which his wife had for years used to balance her scales. For this they were going to shoot him on Court House Green’” (Harriet Jacobs, p311).
“’The tribes which occupied the… eastern states were annihilated or have melted away to make room for the whites. The waves of population and civilization are rolling to the westward’” (Andrew Jackson, p349).
“There was hardly one of these women… who might not have been a candidate for a bed in a hospital, and they had come to me after working all day in the fields’” (Fanny Kemble, p360).
“’She said something about a swing, and in less than five minutes headman Frank had erected it for her, and a dozen young slaves were ready to swing little ‘missus.’ Think of learning to rule despotically over your fellow creatures before the first lesson of self-government is well spelled over. It makes me tremble’” (Fanny Kemble, p360).
“Lear Green shipped herself to freedom in a sailor’s chest …. Maria Wheems disguised herself as a boy …. Minty was barely seven when he ran away” (p365).
“But racism was written into the very documents that guided the country. There were jobs black people could not hold, places where they couldn’t live, schools where they were forbidden to learn” (p373).
“’You had far better all die—die immediately, than live slaves, and entail your wretchedness upon your posterity… there is not much hope of redemption without the shedding of blood’” (Henry Highland Garnet, p384).
“’Resolved, that in the language of inspired wisdom, there shall be no peace to the wicked, and that the guilty nation shall have no peace, and that we will do all we can to agitate! Agitate! AGITATE!!!” (Frederick Douglass, p385).
“Under this law, any person—black or white—could be deputized to help capture and return a runaway slave. Refusing to participate in the capture and return of the fugitive would result in imprisonment and fine. And the only testimony allowed was the testimony of the person who claimed to own the alleged fugitive” (p388).
“But for two weeks an escaped slave had been the focal point of a uniquely American drama, bringing growing regional tensions into stark relief” (p403).
“’We have come to the conclusion that the African race who came to this country, whether free or slave, were not intended to be included in the Constitution for the enjoyment of any personal rights of benefits…” (Roger B. Taney, p418).
“By a five-to-two majority, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that Scott, a slave, had never been a citizen” (p418).
“It was no longer a simple case of being free or enslaved—it was a man’s skin color, not his place in the social hierarchy, which determined his citizenship and share in the democracy” (p418).
“The decision confirmed the entire experience of black people since the founding of the nation. Only now the humiliation was official” (p419).
“’The Supreme Court of the United States is not the only power in this world…,’ he said. ‘Judge Taney can do many things, but he cannot perform impossibilities’” (p419).
“When President James Buchanan put a $250 bounty on [John Brown’s] head, Brown responded by placing a $2.50 bounty on James Buchanan” (p421).
“When Newby’s body was discovered, his wife Harriet’s love letters were nestled in his pocket. One of the townspeople had cut off his ears for a souvenir” (p428).
“Slave patriarchs sought out planters who seemed compassionate and begged them to bid for them and their families” (p436).
“’Every time a bunch of No’thern sojers would come through they would tell us we was free and we’d begin celebratin’. Before we would get through somebody else would tell us to go back to work, and we would go’” (Ambrose Douglass, p440).
***REVIEW WRITTEN FOR THE STARVING ARTIST BLOG***
May 26, 2018
Picked this up at the library book sale. A Very engrossing, if disheartening, read. Contains strange "fictionalized" accounts scattered throughout, which I generally skimmed. Clearly represents the utter hypocrisy of a nation whose core philosophy is equality and justice for all. Well, no, not all. Just some.
April 4, 2012
I wanted this book to be better than it was. I was quite excited when I picked this up at the bookstore, not having seen a book dedicated to this topic before.
It is not that this is BAD book, but neither is it a particularly good book. I am glad that I read it--it does have some interesting information, and introduced me to historical figures I had not heard of. The book, though, is little more than a recitation of facts. There is very little analysis of these facts, little to relate them to the wider world of the time.
I also have to say I am wary of books that have no in-text citations. The book does contain a bibliography at the end, listing all the sources used within the text. Whenever an author makes a claim, though, I want to know the document that makes such a claim valid. The lack of such citations made me continually wonder about the veracity of what I was reading.
It is not that this is BAD book, but neither is it a particularly good book. I am glad that I read it--it does have some interesting information, and introduced me to historical figures I had not heard of. The book, though, is little more than a recitation of facts. There is very little analysis of these facts, little to relate them to the wider world of the time.
I also have to say I am wary of books that have no in-text citations. The book does contain a bibliography at the end, listing all the sources used within the text. Whenever an author makes a claim, though, I want to know the document that makes such a claim valid. The lack of such citations made me continually wonder about the veracity of what I was reading.
April 16, 2016
I learned a great deal in this very opinionated book. There were many factual flaws which made me suspicious of much of the writing, which is a shame for such an important and deep part of the history of the United States. To state that Thomas Jefferson was president of the Continental Congress while trying to add guilt does not become valid as Jefferson was never president of the Continental Congress. This and some other mistakes basically hurt this book from being as strong as it ought to.
December 1, 2017
Wow! I didn't exactly read, but rather watched the four part documentary. We Americans share - and hide from ourselves - the cruelest past. The most sordid and shameful deed of supporting slavery for hundreds of years.
The thorough research, the carfeully worded interviews and the amazing pictorical representations put the issue of racial slavery where it belongs: bang in the center of educational debate.
Watching this series - filmed almost two decades ago - when Trump assumes power, when Syrians are murdered for fleeing to safety and when my own country, Brazil, rolls back social rights, is mind boggling.
Brazil, the last country to abolish slavery in 1888 still fails to and blocks attempts to repair its afrobrazilian population. Watching a film of this caliber and depth makes you think twice about who were our founding fathers and what their intentions were.
Slavery was created on American soil. Its cruel heritage remains still with us and I feel we might never be able to eradicate its effects for years to come unless we really start to feel on our skin and spirit what it was like to be somebody's property. And this is what the documentary based on this book does: creates in you revolt and shame for all that slavery has done to millions of people throughout the Americas.
The thorough research, the carfeully worded interviews and the amazing pictorical representations put the issue of racial slavery where it belongs: bang in the center of educational debate.
Watching this series - filmed almost two decades ago - when Trump assumes power, when Syrians are murdered for fleeing to safety and when my own country, Brazil, rolls back social rights, is mind boggling.
Brazil, the last country to abolish slavery in 1888 still fails to and blocks attempts to repair its afrobrazilian population. Watching a film of this caliber and depth makes you think twice about who were our founding fathers and what their intentions were.
Slavery was created on American soil. Its cruel heritage remains still with us and I feel we might never be able to eradicate its effects for years to come unless we really start to feel on our skin and spirit what it was like to be somebody's property. And this is what the documentary based on this book does: creates in you revolt and shame for all that slavery has done to millions of people throughout the Americas.
June 28, 2019
I learned a lot from reading this book, which was a comprehensive history of slavery in America from the first colonists to the end of the Civil War. I ordered the documentary that goes along with it, but I'm glad I read it first. I learned more details about things I already knew and learned a lot of things that were completely new to me. What I liked most about this book is that it more often centered the African American experience rather than looking at African Americans through the lens of white people.
July 2, 2023
This was on the Juneteenth shelf when I went to the library on Juneteenth so picked it up because the title looked so interesting. This book was very well written and researched. Its made up of 12 chapters with different vignettes in between some of the chapters. I had forgotten a lot about the Revolutionary War and the actions that led up to it, especially about Crispus Atticus, so this was a good history lesson for me as well as being intensely interesting. A truly remarkable book that I highly recommend for everyone.
February 23, 2023
This was an amazing book about the struggles of slavery and the sacrifices made for freedom. It reminds me never to take the gift that my ancestors suffered and fought for to take it for granted!
This book is well written and I suggest that everyone read it.
This book is well written and I suggest that everyone read it.
August 31, 2022
Hard read. Well worth it.
October 6, 2011
"...429 men, women, and children were loaded onto railroad cars and carried north to (be sold). Husbands and wives. Sisters and brothers. Elderly parents. Infants, some only days old. The destruction of community, the tearing apart of families was legal, socially acceptable, justified in churches and the halls of government."
The words "all men are created equal" did not apply to slaves. They were considered inferior to whites...even Thomas Jefferson wrote that they were "lesser creatures". George Washington refused (at first) to allow them into the Continental Army. Church pastors used scripture to justify the owning of slaves. And the new American government looked the other way as fellow human beings were brutalized in a system that treated them no better than livestock.
It took a major civil war to rectify what the "Founding Fathers" refused to address...that slavery was wrong.
Well-researched and loaded with personal stories, pictures, and original documents, I recommend this book and rate it 5 stars!
The words "all men are created equal" did not apply to slaves. They were considered inferior to whites...even Thomas Jefferson wrote that they were "lesser creatures". George Washington refused (at first) to allow them into the Continental Army. Church pastors used scripture to justify the owning of slaves. And the new American government looked the other way as fellow human beings were brutalized in a system that treated them no better than livestock.
It took a major civil war to rectify what the "Founding Fathers" refused to address...that slavery was wrong.
Well-researched and loaded with personal stories, pictures, and original documents, I recommend this book and rate it 5 stars!
July 27, 2014
An amazing and thorough book, in the manner of Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, telling the history of Africans in America from the first few brought to these shores until the start of the Civil War. It had an excellent balance of individuals' stories and broader societal perspective. Readable, educational, and (given the material) very, very hard. Not the worst I've ever read for the details of the viciousness of life under a system of ownership of human beings (though that's in there, too), but incredibly frustrating for realizing the number of times and places that the country could have tipped a different direction and taken a different path.
Excellent if you want to know more about how slavery came to be the institution that it was.
Excellent if you want to know more about how slavery came to be the institution that it was.
December 27, 2012
I am glad I read this, so much information about how slavery was started and why it continued for so long. This is what they should be teaching in the schools, so that our children learn what a horrid time in our history it was and that those founding 'fathers' we hold up as heroes were not perfect, in fact far from it.
This country treated other human beings like property and we have still so much to learn so that we will stop making these kind of mistakes.
This country treated other human beings like property and we have still so much to learn so that we will stop making these kind of mistakes.
August 13, 2007
I just finished reading this book and I was amazed, angered, heart-broken, and thrilled through it all.
Simply, the research team covers everything from much needed basic history to indepth discussion in a straightforward tone. Covers the entire picture from before beginning to end.
Simply, the research team covers everything from much needed basic history to indepth discussion in a straightforward tone. Covers the entire picture from before beginning to end.
March 15, 2011
A wonderful book, well crafted and a compelling read. I'm only sorry I didn't catch the series on television.
December 19, 2012
All Americans need to read this book. I feel much closer to my past.
October 5, 2016
An amazing unveiling of historical truths that should definitely be included in the curriculum of our schools.
August 6, 2008
An excellent book
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews