We All Got History: The Memory Books of Amos Webber

The Working Class in American History

by Nick Salvatore

For six decades, betwen 1854 and 1904, Amos Webberr, a black freeman living in the north, recorded his daily experience in diaries. In 1985 Bancroft Prize-winnning historian Nick Salvatore discovered them in a Harvard library. Salvatore has woven Webber's diaries into a landmark biography of an ordinary man pursuing a rich and independent life even as he shrewdly observed the society that freed black people from slavery also banished them to the margins of history. Photos & illus.

Genres: History

443 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Nick Salvatore is Maurice and Hinda Neufeld Founders Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.

Reviews

[Ben Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dignified portrait of quotidian life lived with "quiet firmness and unspectacular valor."

[Alissa Bentz · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

[Jim Stephens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sociaal history of a particular African American experience that is absolutely fascinating.