African American History

Very Short Introductions #729

by Jonathan Scott Holloway

What does it mean to be an American? The story of the African American past demonstrates the difficulty of answering this seemingly simple question. If being "American" means living in a land of freedom and opportunity, what are we to make of those Americans who were enslaved and have suffered from the limitations of second-class citizenship throughout their lives? African American history illuminates the United States' core paradoxes, inviting profound questions about what it means to be an American, a citizen, and a human being.

This book considers how, for centuries, African Americans have fought for what the black feminist intellectual Anna Julia Cooper called "the cause of freedom." It begins in Jamestown in 1619, when the first shipment of enslaved Africans arrived in that settlement. It narrates the creation of a system of racialized chattel slavery, the eventual dismantling of that system in the national bloodletting of the Civil War, and the ways that civil rights disputes have continued to erupt in the more than 150 years since Emancipation. This Very Short Introduction carries forward to the Black Lives Matter movement, a grass-roots activist convulsion that declared that African Americans' present and past have value and meaning. At a moment when political debates grapple with the nation's obligation to acknowledge and perhaps even repair its original sin of racialized slavery, author Jonathan Scott Holloway tells a story about American citizens' capacity and willingness to realize the ideal
articulated in America's founding document, namely, that all people were created equal.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History

176 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 2023

Reviews

[Giulia Drago · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lettura molto interessante, l'autore è molto bravo a invogliare la curiosità del lettore per invitarlo ad approfondire i temi trattati.

[Ann Herrold · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obviously short but for what it is it does a great job summarizing the last 400 years plus of African American History.

[Harun Musho'd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not generally a big fan of the Very Short Introductions series, as I usually find myself not much the wiser (Literary Theory) or bored (Comedy) at the end of each one. Very few books in the series (currently at 700+) score at least 4, and even fewer manage it with the most ratings at 5. I counted 10, including this one, out of 756 books.

I was persuaded by the unusually high rating on Goodreads and the subject matter to give this one a go. It did the trick. Very well written, interesting and informative. I defy anyone not to come to the view, after reading this book, that African Americans have been royally shafted by the hypocritical white US establishment for hundreds of years. Holloway, writing in 2021, holds out a glimmer of hope for better treatment and full citizen rights for African Americans, based on the progress, on balance, made in the last 70 years. I suspect he might have been more pessimistic had he written this now, 5 years later.

Let's see if I manage to like and understand A Very Short Introduction to Earth System Science (Goodreads rating 4.18 from 128 ratings) on the basis of my poor A-level education in Physics (D) and Chemistry (E) from 40 years ago.

[Josiah Richardson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here's another example of a very short introduction where the title gives the impression of something the pages inside don't deliver. This was a good book as far as it goes (there were some comments made towards the beginning of the book that were quite loaded), but the focus on the history of African Americans is not synonymous either the history of slavery. It is true that you can't tel the story of one without telling the story of the other, but African Americans have accomplished more, and made bigger impacts, in this country than a simple retelling of the history of American chattel slavery (which should have been the title of this book). The vast majority of this book focused on the antebellum period, which was a formidable time, no doubt. But that is not where the story ends.

[Macho · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't envy the task of summarizing 5 centuries of history over a vast geographic area down into a hundred pages or two. Holloway does it expertly, and holds the balance between covering topics that are representative of the overall trends of organization and thought, while also touching on individuals' stories and retaining a readable narrative. I even encountered topics that I had never known before (e.g. the "second middle passage") as well as context I hadn't know about more well-known events (e.g. the failed attempted merger of the Black Panther Party & SNCC). I guess I've got to read more titles from Oxford University Press.

[Kianna Hendricks · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 ⭐️ rounded up. A lot of good baseline information. Would be more useful for people with no knowledge of African American history, but there are a lot of interesting facts I haven’t heard of previously.

[Gi V · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. Required reading.

[Nikki · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a short read about African American history. If you’re not from the US and want to get a handle on the complexities of this history, this book would be a good start.

[Ali Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book provides a much-needed augmentation and correction to the exclusionary versions of history that are usually taught or recounted. Thank you, I hope to become better informed by reading this. And it's sure to be interesting as well.