Free Black History Books PDF – African American History Textbook

The Encyclopedia of African-American Heritage – African American History Textbook PDF

Altman, Susan

Facts on File 1997

“An excellent reference for young readers, The Encyclopedia of African-American Heritage chonicles more than a millennium of history — the rich and varied tapestry woven by Africans who remained on their ancestral continent, those who were forced to leave their homes, and their descendants who developed roots in a new land.
The broad scope of coverage highlights people, places, culture, politics, and history.” -Publisher. Free Black History Books PDF. African American history textbook pdf.

Firebrand of Liberty: The Story of Two Black Regiments that Changed the Course of the Civil War – Free Black History Books PDF

Ash, Steven V.

Norton 2007

“In March 1863, nine hundred black Union soldiers, led by white officers, invaded Florida and seized the town of Jacksonville. They were among the first African American troops in the Northern army, and their expedition into enemy territory was like no other in the Civil War. It was intended as an assault on slavery by which thousands would be freed. At the center of the story is prominent abolitionist Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who led one of the regiments. After waging battle for three weeks, Higginson and his men were mysteriously ordered to withdraw, their mission a seeming failure. Yet their successes in resisting the Confederates and collaborating with white Union forces persuaded President Abraham Lincoln to begin full-scale recruitment of black troops, a momentous decision that helped turned the tide of the war.” -Publisher. Free black history books pdf.

Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves – Free Black History Books PDF

Berlin, Ira

Belknap 2003

“Ira Berlin traces the history of African-American slavery in the United States from its beginnings in the seventeenth century to its fiery demise nearly three hundred years later.
Most Americans, black and white, have a singular vision of slavery, one fixed in the mid-nineteenth century when most American slaves grew cotton, resided in the deep South, and subscribed to Christianity. Here, however, Berlin offers a dynamic vision, a major reinterpretation in which slaves and their owners continually renegotiated the terms of captivity. Slavery was thus made and remade by successive generations of Africans and African Americans who lived through settlement and adaptation, plantation life, economic transformations, revolution, forced migration, war, and ultimately, emancipation.” -Publisher. Free Black History Books PDF. African American history textbook pdf.

Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk about their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation – Free Black History Books PDF

Berlin, Ira, Favreau, Marc and Miller, Steven F., eds.

New Press 1998

“Early in the 1930s interviewers from the Federal Writers’ Project combed the American South in search of former slaves. The interviewers spoke with hundreds of elderly people about their experiences in slavery, and preserved the voices of some of them on primitive recording devices. This includes a comprehensive introductory essay by preeminent slavery historian Ira Berlin, chapters on aspects of slave life, including relationships with owners, work, family culture, the Civil War, and Emancipation; complete transcript of the live recordings and dramatic readings of interviews with former slaves, contained on the companion tapes; extensive additional interviews with former slaves; little-known period photographs, including some of the former slaves interviewed on the companion tapes.” -Publisher. Free Black History Books PDF. African American history books pdf.

Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II – Free Black History Books PDF

Blackmon, Douglas A.

Doubleday 2008

A Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the “Age of Neoslavery,” the American period following the Emancipation Proclamation in which convicts, mostly black men, were “leased” through forced labor camps operated by state and federal governments. In this groundbreaking historical expose, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history—an “Age of Neoslavery” that thrived from the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II. Using a vast record of original documents and personal narratives, Douglas A. Blackmon unearths the lost stories of slaves and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude shortly thereafter. By turns moving, sobering, and shocking, this unprecedented account reveals the stories of those who fought unsuccessfully against the re-emergence of human labor trafficking, the companies that profited most from slavery, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today. Free Black History Books PDF. African American history textbook pdf.

Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America – Free Black History Books PDF

Bordewich, Fergus M

Amistad 2005

The civil war brought to a climax the country’s bitter division. But the beginnings of slavery’s denouement can be traced to a courageous band of ordinary Americans, black and white, slave and free, who joined forces to create what would come to be known as the Underground Railroad, a movement that occupies as romantic a place in the nation’s imagination as the Lewis and Clark expedition. The true story of Harriet Tubamn and the Underground Railroad is much more morally complex and politically divisive than even the myths suggest. Against a backdrop of the country’s westward expansion arose a fierce clash of values that was nothing less than a war for the country’s soul. Not since the American Revolution had the country engaged in an act of such vast and profound civil disobedience that not only challenged prevailing mores but also subverted federal law.
Bound for Canaan tells the stories of men and women like David Ruggles, who invented the black underground in New York City; bold Quakers like Isaac Hopper and Levi Coffin, who risked their lives to build the Underground Railroad; and the inimitable Harriet Tubman, soon to be the first African American featured on American currency. Interweaving thrilling personal stories with the politics of slavery and abolition, Bound for Canaan shows how the Underground Railroad gave birth to this country’s first racially integrated, religiously inspired movement for social change. Free Black History Books PDF. African American history textbook pdf.

American Slavery and Colour – Free Black History Books PDF

Chambers, William

London: Chambers 1857

William Chambers (1800-1883) was a Scottish publisher and politician who, with his brother Robert, published books in Edinburgh and London and also published the periodical “Chambers Edinburgh Journal”, which began in 1832. William Chambers travelled in American in 1854 and wrote in the Preface of this 1857 volume that, “The sight of a few slave sales has a wonderful effect in awakening the feelings on the subject of slavery. The thing is seen to be an undeniable reality – no mere invention of a novelist. … For three years, I have been haunted by recollections of that saddening scene, and taken a gradually deepening interest in American Slavery.” Free black history books pdf.

Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom – Free Black History Books PDF

Clinton, Catherine

Little, Brown 2004

Every schoolchild knows of Harriet Tubman’s heroic escape and resistance to slavery.But few readers are aware that Tubman went on to be a scout, a spy, and a nurse for the Union Army, because there has never before been a serious biography for an adult audience of this important woman.This is that long overdue historical work, written by an acclaimed historian of the antebellum era and the Civil War. Illiterate but deeply religious, Tubman left her family in her early 20s to escape to Philadelphia, then a hotbed of abolitionism.There she became the first and only woman, fugitive slave, and black to work as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. So successful was she in spiriting away slaves that the state of Maryland put a $40,000 bounty on her head.Within a year of starting her work, fellow slaves and Northerners began referring to Tubman as ‘Moses’ because of how many people she had freed. With impeccable scholarship that draws on newly available sources and research into the daily lives of slaves, HARRIET TUBMAN is an enduring work on one of the most important figures in American history. Free black history book pdf.

Children of Crisis: A Study of Courage and Fear – Free Black History Books PDF

Coles, Robert

Little, Brown 1977

“Selections of Coles’ social study of “African American children caught in the throes of the South’s racial integration; the young children of impoverished sharecroppers, migrant workers, and mountaineers in Appalachia; children whose families were transformed by the migration from South to North, from rural to urban communities … ” – Publisher. African American history pdf free download. Free Black History Books PDF.

Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings – Free Black History Books PDF

Douglass, Frederick; edited by Philip Foner

Lawrence Hill 1999

“One of the greatest African American leaders and one of the most brilliant minds of his time, Frederick Douglass spoke and wrote with unsurpassed eloquence on almost all the major issues confronting the American people during his life—from the abolition of slavery to women’s rights, from the Civil War to lynching, from American patriotism to black nationalism. Between 1950 and 1975, Philip S. Foner collected the most important of Douglass’s hundreds of speeches, letters, articles, and editorials into an impressive five-volume set, now long out of print. Abridged and condensed into one volume, and supplemented with several important texts that Foner did not include, Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings presents the most significant, insightful, and elegant short works of Douglass’s massive oeuvre.” -Publisher. Free African American history volume pdf free download. Free Black History Books PDF.

The Souls of Black Folk; Essays and Sketches – Free Black History Books PDF

Du Bois, W.E.Burghardt

McClurg 1903

“Originally published in 1903, Souls introduced a number of now-canonical terms into the American conversation about race, among them double-consciousness, and it sounded the ominous warning that “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.” In a new introduction, Shawn Leigh Alexander outlines the historical context of this critical work and provides rare documents from the special collections archive at the Du Bois Library at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Unlike Du Bois’s more scholarly work, Souls blends narrative and autobiographical essays, and it continues to reach a wide domestic and international readership. This moving homage to black life and culture and its sharp economic and historical critique are more important than ever, resonating with today’s unequivocal demand that Black Lives Matter in the twenty-first century.” -Publisher. African American history volume pdf. African American history textbook pdf. Free Black History Books PDF.

Black Reconstruction in America – Free Black History Books PDF

Du Bois, W. E. B.

Free Press 1998

After four centuries of bondage, the nineteenth century marked the long-awaited release of millions of black slaves. Subsequently, these former slaves attempted to reconstruct the basis of American democracy. W. E. B. Du Bois, one of the greatest intellectual leaders in United States history, evaluates the twenty years of fateful history that followed the Civil War, with special reference to the efforts and experiences of African Americans. Du Bois’s words best indicate the broader parameters of his work: “the attitude of any person toward this book will be distinctly influenced by his theories of the Negro race. If he believes that the Negro in America and in general is an average and ordinary human being, who under given environment develops like other human beings, then he will read this story and judge it by the facts adduced.” The plight of the white working class throughout the world is directly traceable to American slavery, on which modern commerce and industry was founded, Du Bois argues. Moreover, the resulting color caste was adopted, forwarded, and approved by white labor, and resulted in the subordination of colored labor throughout the world. As a result, the majority of the world’s laborers became part of a system of industry that destroyed democracy and led to World War I and the Great Depression. This book tells that story. African American history textbook pdf. Free Black history books pdf.

Antislavery; the Crusade for Freedom in America – Free Black History Books PDF

Dumond, Dwight L.

University of Michigan 1961

“This work of dedicated scholarship and immense learning reveals with extraordinary force the truth behind the Civil War. Year by year slavery in the U.S. became more sinister. It contaminated the body politic, it tainted all institutional life, it became a colossus of arbitrary power and greed.” – Publisher

“Here, in one volume, is contained enough evidence, enough information to wipe segregation from our land. It is fascinating, though at times cruel reading. But it is factual. It has the force of a sledge hammer. I defy anyone to read this book without cringing with shame and embarrassment. It is a must reading for all Americans, North and South.” – Historian Benjamin Fine. African American history textbook pdf. Free Black history books pdf.

Slavemaster President: The Double Career of James Polk – Free Black History Books PDF

Dusinberre, William

Oxford Univ. 2003

James K. Polk held the office of President from 1845 to 1849, a period when the expansion of slavery into the territories emerged as a pressing question in American politics. During his presidency, the slave period of Texas was annexed and the future of slavery in the Mexican Cession was debated. Polk also owned a substantial cotton plantation in northern Mississippi and 54 slaves. He was an absentee master who had a string of overseers or agents manage his plantation and did not visit his estate while he was in the White House. In this book, William Dusinberre reconstructs the world of Polk’s estate and the lives of his slaves, and analyzes how Polk’s experience as a slavemaster conditioned his stance towards slavery-related issues. Dusinberre argues that Polk’s policies helped precipitate the civil war he had sought to avert. African American history volume pdf. Free Black history books pdf.

Speak Now Against the Day – Free Black History Books PDF

Egerton, John

Univ. of North Carolina 1995

Speak Now Against the Day is the astonishing, little-known story of the Southerners who, in the generation before the Supreme Court outlawed school segregation and before Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat on a Montgomery bus, challenged the validity of a white ruling class and a “separate but equal” division of the races.
The voices of the dissenters, although present throughout the South’s troubled history, grew louder with Roosevelt’s election in 1932. An increasing number of men and women who grappled daily with the economic and social woes of the South began forcefully and courageously to speak and to work toward the day when the South—and the nation—would deliver on the historic promises in the country’s founding documents. This is the story of those brave prophets—thhe ministers, writers, educators, journalists, social activists, union members, and politicians, black and white, who pointed the way to higher ground.
Published forty years after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling of the Supreme Court, this compelling book is not only a rich trove of forgotten history—it also speaks profoundly to us in the context of today’s continuing racial and social conflict. African American history textbook pdf. African American history volume online free. Free Black History Books PDF.

Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890-2000 – Free Black History Books PDF

Fairclough, Adam

Viking 2001

“Better Day Coming recounts the endeavors of black Americans to achieve civil rights and equality in a society that, after the collapse of Reconstruction, sanctioned racial segregation, racial discrimination, and white political supremacy. It examines the leaders, movements, and strategies that shaped the black vision of equality. Beginning with the campaign against lynching launched by Ida B. Wells in the 1890s, it examines the tradition of militant protest that in 1909 led to the formation of the NAACP and which over the next fifty years formed a powerful foundation for civil rights efforts. Better Day Coming also offers a sympathetic portrait of Marcus Garvey while concluding that black nationalism, both in the 1920s and the 1960s, was doomed to failure. Paying tribute to the role of the Communist party in raising the fight against racism to a higher level of militancy during the 1930s, the book analyzes the contradictory effects of World War II, the cold war, and McCarthyism on black activism during the 1940s.” -Publisher. African American history textbook pdf. Free Black history books pdf.

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives – Free Black History Books PDF

Federal Writers Project

Washington: Work Projects Administration 1941

This book contains accounts of interviews carried out from 1936 to 1938 with approximately 60 former slaves living in Indiana. Note that other volumes of oral interviews were also prepared in other states as part of this Federal Writers Project. African American history textbook pdf. Free Black history books pdf.

The African-American Century: How Black Americans have Shaped our Country – Free Black History Books PDF

Gates, Henry Louis and West, Cornel

Free Press 2000

One hundred original profiles of the most influential African-Americans of the twentieth century.
Without Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis, we would not have jazz. Without Toni Morrison or Ralph Ellison, we would miss some of our greatest novels. Without Dr. King or Thurgood Marshall, we would be deprived of political breakthroughs that affirm and strengthen our democracy. Here, two of the leading African-American scholars of our day, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Cornel West, show us why the twentieth century was the African-American century, as they offer their personal picks of the African-American figures who did the most to shape our world. Free Black History Books PDF.
This colorful collection of personalities includes much-loved figures such as scientist George Washington Carver, contemporary favorites such as comedian Richard Pryor and novelist Alice Walker, and even less-well-known people such as aviator Bessie Coleman. Gates and West also recognize the achievements of controversial figures such as Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and rap artist Tupac Shakur. Lively, accessible, and illustrated throughout, The African-American Century is a celebration of black achievement and a tribute to the black struggle for freedom in America that will inspire readers for years to come. Free black history book pdf.

Fighting the Devil in Dixie: How Civil Rights Activists Took on the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama – Free Black History Books PDF

Greenhaw, Wayne

Lawrence Hill 2011

Examining the growth of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) following the birth of the civil rights movement, this book is filled with tales of the heroic efforts to halt their rise to power. Shortly after the success of the Montgomery bus boycott, the KKK—determined to keep segregation as the way of life in Alabama—staged a resurgence, and the strong-armed leadership of Governor George C. Wallace, who defied the new civil rights laws, empowered the Klan’s most violent members. Although Wallace’s power grew, not everyone accepted his unjust policies, and blacks such as Martin Luther King Jr., J. L. Chestnut, and Bernard LaFayette began fighting back in the courthouses and schoolhouses, as did young southern lawyers such as Charles “Chuck” Morgan, who became the ACLU’s southern director; Morris Dees, who co-founded the Southern Poverty Law Center; and Bill Baxley, Alabama attorney general, who successfully prosecuted the bomber of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church and legally halted some of Governor Wallace’s agencies designed to slow down integration. Dozens of exciting, extremely well-told stories demonstrate how blacks defied violence and whites defied public ostracism and indifference in the face of kidnappings, bombings, and murders. African American history textbook pdf. Free Black history books pdf.

Negro Suffrage in Wisconsin – Free Black History Books PDF

Gregory, John Goadby

Milwaukee: Transactions 1895

 Free Black History Books PDF.