Literature

"Biography of Sojourner Truth, who was born into slavery, freed in 1827, and became famous for her courage, quick wit, and ready challenge as she campaigned for abolition and women's rights in New York and the Midwestern States."

"The second in the series of three autobiographies penned by Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom picks up where Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass left off. This volume recounts more gripping details of Douglass'transformation from illiterate slave to leading light of the abolitionist movement and offers an extended philosophical meditation on the meaning of slavery."

"Born around 1817 in Maryland, Frederick Douglass was a former plantation slave who went on to become a brilliant writer and eloquent orator. In this amazing first-hand narrative, published in 1881, he vividly recounts his early years, which were filled with physical abuse, deprivation, and tragedy; his dramatic escapes to the North, recapture, and eventual freedom; his work for the Anti-Slavery Society and influential role in speaking for other African-Americans; his abolitionist campaigns, and crusade for full civil rights for former slaves."

Includes Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave; My Bondage and my freedom; and Life and times of Frederick Douglass.

"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."

"Frederick Douglass (1818--1895) was a prolific writer and public speaker whose impact on American literature and history has been long studied by historians and literary critics. Yet as political theorists have focused on the legacies of such notables as W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, Douglass's profound influence on Afro-modern and American political thought has often been undervalued.In an effort to fill this gap in the scholarship on Douglass, editor Neil Roberts and an exciting group of established and rising scholars examine the author's autobiographies, essays, speeches, and novella. Together, they illuminate his genius for analyzing and articulating core American ideals such as independence, liberation, individualism, and freedom, particularly in the context of slavery. The contributors explore Douglass's understanding of the self-made American and the way in which he expanded the notion of individual potential by arguing that citizens had a responsibility to improve not only their own situations but also those of their communities. A Political Companion to Frederick Douglass also considers the idea of agency, investigating Douglass's passionate insistence that every person in a democracy, even a slave, possesses an innate ability to act. Various essays illuminate Douglass's complex racial politics, deconstructing what seems at first to be his surprising aversion to racial pride, and others explore and critique concepts of masculinity, gender, and judgment in his oeuvre. The volume concludes with a discussion of Douglass's contributions to pre-- and post--Civil War jurisprudence."

"This book shows how abolitionists used rhetoric and discourse, rather than violence, to change opinions about slavery. Books like Uncle Tom's Cabin incite people to take action and they provoke a sense of urgency about the matter. Less than a decade before an impending civil war the United States enacted the Compromise of 1850, which among other things revived the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 in a more aggravated form. The main stipulation of the law was to impose strict monetary and legal penalties against those who aided the escape or impeded the capture of fugitive slaves. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe urged Americans to break the Fugitive Slave Law and free blacks across America. These are the most important texts from the American Antebellum Era that dealt with slavery and emancipation. This book explores the implications of the Fugitive Slave Law and the impact that these two figures had during that time period in American history. The argument is that Douglass and Stowe used language instead of violence to convince Americans to break the law, and that not all Americans agreed with the law."

"This book takes as its subject the effect of extraterritorial sites - Ireland, Haiti, Egypt - on Frederick Douglass's writing, self-construction, national, class and racial identity, and status as a representative US American man. Douglass, the most prolific African American writer of the nineteenth century, embarked, after his escape from slavery in 1838, on a public career that would span the century and three continents. The narrative of his life in slavery remains a seminal work in the literary and historical canons of the United States, and has recently been included in the corpus of the American Renaissance. Much critical attention has been placed on Douglass's activities within the United States, his effect on socio-political reform, and his relationship to an oppressed and marginalized community of African Americans. Yet much of his literary and political development occurred outside the United States. This book focuses specifically on Douglass's Atlantic encounters, literal and literary, against the backdrop of slavery, emancipation, and western colonial process."

"Delve into the turbulent roots of race relations in the United States with this inspirational account from Booker T. Washington, a one-time slave who became an important advocate for African-American education and founded several well-known institutions of higher learning, including the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Up From Slavery details Washington's life and outlines his sometimes-controversial views on education, social justice, and racial equality."

"Negative stereotypes of African Americans have long been disseminated through the visual arts. This original and incisive study examines how black writers use visual tropes as literary devices to challenge readers'conceptions of black identity. Lena Hill charts two hundred years of African American literary history, from Phillis Wheatley to Ralph Ellison, and engages with a variety of canonical and lesser-known writers. Chapters interweave literary history, museum culture, and visual analysis of numerous illustrations with close readings of Booker T. Washington, Gwendolyn Bennett, Zora Neale Hurston, Melvin Tolson, and others. Together, these sections register the degree to which African American writers rely on vision - its modes, consequences, and insights - to demonstrate black intellectual and cultural sophistication. Hill's provocative study will interest scholars and students of African American literature and American literature more broadly."

"Since the 1960s, many historians have condemned Booker T. Washington as a problematic, even negative, influence on African American progress. This attitude dramatically contrasts with the nationwide outpouring of grief and reverence that followed Washington's death in 1915. Kenneth M. Hamilton describes how, when, where, and why Americans commemorated the life of Booker T. Washington. For months following his death, tens of thousands of Americans, especially blacks, honored his memory. Their memorials revealed that Washington enjoyed widespread national support for his vision of America and the programs that he imparted to achieve his aspirations. Their actions and articulations provide rich insight into how a cross section of Washington's contemporaries viewed him. From private messages of solace to public pronouncements, countless Americans portrayed him as a revered national icon. Among other characteristics, commemorates voiced their appreciation of his humanitarianism, humility, nationalism, perseverance, philanthropy, progressivism, spirituality, and wisdom. Washington was the leading advocate of the Yankee Protestantism Ethic, which promoted education, and personal qualities such as pragmatism, perseverance, cleanliness, thrift, and the dignity of labor among African Americans."

"Scholars have sought, over many decades, to understand the mystique surrounding Booker T. Washington. He is an enigma and continues to be lauded by those who offer him and his ideas as a model for Black Progress. He was both simple and complex; a passive observer on some issues and an active participant in others; non-assuming, yet egoistic, and a very public man who talked freely with others, yet, a private man who kept certain social tactics and strategies close to his chest. He sought to both make sense of his world, then to manipulate that world in order to obtain from it those things he most wanted and needed. This volume provides the reader with a wide inter-disciplinary landscape with which to assess Washington. We continue to study and research the life and works of Washington because, though we've moved beyond Washington and the ideology of race and racial politics of his times on certain levels, yet in reality, this generation is confronted with all the contradictions and ambiguities around race, and class, which Washington encountered and for which he sought solutions. For example, as black Americans continue to be mired in the deficits of educational opportunity and development, employment opportunities and occupational advancements, and health and medical problems, we are reminded of Washington's arguments for greater individual and group black self-sufficiency and self-reliance, as well as the need for practical educational objectives which Washington advocated under aegis of vocational education. As we move into the new century, the economic and educational goals and programs highlighted by Washington remain forgotten and unfulfilled. Hopefully, the articles in this volume will force a re-thinking of Washington's economic and educational objectives and strategies. This may prompt the emergence of new thinkers and builders who will create the educational and economic bases, similar to the ones created by Washington. This volume uses an interdisciplinary approach to examine Washington's life. It reflects on obstacles that remain despite Washington's influence, and aspires to serve as an inspirational vehicle towards educational and economic change."

"Booker T. Washington has long held an ambiguous position in the pantheon of black leadership. Lauded by some in his own lifetime as a black George Washington, he was also derided by others as a Benedict Arnold. In The Education of Booker T. Washington, Michael West offers a major reinterpretation of one of the most complex and controversial figures in American history. West reveals the personal and political dimensions of Washington's journey'up from slavery.'He explains why Washington's ideas resonated so strongly in the post-Reconstruction era and considers their often negative influence in the continuing struggle for equality in the United States. West's work also establishes a groundwork for understanding the ideological origins of the civil rights movement and discusses Washington's views on the fate of race and nation in light of those of Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., and others. West argues that Washington's analysis was seen as offering a'solution'to the problem of racial oppression in a nation professing its belief in democracy. That solution was the idea of'race relations.'In practice, this theory buttressed segregation by supposing that African Americans could prosper within Jim Crow's walls and without the normal levers by which other Americans pursued their interests. Washington did not, West contends, imagine a way to perfect democracy and an end to the segregationist policies of southern states. Instead, he offered an ideology that would obscure the injustices of segregation and preserve some measure of racial peace. White Americans, by embracing Washington's views, could comfortably find a way out of the moral and political contradictions raised by the existence of segregation in a supposedly democratic society. This was (and is) Washington's legacy: a form of analysis, at once obvious and concealed, that continues to prohibit the realization of a truly democratic politics."