Recommended Resources
African American History
The books, articles, films, and websites in this section will enhance the materials included on our website for this era of American history. Many of the books are by the historians whose essays and lectures you have read and listened to here and offer in-depth studies of the topics that have caught your interest. The websites and other resources open new ways to explore American history and take advantage of new interpretations and new technologies to enhance classroom or at-home learning.
Fradin, Judith Bloom, and Dennis B. Fradin. 5,000 Miles to Freedom: Ellen and William Craft’s Flight from Slavery. Washington: National Geographic Society, 2006.
Manis, Andrew Michael. A Fire You Can’t Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham’s Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999.
Davis, Thomas J. A Rumor of Revolt: The “Great Negro Plot” in Colonial New York. New York: Free Press, 1985.
Foner, Eric. A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863–1877. New York: Harper and Row, 1990.
Altschuler, Glenn C. All Shook Up: How Rock ’n’ Roll Changed America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Basker, James G., ed. Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems about Slavery, 1660–1810. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2002.
O’Neill, William L. American High: The Years of Confidence, 1945–1960. New York: Free Press, 1986.
Foner, Eric, and Olivia Mahoney. America’s Reconstruction: People and Politics after the Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997.
Young, Andrew. An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.
McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Honey, Maureen, ed. Bitter Fruit: African American Women in World War II. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999.
Ogbar, Jeffrey Ogbonna Green. Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
Swift, David E. Black Prophets of Justice: Activist Clergy before the Civil War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.
Colley, David. Blood for Dignity: The Story of the First Integrated Combat Unit in the US Army. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003.
Haskins, James, and Kathleen Benson. Bound for America: The Forced Migration of Africans to the New World. New York: Lothrop, Lee and Shepard, 1999.
Haskins, James, and Kathleen Benson. Building a New Land: African Americans in Colonial America. Illus. James Ransome. New York: Amistad, 2001.
Rable, George C. But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1984.
McWhorter, Diane. Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001.
Chafe, William H. Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Richards, David A. Conscience and the Constitution: History, Theory, and Law of the Reconstruction Amendments. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Ransby, Barbara. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
Maestro, Betsy C. Exploration and Conquest: The Americas after Columbus, 1500–1620. With illustrations by Giulio Maestro. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1994.
Clark-Lewis, Elizabeth, ed. First Freed: Washington, DC in the Emancipation Era. Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 2002.
Berkin, Carol. First Generations: Women in Colonial America. New York: Hill and Wang, 1996.
Berkin, Carol. First Generations: Women in Colonial America. New York: Hill and Wang, 1996.
Lee, Chana Kai. For Freedom’s Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.
Robinet, Harriet Gillem. Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 1998.
Horton, James Oliver. Free People of Color. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993.
Rappaport, Doreen. Freedom River. New York: Hyperion Books for Children, 2000.
Foner, Eric. Freedom’s Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders during Reconstruction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Siddali, Silvana R. From Property to Person: Slavery and the Confiscation Acts, 1861–1862. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005.
Levine, Bruce. Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of Civil War. Rev. ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 2005; orig. 1992.
Betts, Robert B. In Search of York: The Slave Who Went to the Pacific with Lewis and Clark. Boulder: Colorado Associated University Press, 1985.
Diner, Hasia R. In the Almost Promised Land: American Jews and Blacks, 1915–1935. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
Embree, Edwin R., and Julia Waxman. Investment in People: The Story of the Julius Rosenwald Fund. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949.
Smith, Warren Thomas. John Wesley and Slavery. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1986.
Cady, Edwin Harrison. John Woolman. New York: Washington Square Press, 1965.
Capeci, Dominic J., Jr., and Martha Wilkerson. Layered Violence: The Detroit Rioters of 1943. Jackson: University of Mississippi, 1991.
Thomas, Richard W. Life for Us Is What We Make It: Building Black Community in Detroit, 1915–1945. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.
Trefousse, Hans L. Lincoln’s Decision for Emancipation. Philadelphia: 
Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, 1975.
Guelzo, Allen C. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004.
Bolden, Tonya. Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl. New York: Henry N. Abrams, 2005.
Holt, Rackham. Mary McLeod Bethune: A Biography. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964.
Delbanco, Andrew. Melville: His World and Work. New York: Knopf, 2005.
Reynolds, David S. Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Battle for America. New York: Norton, 2011.
Weatherford, Carole Boston. Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom. New York: Hyperion Books for Children, 2006.
Hauser, Thomas. Muhammad Ali in Perspective. San Francisoco: HarperCollins, 1996.
Breen, T.H., and Stephen Innes. Myne Owne Ground: Race and Freedom on Virginia's Eastern Shore, 1640-1676. 25th Anniversary ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Lepore, Jill. New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan. New York: Random House, 2005.
Foner, Eric. Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984.
Wiggins, William H. O Freedom! Afro-American Emancipation Celebrations. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987.
Lewis, Mary C. “Origins: How the Holiday Was Born.” American Visions 1, no. 1 (1986): 44–49.
Roberts, Randy. Papa Jack: Jack Johnson and the Era of White Hopes. New York: The Free Press, 1983.
Blight, David W. Passages to Freedom: The Underground Railroad in History and Memory. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.
Clinton, Catherine. Phillis’s Big Test. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008.
Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.
De Leon, Arnoldo. Racial Frontiers: Africans, Chinese, and Mexicans in Western America, 1848–1890. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002.
Carmichael, Stokely, with Ekwueme Michael Thelwell. Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003.
Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. New York: Harper and Row, 1988.
Chafe, William H., Raymond Gavins, Robert Korstad, et al., eds. Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell about Life in the Segregated South. New York: New Press, 2001.
Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Vintage, 1976.
Quigley, David. Second Founding: New York City, Reconstruction, and the Making of American Democracy. New York: Hill and Wang, 2004.
Oakes, James. Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
Patterson, Marie. Slavery in America: Expanding and Preserving the Union, Primary Source Readers. Huntington Beach, CA: Teacher Created Resources, 1991.
Washington, Margaret. Sojourner Truth’s America. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2009.
Berkowitz, Edward D. Something Happened: A Political and Cultural Overview of the Seventies. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.
Sugrue, Thomas J. Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North. New York: Random House, 2008.
Shields, Thomas J. “The ‘Tip of the Iceberg’ in a Southern Suburban County: The Fight for a Martin Luther King, Jr., Holiday.” Journal of Black Studies 33, no. 4 (2003): 499–519.
Gibran, Daniel K. The 92nd Infantry Division and the Italian Campaign in World War II. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001.
Sinha, Manisha. The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
Franklin, John Hope. The Emancipation Proclamation. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1995.
Hoffer, Peter Charles. The Great New York Conspiracy of 1741: Slavery, Crime, and Colonial Law. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003.
Garrow, David J. “The Helms Attack on King.” Southern Exposure 12, no. 2 (1984): 12–15.
Gordon-Reed, Annette. The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. New York: Norton, 2008.
Nelson, Dennis Denmark. The Integration of the Negro into the US Navy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951.
Miller, Richard E. The Messman Chronicles: African Americans in the US Navy, 1932–1943. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004.
Maestro, Betsy. The New Americans: Colonial Times: 1620-1689. New York: Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Books, 1998.
Sugrue, Thomas J. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.
Washburn, Patrick S. “The Pittsburgh Courier’s Double V Campaign in 1942.” American Journalism 3, no. 2 (1986): 73–86.
Oakes, James. The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007.
The Reconstruction Amendments’ Debates: The Legislative History and Contemporary Debates in Congress on the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. Compiled by Alfred Avins. Richmond: Virginia Commission on Constitutional Government, 1967.
Wellman, Judith. The Road to Seneca Falls: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the First Woman’s Rights Convention. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004.
Oakes, James. The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders. New York: Vintage, 1983.
Schulman, Bruce J. The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics. New York: Free Press, 2001.
Denisoff, R. Serge, and Richard A. Peterson, eds. The Sounds of Social Change: Studies in Popular Culture. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1972.
Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. New York: Random House, 2010.
Mills, Kay. This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. New York: Dutton, 1993.
United States. President’s Committee on Civil Rights. To Secure These Rights: The Report of Harry S Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights. Edited by Steven F. Lawson. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2004.
Moore, Brenda L. To Serve My Country, to Serve My Race: The Story of the Only African American WACS Stationed Overseas during World War II. New York : New York University Press, 1996.
Schaap, Jeremy. Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007.
Caretta, Vincent. Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the Eighteenth Century. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1996.
Downey, Bill. Uncle Sam Must Be Losing the War: Black Marines of the 51st. San Francisco: Strawberry Hill Press, 1982.
Ward, Geoffrey C. Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. New York: Vintage Books, 2006.
Benezet, Anthony, and John Wesley. Views of American Slavery: Taken A Century Ago. Philadelphia: Association of Friends for the Diffusion of Religious and Useful Knowledge, 1858.
Krannawitter, Thomas L. Vindicating Lincoln: Defending the Politics of Our Greatest President. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008.
Putney, Martha S. When the Nation Was in Need: Blacks in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1992.
Bly, Antonio. “Crossing the Lake of Fire: Slave Resistance in the Middle Passage, 1720–1842.” Journal of Negro History 83 (1998): 178–86.
Andolsen, Barbara H. “Daughters of Jefferson, Daughters of Bootblacks”: Racism and American Feminism. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1986.