African Americans Frontiers

African American Frontiers concentrates on the period from 1703, the date of the first published narrative of an African slave's attainment of freedom in the American colonies, to 1948, the year in which President Harry S. Truman integrated the United States armed forces through Executive Order 9981.

This book is an invaluable historical resource that brings together diverse first-person accounts of individual African Americans through primary source documents, including: Henry "Box" Brown, who escaped the South by express mailing himself to Philadelphia in a wooden crate; Herb Jeffries, who introduced the black cowboy in Westerns; and Eunice Jackson, whose funeral home was destroyed in the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. Such little known stories, most of them previously unpublished, resonate with the determination, forbearance, moral strength, and imagination of the tellers, and give readers an opportunity to see the world as it once was, as told by the men and women who lived in it.

A collection of first hand narratives and oral histories portraying the African American experience from slavery through emancipation and into the 20th century.

Booknews

Govenar (an author and historian) supplies a lengthy history of slavery in the US, with several maps, as an introduction to this substantial reader of slave narratives. The stories are grouped into three sections; slave narratives, slave narratives gathered in the WPA collection, and oral histories. The latter were gathered by Govenar and others and survey African-Americans in many professions, including musicians, athletes, artists, barbers, activists, and doctors. Bibliographies of primary and secondary sources are included. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)