History Books

From a Raw Deal to a New Deal: African Americans 1929-1945 (The Young Oxford History of African Americans ; Vol. 8)

Joe William Trotter

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Bank closings, soup kitchens, bread lines, unemployed workers begging for work--these images defined the 1930s and '40s in America. For African Americans the era was a study in contrasts: black workers had the highest unemployment rate at a time when black leaders held important positions in Franklin Roosevelt's administration; New Deal legislation threw hundreds of thousands of black sharecroppers off the land while the same federal government provided unprecedented opportunities for black writers and artists; dramatic episodes of racist violence against African Americans occurred just as Communists and other radicals launched a nationwide campaign against racial injustice.
When the United States entered World War II in 1941, the horrors of war provided an opportunity for blacks to demand equal treatment. As the African American servicemen, such as the all-black 99th fighter squadron (also known as the "Tuskegee Airmen"), fought for democracy overseas, black people at home were treated like second-class citizens. The war also created employment opportunities for many black working people. But few managed to get industrial jobs or into training programs, and those who did were likely to experience violent reprisals from disgruntled white workers. While U.S. troops invaded Normandy and bombed Okinawa, African Americans fought their own war at home.
From a Raw Deal to a New Deal examines the impact of the depression and the war on black communities. The response of workers, farmers, activists, and the federal government, the inspiring cultural and intellectual achievements of such leading African Americans as Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, and Marian Anderson, and the role that war-time industrialization and recovery played in black protest movements paved the way for the modern civil rights movement. This is fascinating and relevant history for today's young people.

The Colonial Mosaic: American Women 1600-1760 (Young Oxford History of Women in the United States Series ))

Jane Kamensky

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Colonial "women's work" was hard, physical labor. In the South, the urgency of farming crops for export stretched a woman's workday from sunrise to sunset. It was not much different in New England, though the goal was more often to maintain the family and set aside enough to get through the harsh winter. In the 17th and early 18th century, nearly endless toil marked the lives of the majority of American women, regardless of their region, color, or status. Most women in the colonies, enslaved and free, were farm wives, giving birth to children and working hard to raise them. Yet, as Jane Kamensky shows in this volume, some women entered this era with rising expectations. They were marrying whom and when they chose, or choosing to remain unmarried. They were fleeing cruel masters in search of a better life. Women's voices were heard, though not all in the same tones or claiming the same rights. During these years women such as Anne Hutchinson had to leave Massachusetts when she tried to claim a public role for herself in the Puritan church; Abigail Smith Adams encouraged her husband John Adams to "Remember the Ladies" in the country's new code of laws; the African-American poet Phillis Wheatley published stirring patriotic poems; and Deborah Read Franklin ran Ben Franklin's stationery store when he was away (which was most of the time). These women were not feminists by today's definition, but they began a tradition of persistence and loyalty that has served women well into the 20th century.

The First Passage: Blacks in the Americas 1502-1617 (Young Oxford History of African Americans, Vol. 1)

Colin A. Palmer

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The history of African Americans begins in Africa, a continent that was home to people with different languages, traditions, histories, and religions. They called themselves Twi, Yoruba, Zulu, Ashanti, and Kumba, among other names. In the early sixteenth century Europeans turned to Africa for the labor force needed to mine, cultivate, and process the bounty of natural resources in the newly colonized Americas. As many as 12 million Africans from varied ethnic backgrounds endured forced migration and enslavement. Out of their suffering was forged a new people--no longer simply Twi, Yoruba, Ashanti, or Kumba. In the Americas, they first became Africans and then African Americans.
The First Passage examines the first century of the recorded black presence in the Americas. The ordeal of the Atlantic crossing gave way to the isolation and humiliation of slavery and the loss of friends and family. Some slaves attempted rebellion and escape. Others maintained as many religious and cultural traditions as possible and as the African-American population grew, forged new traditions and new ties of kinship. This history remains at the core of black life in the Americas. Colin Palmer tells a story of extraordinary suffering. But The First Passage is also a timeless lesson in endurance and survival.

Break Those Chains at Last: African Americans 1860-1880 (The Young Oxford History of African Americans ; Vol. 5)

Noralee Frankel

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"We thought we'd break those chains at last," sang the slaves, hoping such spirituals would sustain them until the Confederacy surrendered and slavery was gone forever. During the Civil War, blacks served in the Union army and navy (although some fought for the South) and in Union-controlled camps, which harbored fleeing slaves. Not all slaves escaped, but even those who remained with their masters began to imagine a new life.
After the war, amendments to the Constitution abolished slavery, granted citizenship to freed people, and gave African-American men the right to vote. Freedom, blacks hoped, would also mean political equality and economic well-being. Some moved from rural areas to cities in the South or North; others looked to the West, where many African-American men became farmers or found work as cattle-drive cooks and cowboys.
But many whites viewed freedom for African Americans as a threat, and they responded by establishing white supremacy organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan. Organized violence against blacks, along with poor agricultural conditions, discrimination, and worsening economic times, guaranteed poverty for most Southern blacks.
Although the tightly knit slave communities on the larger plantations began to disperse, a sense of having shared interests and goals actually widened freed people's vision of the meaning of community. Despite fierce white opposition, African Americans established their own churches, schools, and other associations and began to participate actively in government. Break Those Chains at Last tells the story of these turbulent and complicated years, as African Americans created the communities and organizations that survive to this day.

The Limits of Independence: American Women 1760-1800 (The Young Oxford History of Women in the United States, Vol 3)

Marylynn Salmon

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The second half of the 18th century saw a handful of English colonies transform themselves into a nation. This process involved not only a revolution against the British crown but also the uniting of a diverse population; in addition to the English and Africans who made up the bulk of the population, people from continental Europe had to become willing to join in the creation of the new republic. Tradition dictated that the independent male citizen was the most important actor in this drama, but women's contributions to the war effort and support of the political ideals of the era were essential to the survival of the new United States.
The first obligation of a women--to God and to country--was to marry and bear children. The lives of the 18th-century white women were filled with the numerous demands of child care and housekeeping. African-American women faced the same demands, but found their ability to care for their families sharply limited by their lives as slaves, while Native American women often saw their families and tribes destroyed when whites seized their lands in the name of the federal government. But there were other forces at work during this turbulent period as the community of women addressed issues of educational reform, the abolition of slavery in the North and renewed embrace of it in the South, voting rights, religion, the rise of prominent women intellectuals, and the ever-changing relationships between women and men.
The poet Phillis Wheatley, the writer and educator Susanna Rowson, and other women--both well known and unsung--fill the pages of The Limits of Independence. The book looks at the traditional patterns of women's lives during the time of the American Revolution and charts the new directions to come as women help to carve a new nation "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

Into the Fire: African Americans Since 1970 (Young Oxford History of African Americans, V. 10)

Robin D. G. Kelley

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When something goes from bad to worse, we say it "fell out of the frying pan and into the fire." This timeless phrases succinctly captures what has happened to the majority of African Americans since the 1970s. The civil rights movement of the 1960s brought about remarkable gains for most black people, and by 1970 African Americans were beginning to be key figures in national politics and in corporate board rooms. The black middle class was decidedly growing, and thus a handful of African Americans escaped the frying pan altogether. But after 1970, heavy industry began to disappear as American companies looked to foreign lands for cheaper manufacturing. Millions of jobs were lost. The number of black poor began to grow dramatically, city services declined, federal spending on cities dried up, affirmative action programs were dismantled, blatant acts of racism began to rise again, and the United States entered a deep economic recession.
But this decline is only part of the story. Since 1970, the black community has resisted oppression, struggled for power, dealt with internal tensions and conflicts, and profoundly shaped American culture. This book explores a range of issues that the African American community faces in the late 20th century: the rebirth of black nationalism, the emergence of a new black conservative movement, the challenge of black feminism, the impact of Caribbean immigration, the rise of rap music and hip-hop culture. It looks at the impact on African American life of such diverse personalities as Roy Innis, Toni Morrison, Anita Hill, Jimi Hendrix, Louis Farrakhan, Angela Davis, Spike Lee, Barbara Jordan, Shirley Chisholm, and Jesse Jackson, among others. Into the Fire will challenge and be challenged by readers of all ages, and calls on our young people to exercise their power to determine the outcome of chapters yet to be written in the history of African Americans.

Revolutionary Citizens: African Americans 1776-1804 (The Young Oxford History of African Americans, V. 3)

Daniel C. Littlefield

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It is not entirely clear who provoked the British musket fire at the Custom House in Boston on March 5, 1770, but the volley wounded eight men and killed five. Crispus Attucks, a tall, young mulatto, was one of the men who died in the confrontation. He would later become a revolutionary hero, celebrated as "the first to defy, and the first to die" in the cause of colonial liberty that went down in history as the Boston Massacre. When the American Revolution broke out six years later, African Americans like Crispus Attucks were among the first to rally to Patriot banners. As they fought to free their country, they also fought to free themselves from slavery.
This nation's fight for independence from Great Britain laid bare the contradictions between slavery and freedom for African Americans. It was a contradiction many resolved to settle. Some joined with other colonists in striking direct blows for liberty. Others, meanwhile, heard the pleas for loyalty to the British crown, and with the promise of emancipation as their reward, remained faithful to the old order only to see it vanish before them. But whether in the poems of Phillis Wheatley, the legal action of Quok Walker, or the efforts of businessman Paul Cuffe, Americans of African descent helped define what it meant to be revolutionary citizens.
By 1804, however, slavery seized a new lease on life. "King Cotton" demanded black slaves and produced a generation born into servitude. Unlike their immigrant forefathers, these African Americans had no memory of a homeland and depended upon stories handed down around fireplaces, campfires, and bedsides for their knowledge of their ancestors. They might hear of people who had fought with the British, or against them, or of people who had gone overseas or run away and formed communities of their own. Unfortunately, they would have few opportunities for such heroics in the 19th century.
In Revolutionary Citizens, author Daniel C. Littlefield brings to life African-American heroes and heroines who both shaped and were shaped by the times in which they lived. From their embrace of religion to the formation of independent institutions such as the Free African Union Society, African Americans inserted themselves into the social and cultural life of the country. Ever aware of the implication of freedom, they spread word of their own efforts throughout the Americas.

Pushing the Limits: American Women 1940-1961 (Young Oxford History of Women in the United States , Vol 9)

Elaine Tyler May

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Americans living in the mid 20th century saw momentous change. A decade of severe economic depression in the 1930s was followed by the largest scale war the world had ever seen. In Pushing the Limits, Elaine Tyler May shows how women's lives in the United States reflected and helped to shape these world changes. During the war, women joined the military effort through the WACS (Women's Army Corps) and the WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Services). Production demands drew women into manufacturing jobs and broadcast the famous image of Rosie the Riveter. After the war, women were encouraged to give up their jobs to the returning veterans and resume their tasks as wives and mothers.
We discover that women of all backgrounds pushed the limits of their circumstances, whether they were college educated homemakers working to elevate the job of housewife to a respected career, working class women struggling to preserve the gains of wartime, or African American women leading the struggle for civil rights. Popular culture of the 1950s--TV shows such as "Ozzie and Harriet," "Leave It To Beaver," and "Father Knows Best"--promoted the subservient wife in a traditional nuclear family and kept women as homemakers. At the same time, however, women such as Rosa Parks became household names as they challenged racial and gender discrimination. These women, May reveals, paved the way for the political, sexual, and social movements of the 1960s and the feminist gains that would follow.

The Tried and the True: Native American Women Confronting Colonization (The Young Oxford History of Women in the United States, Vol 1)

John Demos

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The first of the women we now call Native American were among the prehistoric nomads who crossed a land bridge between Asia and North America 40,000 years ago. Over centuries, these humans formed larger bands, and eventually farming villages and even larger units, the seeds of the many tribes and nations that we call Indians or Native Americans.
In most of these cultures, women held positions of honor in the community. John Demos looks at four Native American groups--the Puebloans of the North American Southwest, the Iroquois of the Northeast woodlands, the fur-trading tribes of the central Great Lakes region, and the Cherokees of the interior Southeast--and explores the possibilities open to women and how colonization by Europeans forever changed their lives.
In many Indian tribes, property passed through the female line, from mothers to daughters to granddaughters, giving women considerable power and influence through the link to their clan. Women often held the primary responsibility for farming, craft production, and even house construction or boat building. Behind this broad array of roles and duties lay a fundamental respect for women as women. In startling contrast to the premodern European view, Native American cultures supported a balanced view of the sexes. Men were considered superior in some ways, women in others, and both were necessary to the survival of the group.
Contact with European explorers and missionaries, the effects of the American Revolution, and the new United States government's policies toward Native American cultures irrevocably transformed every tribe. As a result Native American culture declined and women in particular lost opportunities, influence, and status that had formerly belong to them.
But The Tried and the True is not only a story of decline. John Demos looks at the full range of Native American women's experiences and finds that words like adaptation, recovery, and survival also apply. These first American women laid the foundation for future generations and began a struggle for equality and respect that continues today.

Strange New Land: African Americans 1617-1776 (The Young Oxford History of African Americans ; Vol. 2)

Peter H. Wood

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For Africans who survived the trans-Atlantic journey and were forced to disembark at one of the many ports along the coast of Britain's North American colonies, what lay before them was indeed a strange new land. Although forms of bondage had existed in West and Central Africa long before the trans Atlantic slave trade began, human beings were rarely the main commodity at the marketplace. Here in the modern world, the enslaved African was inspected, assessed, auctioned, bought, sold, bartered, and treated in any manner the owner saw fit.
Slaves did not always cooperate. They fought and ran away, or made the business of commercial farming more difficult by not working efficiently. In spite of their condition and despite different ethnic backgrounds and languages, enslaved Africans forged a strong sense of community. The Africans learned the English language and made it their own. They learned Christianity and transformed it. Others held fast to Islam or combined their own spiritual beliefs with the faith of their masters. And all around them they heard talk of liberty and freedom, of the rights of man. Not surprisingly, many enslaved Africans embraced the idea of liberty as a fundamental right, and some even petitioned colonial administrators, insisting on that right. But the majority simply stole themselves and headed to Northern cities where slavery was less visible and where they might blend in more easily.
Strange New Land explores the history of slavery and the struggle for freedom before the United States became a nation. Beginning with the colonization of North America, it documents the transformation of slavery from a brutal form of indentured servitude to a full-blown system of racial domination. More importantly, it surveys black social and cultural life, illustrating just how such a diverse group of people from the shores and hinterlands of West and Central Africa became a community in North America that survives and flourishes today.