Juneteenth: Books

Creating Black Americans : African-American history and its meanings, 1619 to the present by Nell Irvin Painter Here is a magnificent account of a past rich in beauty and creativity, but also in tragedy and trauma. Eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter blends a vivid narrative based on the latest research with a wonderful array of artwork by African American artists, works which add a new depth to our understanding of black history. Painter offers a history written for a new generation of African Americans, stretching from life in Africa before slavery to today's hip-hop culture. The book describes the staggering number of Africans--over ten million--forcibly transported to the New World, most doomed to brutal servitude in Brazil and the Caribbean. Painter looks at the free black population, numbering close to half a million by 1860 (compared to almost four million slaves), and provides a gripping account of the horrible conditions of slavery itself. The book examines the Civil War, revealing that it only slowly became a war to end slavery, and shows how Reconstruction, after a promising start, was shut down by terrorism by white supremacists. Painter traces how through the long Jim Crow decades, blacks succeeded against enormous odds, creating schools and businesses and laying the foundations of our popular culture. We read about the glorious outburst of artistic creativity of the Harlem Renaissance, the courageous struggles for Civil Rights in the 1960s, the rise and fall of Black Power, the modern hip-hop movement, and two black Secretaries of State. Painter concludes that African Americans today are wealthier and better educated, but the disadvantaged are as vulnerable as ever. Painter deeply enriches her narrative with a series of striking works of art--more than 150 in total, most in full color--works that profoundly engage with black history and that add a vital dimension to the story, a new form of witness that testifies to the passion and creativity of the African-American experience. * Among the dozens of artists featured are Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Beauford Delaney, Jacob Lawrence, and Kara Walker * Filled with sharp portraits of important African Americans, from Olaudah Equiano (one of the first African slaves to leave a record of his captivity) and Toussaint L'Ouverture (who led the Haitian revolution), to Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X

Douglass and Lincoln: how a revolutionary black leader and a reluctant liberator struggled to end slavery and save the Union by Paul Kendrick; Stephen Kendrick Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln had only three meetings, but their exchanges profoundly influenced the course of slavery and the outcome of the Civil War. Although Abraham Lincoln deeply opposed the institution of slavery, he saw the Civil War at its onset as being primarily about preserving the Union. Frederick Douglass, himself a former slave, by contrast saw the War's mission to be the total and permanent abolition of slavery. And yet, these giants of the nineteenth century, despite their different outlooks, found common ground, in large part through their three historic meetings. Lincoln first invited Douglass to the White House in August 1862. Well-known for his speeches and his internationally read abolitionist newspaper, Douglass laid out for the president his concerns about how the Union army was discriminating against black soldiers. Douglass, often critical of the president in his speeches and articles, was impressed by Lincoln's response. The following summer when the war was going poorly, the president summoned Douglass to the White House. Fearing that he might not be reelected, Lincoln showed Douglass a letter he had prepared stating his openness to negotiating a settlement to end the Civil War--and leave slavery intact in the South. Douglass strongly advised Lincoln against making the letter public. Lincoln never did; Atlanta fell and he was reelected. Their final meeting was at the White House reception following Lincoln's second inaugural address, where Lincoln told Douglass there was no man in the country whose opinion he valued more and Douglass called the president's inaugural address "sacred." In elegant prose and with unusual insights, Paul and Stephen Kendrick chronicle the parallel lives of Douglass and Lincoln as a means of presenting a fresh, unique picture of two men who, in their differences, eventually challenged each other to greatness and altered the course of the nation.

Landmarks of African American History by James Oliver Horton In Landmarks of African American History, James Oliver Horton chooses thirteen historic sites to explore the struggles and triumphs of African Americans and how they helped shape the rich and varied history of the United States. Horton begins with the first Africans brought to Jamestown,Virginia, and the start of slavery in the colonies that became the United States. Boston's Old State House provides the backdrop to the martyrdom of Crispus Attucks, the former slave killed in the Boston Massacre, the confrontation with British troops that led to the American Revolution. After theCivil War, former slaves settled the desolate area of Nicodemus, Kansas, and turned it into a thriving community. The USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and Boston's Old State House illustrate African American contributions to the defense of their country and reveal racial tensions withinthe military. And the black students who demanded service at Woolworth's racially segregated lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, launched the sit-in movement and advanced the fight for civil rights. Horton brings together a wide variety of African American historical sites to tell of theglory and hardship, of the great achievement and determination, of the people and events that have shaped the values, ideals, and dreams of our nation.

Lone Star Pasts: memory and history in Texas by Elizabeth Hayes Turner (Editor); W. Fitzhugh Brundage (Foreword by); Gregg Cantrell (Editor) The past has long fingers into the present, but they are not just the fingers of fact. How we remember the past is at least as important as the objective facts of that past. The memories used by a people to define itself have to be understood not just as (sometimes) bad history but also as historical artifacts themselves. Texas’ pasts are examined in this groundbreaking volume, featuring chapters by a wide range of scholars. Current historians’ views of Texas in the nineteenth century and especially the significance of the Alamo as a site of memory in architecture, art, and film across the years comprise a major element of this volume. Other nineteenth-century historical events are also examined through their memorializations in the twentieth century: the construction of Civil War monuments by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, public and private Juneteenth celebrations, and the Tejano memorial on the Capitol grounds commemorating the history of Mexicans in Texas. Twentieth-century chapters include collective memories and meaning attached to the Ku Klux Klan, the significance of the civil rights movement in the eyes of different generations of Texans, and the lasting (or fading) Texan memories of Lyndon Baines Johnson. The volume editors offer these studies as a model of how Texas historians can begin to incorporate memory into their work, as historians of other regions have done. In the process, they offer a more nuanced and even a more applied version of Texas history than many of us learned in school.