Paul Finkelman

Focusing on the making of African American society from the 1896 "separate but equal" ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson up to the contemporary period, this encyclopedia traces the transition from the Reconstruction Era to the age of Jim Crow, the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Migration, the Brown ruling that overturned Plessy , the Civil Rights Movement, and the ascendant influence of African-American culture on the American cultural landscape. --publisher description

"In this third edition of Slavery and the Founders, including a new chapter on the regulation and eventual banning of the African slave trade, Paul Finkelman confronts a central issue of the American founding: how the first generation of leaders of the United States dealt with the profoundly important question of human bondage. The book explores the tension between the professed idea of America as stated in the Declaration of Independence, and the reality of the early American republic, reminding us of the ways that slavery influenced the writing of the Constitution and the development of early national politics and law. The book remains the most important short critique of Thomas Jefferson's relationship to slavery, and contrasts the way Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans approached the problem of slavery in the first thirty years after the Revolution"--Unedited summary from book cover.

xvii, 477 p. : 24 cm

Among the documents included in the set are important legislative documents such as the Reconstruction era amendments; critical Supreme Court decisions from Dred Scott v. Sandford to Plessy v. Ferguson to Brown v. Board of Education; and iconic speeches and writings by leaders such as Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Mary McLeod Bethune, Martin Luther King Jr., Shirley Chisholm, and Barack Obama. Key congressional reports, executive orders, and letters help round out our coverage, providing an invaluable collection of primary documents that is paired with extensive original commentary that helps students understand the documents.

This collection explores the closing months and weeks of the Civil War and its implications for Congress in the postwar nation. Topics include ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment; Sherman's March and the laws of war; commemoration of the Civil War after 100 and 150 years; sectionalism, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the end of popular constitutionalism; treatment of federal prisoners of war; the refugee crisis at the end of the war and in the Reconstruction period; and the postbellum U.S. economy.

In addition to freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly, and petition, the encyclopedia covers topics such as privacy, property rights, the rights of the accused, and national security. The entries discuss a broad range of topics, including the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the history of civil liberties; cases trials and important court decisions; associations, societies, organizations and government bodies; literature, entertainment, media and art; slavery, crime, and war; relgion, censorship and privacy; and people places and events. – from introduction.

A fresh compilation of essays and entries based on the latest research, this work documents African American culture and political activism from the slavery era through the 20th century. Of the 11 million Africans shipped across the Atlantic beginning in the 16th century, around 500,000 were sent to North America. As their descendents and other immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa have struggled for equality, legal protection, and the opportunities of the American promise, they have left an indelible imprint on virtually every aspect of American life. Encyclopedia of African American History introduces readers to the significant people, events, sociopolitical movements, and ideas that have shaped African American life from earliest contact between African peoples and Europeans through the late 20th century. The encyclopedia places the African American experience in the context of the entire African diaspora, with entries organized in sections on African/European contact and enslavement, culture, resistance and identity during enslavement, political activism from the Revolutionary War to Southern emancipation, political activism from Reconstruction to the modern Civil Rights movement, black nationalism and urbanization, and Pan-Africanism and contemporary black America. Based on the latest scholarship and engagingly written, there is no better go-to reference for exploring the history of African Americans and their distinctive impact on American society, politics, business, literature, art, food, clothing, music, language, and technology. - Publisher.