Struggle for Freedom: A History of African Americans, The, Penguin Academic Series, Concise Edition, Combined Volume

The Struggle for Freedom, a narrative of the black experience in America, uses a distinctive biographical approach to guide the story and animate the history. In each chapter, individual African Americans are the pivot points on which historical changes of the era turn. Life stories capture the rush of events that envelop individuals and illuminate the momentous decisions that, collectively, frame the American past and present.

Inasmuch as that history is grounded in struggle–in the consistent and insistent call to the United States to deliver on the constitutional promises made to all its citizens–this book is also an American history text, weaving into the narrative the milestones of mainstream American history, economy, politics, arts and letters.

Preface

Meet the Authors

Chapter 1               Ancient Africa

Chapter 2               Africa and the Atlantic World

Chapter 3               Africans in Early North America, 1619—1726

Chapter 4               Africans in Bondage: Early Eighteenth Century to the American Revolution

Chapter 5               The Revolutionary Era: Crossroads of Freedom

Chapter 6               After the Revolution: Constructing Free Life and Combating Slavery, 1787—1816

Chapter 7               African Americans in the Antebellum Era

Chapter 8               African Americans in the Reform Era, 1831—1850

Chapter 9               A Prelude to War: The 1850s

Chapter 10             Civil War and the Promises of Freedom: The Turbulent 1860s

Chapter 11             Post Civil War Reconstruction: A New National Era

Chapter 12             The Post-Reconstruction South

Chapter 13             “Colored” Becomes “Negro” in the Progressive Era

Chapter 14             The Making of a “New Negro”: World War I to the Great Depression

Chapter 15             The New Politics of the Great Depression

Chapter 16             Fighting Fascism Abroad and Racism at Home

Chapter 17             Emergence of a Mass Movement Against Jim Crow

Chapter 18             Marching Toward Freedom, 1960—1966

Chapter 19             Resistance, Repression, and Retrenchment, 1967—1978

Chapter 20             The Search for New Directions During a Conservative Era, 1979—1991

Chapter 21             Continuing Struggles Over Identity and Destiny, 1992—Present

Appendix

Credits

Index