Bibliographic Essay on African American History Wilma King Introduction In the essay “On the Evolution of Scholarship in Afro- American History” the eminent historian John Hope Franklin declared “Every generation has the opportunity to write its own history, and indeed it is obliged to do so.”1 The social and political revolutions of 1960s have made fulfilling such a responsibility less daunting than ever. Invaluable references, including Darlene Clark Hine, ed. Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Evelyn Brooks Higgingbotham, ed., Harvard Guide to African American History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001); Arvarh E. Strickland and Robert E. Weems, Jr., eds., The African American Experience: An Historiographical and Bibliographical Guide (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2001); and Randall M. Miller and John David Smith, eds., Dictionary of Afro- American Slavery (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1988), provide informative narratives along with expansive bibliographies. General texts covering major historical events with attention to chronology include John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2000), considered a classic; along with Joe William Trotter, Jr., The African American 1 Experience (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001); and, Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine, and Stanley Harrold, The African American Odyssey (Upper Saddle River: Printice-Hall, Inc., 2000). Other general texts not to be overlooked are Colin A. Palmer’s Passageways: An Interpretive History of Black America Vol. I: 1619-1863 and Vol. II (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998), which emphasizes culture; and, Darlene Clark Hine and Kathleen Thompson’s Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America (New York: Broadway Books, 1998), a work highlighting the presence of women. Juliet E. K. Walker’s The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998) is a general historical overview of blacks in business across time. Of a more limited scope is A’Lelia Bundles’ On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker (New York: Scribner, 2001), touted as a definitive biography of a black woman entrepreneur before 1919. Africans in North America Between 1619 and 1808, less than one million Africans were transported involuntarily to North America. Documentation for 27,233 voyages is available in The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: A Data Base on CD-Rom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Statistics alone tell little about the human conditions; but, the special issue “New Perspectives on the Transatlantic 2 Slave Trade,” William and Mary Quarterly 58 (January 2001), contains insightful essays that combine sheer numbers with interpretative narratives. G. Ugo Nwokeji, “African Conceptions of Gender and the Slave Traffic,” (47-68); and, David Richardson, “Shipboard Revolts, African Authority, and the Atlantic Slave,” (69-93), are but two examples. For a first-hand account by Middle Passage survivors, see Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano: Written by Himself, edited by Robert J. Allison (Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1995). Questions regarding the veracity of Equiano’s richly detailed book, which is not at variance with others on the subject, surfaced soon after it appeared in 1787. Vincent Carretta’s “Olaudah Equino or Gustavus Vassa? New Light on an Eighteenth-Century Question of Identity,” Slavery and Abolition 20 (December 1999): 96-103, delivers a succinct discussion of the matter. An overview of other narratives appears in Jerome S. Handler, “Survivors of the Middle Passage: Life Histories of Enslaved Africans in British America,” Slavery and Abolition 23 (April 2002): 23-56. Several autobiographies, including Venture Smith, mentioned in Handlin’s essay are readily available in print format and at the University of North Carolina website “Documenting the American South”–-http://docsouth.unc.edu.hmtl Slavery and freedom existed concomitantly, and Edmund S. 3 Morgan, American Slavery American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1975), offers a cogent explanation of the anomaly while T. H. Breen and Stephen Innes, "Myne Owne Ground": Race and Freedom on Virginia's Eastern Shore, 1640-1676 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980) personify the changing status of Africans in the Old Dominion. Kenneth Morgan’s Slavery and Servitude in Colonial North America: A Short History (Washington Square: New York University Press, 2000) covers much of the same argument as Morgan but includes a larger geographical region. Most general sources contain limited discussions of enslaved women, especially in the North, but Nell Irving Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996); C. W. Larison, Sylvia Dubois, A Biography of the Slave who Whipt her Mistres and Gand her Fredom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), and Kenneth E. Marshall, “Work, Family and Day-to-Day Survival on an Old Farm: Nance Melick, a Rural Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-century New Jersey Slave Woman,” Slavery and Abolition 19 (December 1998): 22-45, help to eradicate the void. The incongruent existence of slavery and freedom was most evident in Revolutionary America. As a result, states north of Delaware either abolished or made provisions for slavery’s gradual demise. Given its early efforts to end slavery, the 4 North is often characterized as bondage free. Lorenzo Johnston Greene, The Negro in Colonial New England (New York: Atheneum, 1974) counters the faulty notion, and Joanne Pope Melish’s Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780-1860 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998) chronicles abolition in New England. A highly readable treatment of slavery ending elsewhere in the North is Leslie M. Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626- 1863 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). A longtime interest in free blacks in the slave era has precipitated a wide range of publications. General sources include James Oliver Horton, Free People of Color: Inside the African American Community (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993); Leon Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961); and, Gary B. Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia's Black Community, 1720-1840 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). Both Shane White, Stories of Freedom in Black New York (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); and, Marvin McAllister, White People Do Not Know How to Behave at Entertainments Designed for Ladies & Gentlemen of Colour: William Brown’s African & American Theater (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003) are recommended for insight about a theatre company founded by former slaves in the 1820s. 5 Studies of free blacks in the South include Kimberly S. Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769-1803 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997) and, Daniel L. Schaefer, Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003). Monographs such as Adele Logan Alexander, Ambiguous Lives: Free Women of Color in Rural Georgia, 1789-1879 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1991); and, John Hope Franklin, The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1943), concentrate on specific geographical areas. The majority of free persons were economically deprived, but some were prosperous indeed. How they acquired, maintained, or disbursed their wealth in real and personal property--human beings--is of interest. Both Adrienne D. Davis, “The Private Law of Race and Sex: An Antebellum Perspective,” Stanford Law Review 51 (January 1999); and, Gary B. Mills, "Coincoin: An Eighteenth- Century 'Liberated' Woman," Journal of Southern History 42 (May 1976): 203-22, are useful in this regard. Other studies of propertied free blacks, such as Michael P. Johnson and James Roark, Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1984); Edwin Adams Davis and William Ransom Hogan, The Barber of Natchez (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973); and, Larry Koger, Black Slaveholders: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina 6 (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1985), lend themselves to more extensive treatments and challenge historian Carter G. Woodson’s argument claiming benevolence motivated black slaveowners. Conventional wisdom suggests that free blacks remained aloof from their enslaved contemporaries, but Whittington B. Johnson, Black Savannah, 1788-1864 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1996); Tommy L. Bogger, Free Blacks in Norfolk, Virginia, 1796-1860: The Darker Side of Freedom (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997); and Bernard E. Powers, Jr., Black Charlestonians: A Social History, 1822-1885 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1994), yield enough data to claim interactions among free and unfree blacks were more fluid than previously reported. Furthermore, Victoria Bynum’s Unruly Women: The Politics of Social & Sexual Control in the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), based largely on public records, may be used to expand the discussion of associations