Hard Road to Freedom: The Story of African America - Softcover

Horton, James O.

3.76

17 ratings by Goodreads

9780813528519: Hard Road to Freedom: The Story of African America

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813528518 ISBN 13: 9780813528519

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 2001

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Since Hard Road to Freedom was released, it has garnered universal acclaim. Rutgers University Press is pleased to announce the availability of this book in two separate volumes for courses in African American history that span two semesters. Volume I includes the following chapters:

Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade
The Evolution of Slavery in British North America
Slavery and Freedom in the Age of Revolution
The Early Republic and the Rise of the Cotton Kingdom
Slavery and the Slave Community
Free People of Color and the Fight against Slavery
From Militancy to Civil War

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From the Back Cover:

Hard Road to Freedom tells the story of African America from its African roots to the political and social upheavals at the end of the twentieth century. It interweaves the experiences of individual black Americans with an analysis of the nation's pursuit of its fundamental principles, of freedom, and civil rights. The book begins with African cultures and the African people who withstood the horrors of the slave trade and slavery to help shape a new multiracial society in North America.

The American Revolution brought freedom to some, but most remained in the grip of slavery. African Americans and their allies continually raised the cry for freedom, building determined black communities and dedicated antislavery organizations that contributed to the abolition of slavery. The precarious freedom after the Civil War brought new opportunities, but also new dangers and the limitations of Jim Crow. The wars and the depression in the early twentieth century found black Americans forging new alliances, creating a cultural renaissance, and fighting for democracy and freedom abroad. At home, they struggled against the denials of freedom and citizenship that still barred their full participation and that tarnished America's standing in the eyes of the international community. Throughout the social and political turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s and the political and cultural backlash that followed, African Americans continued to raise their voices in often eloquent and always insistent appeals that the nation live up to the promise of its principles.

This book tells of America's unsteady advance along the road to freedom, the triumphs and hope, as well as the failures and despair, from the vantage point of the African Americans who resolutely played a critical role in that story. AUTHORBIO: James Oliver Horton, the Benjamin Banneker Professor of American Studies and History at the George Washington University, directs the Africa American Communities Project at the Smithsonian Institution. Lois E. Horton is professor of sociology and American studies at George Mason University. They are coauthors of several books, including In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community and Protest Among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860 and Black Bostonians: Family Life and Community Struggle in the Antebellum North.

From Booklist:

Hard Road to Freedom is an extraordinary contribution to the literature on the African American experience. The Hortons most assuredly will be compared to such influential writers on the subject as John Hope Franklin and C. Eric Lincoln. This academic yet readable work highlights the contributions and struggles of black people in the U.S. from their arrival from Africa to the new social order of the multicultural twenty-first century. The Hortons detail the Atlantic slave trade, slavery in British North America, and slavery during the age of revolution, the early republic, and the rise of cotton. Other topics include the fight against slavery, militancy and civil war, and Reconstruction and Jim Crow. The twentieth-century political and popular issues facing African Americans discussed here include populism, industrial union, the Harlem Renaissance, postwar civil rights, civil rights and black power, and conservatism and race in multicultural America. The book ends optimistically: "blacks will continue the struggle along the hard road to freedom, justice, and equality," a point that the Hortons have proved with their careful discussion, telling illustrations, and exhaustive research. Lillian Lewis
Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved

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