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Creating Black Americans:
African American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present
Nell Irvin Painter
ISBN: 0195137558
Format: Hardcover, 458pp
Pub. Date: October 2005
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Price: $35.00
BBP Price: $26.25 Save 25%
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FROM THE PUBLISHER
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 fullcolor--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.
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