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Black History Month: After Emancipation

In honor of Black History Month this Research Guide will show what is available at the SVC library and online.

Books in the Library - click arrows for more

Been in the Storm So Long : the aftermath of slavery

Based on hitherto un-examined sources: interviews with ex-slaves, diaries and accounts by former slaveholders, this "rich and admirably written book" (Eugene Genovese, The New York Times Book Review) aims to show how, during the Civil War and after Emancipation, blacks and whites interacted in ways that dramatized not only their mutual dependency, but the ambiguities and tensions that had always been latent in "the peculiar institution. 651 pages.

Reconstruction

 An anthology of revisionist writings

The American Crucible: slavery, emancipation and human rights

This book is a history of the rise and abolition of slavery in the Americas and covers such topics as the plantation revolution of the seventeenth century, the emergence of anti-slavery thought, and the contributions of such figures as Thomas Paine and Frederick Douglass. 498 pages.

The Emancipation Proclamation

Manuscript (ebook from Project Gutenberg)

Jim Crow - click arrows for more

Remembering Jim Crow : African Americans tell about life in the segregated South

Oral histories of the searing experiences of the Jim Crow years. Men & women of all walks of life tell how their day-to-day lives were subjected ot profound & unrelenting racial oppression. 346 pages.

Stony the road : Reconstruction, white supremacy, and the rise of Jim Crow

A history that moves from the Reconstruction Era to the 'nadir' of the African-American experience under Jim Crow, through to World War I and the Harlem Renaissance. Gates reveals the faces of Jim Crow and how, together, they reinforced a stark color line between white and black Americans. He uncovers the roots of structural racism in our own time, while showing how African Americans after slavery combatted it by articulating a vision of a "New Negro" to force the nation to recognize their humanity and unique contributions to America as it hurtled toward the modern age.

Online Resources

All Content CC-BY.