Books in the The African American Experience Series series

The beginning of the twentieth century was an important time in African-American history. Segregation and discrimination were on the rise. Two seminal African American figures - Booker T Washington and W E B Du Bois - began to debate on ways to combat racial problems.

Distinguished scholar Betty Wood clearly explains the evolution of the transatlantic slave trade and compares the regional social and economic forces that affected the growth of slavery in early America. In addition, Wood provides a window into the reality of slavery, presenting a true picture of daily life throughout the colonies.

This book examines African Americans'' strategies for resisting white racial violence from the Civil War until the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968 and up to the Clinton era. Christopher Waldrep''s semi-biographical approach to the pioneers in the anti-lynching campaign portrays African Americans as active participants in the effort to end racial violence rather than as passive victims.  In telling this more than 100-year-old story of violence and resistance, Waldrep describes how white Americans legitimized racial violence after the Civil War, and how black journalists campaigned against the violence by invoking the Constitution and the law as a source of rights. He shows how, toward the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, anti-lynching crusaders Ida B. Wells and Monroe Work adopted a more sociological approach, offering statistics and case studies to thwart white claims that a black propensity for crime justified racial violence. Waldrep describes how the NAACP, founded in 1909, represented an organized, even bureaucratic approach to the fight against lynching. Despite these efforts, racial violence continued after World War II, as racists changed tactics, using dynamite more than the rope or the gun. Waldrep concludes by showing how modern day hate crimes continue the lynching tradition, and how the courts and grass-roots groups have continued the tradition of resistance to racial violence.  A rich selection of documents helps give the story a sense of immediacy. Sources include nineteenth-century eyewitness accounts of lynching, courtroom testimony of Ku Klux Klan victims, South Carolina senator Ben Tillman''s 1907 defense of lynching, and the text of the first federal hate crimes law.

The victorious end to the first World War offered hope to African Americans who had fought for freedom abroad and hoped to find it at home. Mark R. Schneider recounts the history of this turbulent era, paying particular attention to the ways in which African Americans actively challenged Jim Crow and firmly expressed pride in their heritage.

Drawing on more than thirty years of teaching and research, Neil A. Wynn combines narrative history and primary sources as he locates the World War II years within the long-term struggle for African Americans' equal rights.

Bayard Rustin was a unique twentieth-century American radical voice. A homosexual, World War II draft resister, and ex-communist, Rustin made enormous contributions to the civil rights, socialist, labor, peace, and gay rights movements in the United States, despite being viewed as an "outsider" by fellow activists. Author Jerold Podair also includes excerpts from Rustin's writings, speeches, letters, and statements, allowing the reader to gain firsthand interaction with one of the most important civil rights leaders-and one of the most important radical leaders-in twentieth-century American history.

Explores the social and professional paradoxes facing African-American soldiers in Vietnam.

Before the emergence of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr, there were several key leaders who fought for civil rights in the US. Among them was A Philip Randolph, who perhaps best embodied the hopes, ideals, and aspirations of black Americans. This book explores Randolph's influences and accomplishments as both a labor and civil rights leader.

In this book, historian Emily West offers the first comprehensive overview of the lives of enslaved women in America by placing their stories within the broader context of slavery in this country from the colonial era through to the end of the Civil War.

In Caring for Equality David McBride chronicles the struggle by African Americans and their white allies to improve poor black health conditions as well as inadequate medical care-caused by slavery, racism, and discrimination-since the arrival of African slaves in America.

Paying Freedom's Price provides a comprehensive yet brief and readable history of the role of African Americans-both slave and free-from the decade leading up to the Civil War until its immediate aftermath.

More than a Game discusses how African American men and women sought to participate in sport and what that participation meant to them, the African American community, and the country. It discusses the varied experiences of African Americans in sport and how their participation has both reflected and changed views of race.