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The University of North Carolina Press
352 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, notes, bibl., index
The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture
A Faithful Account of the Race
African American Historical Writing in Nineteenth-Century America
The civil rights and black power movements expanded popular awareness of the history and culture of African Americans. But, as Stephen Hall observes, African American authors, intellectuals, ministers, and abolitionists had been writing the history of the black experience since the 1800s. With this book, Hall recaptures and reconstructs a rich but largely overlooked tradition of historical writing by African Americans.
Hall charts the origins, meanings, methods, evolution, and maturation of African American historical writing from the period of the Early Republic to the twentieth-century professionalization of the larger field of historical study. He demonstrates how these works borrowed from and engaged with ideological and intellectual constructs from mainstream intellectual movements including the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Realism, and Modernism. Hall also explores the creation of discursive spaces that simultaneously reinforced and offered counternarratives to more mainstream historical discourse. He sheds fresh light on the influence of the African diaspora on the development of historical study. In so doing, he provides a holistic portrait of African American history informed by developments within and outside the African American community.
"A Faithful Account of the Race is a definitive study of nineteenth-century African American historical writing. Hall's contribution to the field is original, deeply informed, and much needed. No other book covers such a wide range of historians and texts, and no one else has yet covered so much territory so well. A stunning achievement, an important and timely book that challenges much of the conventional wisdom."
--John Ernest, author of Chaotic Justice: Rethinking African American Literary History
"In perhaps the most thorough examination of African American historical writing and consciousness in the last decade, Hall considers the evolving scope and intent of black history writing during the long nineteenth century, the nature of black cultural production both before and after the Civil War, and black history writers' attempts to engage the wider world of biblical hermeneutics, enlightenment thought, and romantic idealism while at the same time sharpening the very meaning of black historical consciousness. Hall's writing is sharp, and his research is deep and learned."
--Richard S. Newman, author of The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic
Cloth: $65.00
Paper: $22.95
© 2009 The University of North Carolina Press
116 South Boundary Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27514-3808
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