African American History: A Very Short Introduction
Jonathan Scott Holloway
Feb 2023 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Diontae Black
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4 hr 10 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
What does it mean to be an American? The story of the African American past demonstrates the difficulty of answering this seemingly simple question. This book illuminates the US's core paradoxes, inviting profound questions about what it means to be an American, a citizen, and a human being. This book considers how, for centuries, African Americans have fought for what the black feminist intellectual Anna Julia Cooper called "the cause of freedom." It begins in Jamestown in 1619, when the first shipment of enslaved Africans arrived in that settlement. It narrates the creation of a system of racialized chattel slavery, the eventual dismantling of that system in the national bloodletting of the Civil War, and the ways that civil rights disputes have continued to erupt in the more than 150 years since Emancipation. This Very Short Introduction carries forward to the Black Lives Matter movement, a grass-roots activist convulsion that declared that African Americans' present and past have value and meaning. At a moment when political debates grapple with the nation's obligation to acknowledge and perhaps even repair its original sin of racialized slavery, author Jonathan Scott Holloway tells a story about American citizens' capacity and willingness to realize the ideal articulated in America's founding document, namely, that all people were created equal.
About the author
Jonathan Scott Holloway is president of Rutgers University. He was formerly provost at Northwestern University and Dean of Yale College. He specializes in intellectual and social history, with an emphasis on post-emancipation United States history. His books include Jim Crow Wisdom and Confronting the Veil.
Diontae Black is a young and upcoming talent. He is a graduate of Auburn University with a BA in music and a BFA in musical theater performance. In addition to performing in musicals, operas, and choral concerts, Diontae has a passion for playing video games and exploring the ever-growing world of voice-over.
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