The Cause of Freedom: A Concise History of African Americans
Jonathan Scott Holloway
May 2021 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Bill Andrew Quinn
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4 hr 7 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. If being "American" means living in a land of freedom and opportunity, what are we to make of those Americans who were enslaved and who have suffered from the limitations of second-class citizenship throughout their lives? African American history illuminates the United States' 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. The Cause of Freedom 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.
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.
Bill Andrew Quinn, a nationally recognized commercial and promo voice actor, has been narrating audiobooks since 1993. When not behind the microphone, Bill can be found doing research for his radio show The Bill Andrew Quinn Radio Hour X2, watching his beloved St. Louis Cardinals on the MLB Network, or sampling craft beer.
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