The Shaping of Black America"What forces transformed Africans into African-Americans? How did they sustain themselves during centuries of captivity and oppression? In what way did their presence shape the attitudes--and fortunes--of white America? How did black people become a nation within a nation? And what are the prospects for that nation in the 1990s?" "These are among the questions that Lerone Bennett, Jr., addresses in this triumphant companion volume to his epochal Before the Mayflower. Where that book rendered the African-American experience chronologically, The Shaping of Black America tells its story from a developmental perspective. Its first section, "Foundations," encompasses black slaves and white indentured servants, the black founding fathers, and the relationship between African-Americans and Indians. In the second section, "Directions," Bennett traces the growth of black labor and black capital and the development of a system that unites and separates blacks and whites. The result is a bald and literate work that persuasively demonstrates its author's notion that "blacks lived a different time and a different reality in this country." Book jacket."--Jacket. |
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Absalom Jones acres areas bank barber became black America black and white black artisans black business black businessmen black community black entrepreneurs black labor black leaders black pioneers black workers capital Chicago church City colonies colored created Cuffee cultural decades Douglass DuBois DuSable English European fact force Frederick Douglass Free African Society free blacks freedmen freedom hundred important indentured servants industry institutions James James Forten John Johnson Jubilee land later laws living masters ment merchants movement National Labor Union Negro North number of blacks oppression organized percent period persons Philadelphia plantations planters political poor whites race racial racism Radical Republican runaways Seminoles settlers ship situation slave community slavemasters slavery social Society sold South Carolina Southern thousand tion trade Virginia W. E. B. DuBois Washington white Americans white labor white servants white servitude white workers William words York