The Roots of African-American Identity: Memory and History in Free Antebellum Communities

Spanning the eight decades between the American Revolution and the Civil War, Bethel focuses on the lives of African Americans living in the nominally free northern and western states. Examining race and the construction of a politicized racial identity, this book explores how a group of fundamentally marginalized people crafted a uniquely New World ethnic identity which informed popular African American historical consciousness. The vision of freedom and historical consciousness this population crafted shaped post-1865 African American participation in Reconstruction, formed the spiritual and ideological foundation for the modern Pan-African movement and provided the historical legacy for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Author: Bethel, Elizabeth Rauh
Published: 10/06/1997
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
ISBN: 9780312128609
Pages: 260
Weight: 1.17lbs
Size: 8.94h x 5.88w x 0.90d