Books, Teens, Series, History

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Colin A. Palmer
The First Passage: Blacks in the Americas 1502-1617 (Young Oxford History of African Americans, Vol. 1)
by Oxford University Press, USA (Hardcover)

The history of African Americans begins in Africa, a continent that was home to people with different languages, traditions, histories, and religions. They called themselves Twi, Yoruba, Zulu, Ashanti, and Kumba, among other names. In the early sixteenth century Europeans turned to Africa for the labor force needed to mine, cultivate, and process the bounty of natural resources in the newly colonized Americas. As many as 12 million Africans from varied ethnic backgrounds endured forced migration and enslavement. Out of their suffering was forged a new people--no longer simply Twi, Yoruba, Ashanti, or Kumba. In the Americas, they first became Africans and then African Americans. The First Passage examines the first century of the recorded black presence in the Americas. The ordeal of the Atlantic crossing gave way to the isolation and humiliation of slavery and the loss of friends and family. Some slaves attempted rebellion and escape. Others maintained as many religious and ...

Joe William Trotter
From a Raw Deal to a New Deal: African Americans 1929-1945 (The Young Oxford History of African Americans ; Vol. 8)
by Oxford University Press, USA (Hardcover)

Bank closings, soup kitchens, bread lines, unemployed workers begging for work--these images defined the 1930s and '40s in America. For African Americans the era was a study in contrasts: black workers had the highest unemployment rate at a time when black leaders held important positions in Franklin Roosevelt's administration; New Deal legislation threw hundreds of thousands of black sharecroppers off the land while the same federal government provided unprecedented opportunities for black writers and artists; dramatic episodes of racist violence against African Americans occurred just as Communists and other radicals launched a nationwide campaign against racial injustice. When the United States entered World War II in 1941, the horrors of war provided an opportunity for blacks to demand equal treatment. As the African American servicemen, such as the all-black 99th fighter squadron (also known as the "Tuskegee Airmen"), fought for democracy overseas, black people at home were ...

Jane Kamensky
The Colonial Mosaic: American Women 1600-1760 (Young Oxford History of Women in the United States Series ))
by Oxford University Press, USA (Paperback)

Colonial "women's work" was hard, physical labor. In the South, the urgency of farming crops for export stretched a woman's workday from sunrise to sunset. It was not much different in New England, though the goal was more often to maintain the family and set aside enough to get through the harsh winter. In the 17th and early 18th century, nearly endless toil marked the lives of the majority of American women, regardless of their region, color, or status. Most women in the colonies, enslaved and free, were farm wives, giving birth to children and working hard to raise them. Yet, as Jane Kamensky shows in this volume, some women entered this era with rising expectations. They were marrying whom and when they chose, or choosing to remain unmarried. They were fleeing cruel masters in search of a better life. Women's voices were heard, though not all in the same tones or claiming the same rights. During these years women such as Anne Hutchinson had to leave Massachusetts when she ...

Elaine Tyler May
Pushing the Limits: American Women 1940-1961 (Young Oxford History of Women in the United States , Vol 9)
by Oxford University Press, USA (Paperback)

Americans living in the mid 20th century saw momentous change. A decade of severe economic depression in the 1930s was followed by the largest scale war the world had ever seen. In Pushing the Limits, Elaine Tyler May shows how women's lives in the United States reflected and helped to shape these world changes. During the war, women joined the military effort through the WACS (Women's Army Corps) and the WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Services). Production demands drew women into manufacturing jobs and broadcast the famous image of Rosie the Riveter. After the war, women were encouraged to give up their jobs to the returning veterans and resume their tasks as wives and mothers. We discover that women of all backgrounds pushed the limits of their circumstances, whether they were college educated homemakers working to elevate the job of housewife to a respected career, working class women struggling to preserve the gains of wartime, or African American women ...

John Demos
The Tried and the True: Native American Women Confronting Colonization (The Young Oxford History of Women in the United States, Vol 1)
by Oxford University Press, USA (Hardcover)

The first of the women we now call Native American were among the prehistoric nomads who crossed a land bridge between Asia and North America 40,000 years ago. Over centuries, these humans formed larger bands, and eventually farming villages and even larger units, the seeds of the many tribes and nations that we call Indians or Native Americans. In most of these cultures, women held positions of honor in the community. John Demos looks at four Native American groups--the Puebloans of the North American Southwest, the Iroquois of the Northeast woodlands, the fur-trading tribes of the central Great Lakes region, and the Cherokees of the interior Southeast--and explores the possibilities open to women and how colonization by Europeans forever changed their lives. In many Indian tribes, property passed through the female line, from mothers to daughters to granddaughters, giving women considerable power and influence through the link to their clan. Women often held the primary ...

Noralee Frankel
Break Those Chains at Last: African Americans 1860-1880 (The Young Oxford History of African Americans ; Vol. 5)
by Oxford University Press, USA (Paperback)

"We thought we'd break those chains at last," sang the slaves, hoping such spirituals would sustain them until the Confederacy surrendered and slavery was gone forever. During the Civil War, blacks served in the Union army and navy (although some fought for the South) and in Union-controlled camps, which harbored fleeing slaves. Not all slaves escaped, but even those who remained with their masters began to imagine a new life. After the war, amendments to the Constitution abolished slavery, granted citizenship to freed people, and gave African-American men the right to vote. Freedom, blacks hoped, would also mean political equality and economic well-being. Some moved from rural areas to cities in the South or North; others looked to the West, where many African-American men became farmers or found work as cattle-drive cooks and cowboys. But many whites viewed freedom for African Americans as a threat, and they responded by establishing white supremacy organizations such as the ...

Marylynn Salmon
The Limits of Independence: American Women 1760-1800 (Young Oxford History of Women in the United States , Vol 3)
by Oxford University Press, USA (Paperback)

The second half of the 18th century saw a handful of English colonies transform themselves into a nation. This process involved not only a revolution against the British crown but also the uniting of a diverse population; in addition to the English who made up the bulk of the population, Africans and continental Europeans joined in the creation of the new republic. Although tradition dictated that the independent male citizen was the most important actor in this drama, political leaders soon learned that the support of women was essential to the success of a republican form of government. Salmon demonstrates the new directions in women's lives, including reforms in education, that occurred during this era of experimentation. She also delineates the ways in which women's lives remained constrained by the racial and cultural assumptions of the age, for while white women's horizons expanded, Native American women and women of African descent suffered greatly. Educator Judith Sargent ...

Robin D. G. Kelley
Into the Fire: African Americans Since 1970 (Young Oxford History of African Americans, V. 10)
by Oxford University Press, USA (Hardcover)

When something goes from bad to worse, we say it "fell out of the frying pan and into the fire." This timeless phrases succinctly captures what has happened to the majority of African Americans since the 1970s. The civil rights movement of the 1960s brought about remarkable gains for most black people, and by 1970 African Americans were beginning to be key figures in national politics and in corporate board rooms. The black middle class was decidedly growing, and thus a handful of African Americans escaped the frying pan altogether. But after 1970, heavy industry began to disappear as American companies looked to foreign lands for cheaper manufacturing. Millions of jobs were lost. The number of black poor began to grow dramatically, city services declined, federal spending on cities dried up, affirmative action programs were dismantled, blatant acts of racism began to rise again, and the United States entered a deep economic recession. But this decline is only part of the story. ...

Daniel C. Littlefield
Revolutionary Citizens: African Americans 1776-1804 (The Young Oxford History of African Americans, V. 3)
by Oxford University Press, USA (Paperback)

It is not entirely clear who provoked the British musket fire at the Custom House in Boston on March 5, 1770, but the volley wounded eight men and killed five. Crispus Attucks, a tall, young mulatto, was one of the men who died in the confrontation. He would later become a revolutionary hero, celebrated as "the first to defy, and the first to die" in the cause of colonial liberty that went down in history as the Boston Massacre. When the American Revolution broke out six years later, African Americans like Crispus Attucks were among the first to rally to Patriot banners. As they fought to free their country, they also fought to free themselves from slavery. This nation's fight for independence from Great Britain laid bare the contradictions between slavery and freedom for African Americans. It was a contradiction many resolved to settle. Some joined with other colonists in striking direct blows for liberty. Others, meanwhile, heard the pleas for loyalty to the British crown, and ...

Peter H. Wood
Strange New Land: African Americans 1617-1776 (The Young Oxford History of African Americans ; Vol. 2)
by Oxford University Press, USA (Paperback)

For Africans who survived the trans-Atlantic journey and were forced to disembark at one of the many ports along the coast of Britain's North American colonies, what lay before them was indeed a strange new land. Although forms of bondage had existed in West and Central Africa long before the trans Atlantic slave trade began, human beings were rarely the main commodity at the marketplace. Here in the modern world, the enslaved African was inspected, assessed, auctioned, bought, sold, bartered, and treated in any manner the owner saw fit. Slaves did not always cooperate. They fought and ran away, or made the business of commercial farming more difficult by not working efficiently. In spite of their condition and despite different ethnic backgrounds and languages, enslaved Africans forged a strong sense of community. The Africans learned the English language and made it their own. They learned Christianity and transformed it. Others held fast to Islam or combined their own ...

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