A Faithful Account of the Race: African American Historical Writing in Nineteenth-Century America / Edition 1

by Stephen G. Hall

Overview

The civil rights and black power movements expanded popular awareness of the history and culture of African Americans. But, as Stephen Hall observes, African American authors, intellectuals, ministers, and abolitionists had been writing the history of the black experience since the 1800s. With this book, Hall recaptures and reconstructs a rich but largely overlooked tradition of historical writing by African Americans.

Hall charts the origins, meanings, methods, evolution, and maturation of African American historical writing from the period of the Early Republic to the twentieth-century professionalization of the larger field of historical study. He demonstrates how these works borrowed from and engaged with ideological and intellectual constructs from mainstream intellectual movements including the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Realism, and Modernism. Hall also explores the creation of discursive spaces that simultaneously reinforced and offered counternarratives to more mainstream historical discourse. He sheds fresh light on the influence of the African diaspora on the development of historical study. In so doing, he provides a holistic portrait of African American history informed by developments within and outside the African American community.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807859674
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	10/15/2009
Series:	The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture
Edition description:	1
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Stephen G. Hall is assistant professor of history at Alcorn State University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1 Troubling the Pages of Historians

African American Intellectuals and Historical Writing in the Early Republic, 1817-1837 17

2 To Present a Just View of Our Origin

Creating an African American Historical Discourse, 1837-1850 49

3 The Destiny of the Colored People

African American History between Compromise and Jubilee, 1850-1863 86

4 The Historical Mind of Emancipation

Writing African American History at the Dawn of Freedom, 1863-1882 123

5 Advancement in Numbers, Knowledge, and Power

African American History in Post-Reconstruction America, 1883-1915 151

6 To Smite the Rock of Knowledge

The Black Academy and the Professionalization of History 188

Conclusion 227

Notes 235

Bibliography 291

Index 327

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

A Faithful Account of the Race is a definitive study of nineteenth-century African American historical writing. Hall's contribution to the field is original, deeply informed, and much needed. No other book covers such a wide range of historians and texts, and no one else has yet covered so much territory so well. A stunning achievement, an important and timely book that challenges much of the conventional wisdom.—John Ernest, author of Chaotic Justice: Rethinking African American Literary History

Editorial Reviews

Highly recommended.—Choice



The book's immense strength lies in its breadth and expansiveness. In conducting a chronological examination . . . Hall is able to present a wide range of understudied texts. . . . Critically important to the development and evolution of African American historiography.—Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography



The distinctive contributions of A Faithful Account of the Race is not that it considers black understandings of the black experience, but that it selects one set of these black historical writings and weaves them into a 120-year story of the ways in which African Americans thought about black people in history, both as actors and as the subjects of action. . . . [An] excellent book.—North Carolina Historical Review



A fine first book. . . . It is persuasively argued and succeeds in enhancing our understanding of the development of early black history. . . . Clearly organized. . . . Well written. . . . Its subject of nineteenth-century black history texts is thoroughly researched.—H-Net Reviews



Hall takes his subjects seriously as thinkers and historians and places them in the context of their time, rather than judging them according to modern standards of historical scholarship or analyzing them through the lens of modern racial concerns. . . . Fascinating and illuminating. . . . By demonstrating the richness and complexity of nineteenth-century African-American historical writing, Hall contributes to our understanding of American historiography and intellectual history.—Journal of American History



Extensively researched and well written, this monograph does more than establish the credibility of nineteenth-century black historical writings. Hall successfully locates the professionalization of black history within a continuum that stretches back to the early republic.—American Historical Review



Stephen G. Hall provides a solid introduction to early African American historical writing, reflecting a reverence for, and a mastery of, his subject.—Journal of Southern History



Provocative, groundbreaking, interdisciplinary historical methodology.—African American Review



With his insightful book as a starting point, Stephen Hall is pointing us in the right direction.—American Nineteenth Century History

From the Publisher