It is impossible to understand America without understanding the history of African Americans. In nearly seven hundred entries, the Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895 documents the full range of the African American experience during that period - from the arrival of the first slave ship to the death of Frederick Douglass - and shows how all aspects of American culture, history, and national identity have been profoundly influenced by the experience of African Americans.The Encyclopedia covers an extraordinary range of subjects. Major topics such as "Abolitionism," "Black Nationalism," the "Civil War," the "Dred Scott case," "Reconstruction," "Slave Rebellions and Insurrections," the "Underground Railroad," and "Voting Rights" are given the in-depth treatment one would expect. But the encyclopedia also contains hundreds of fascinating entries on less obvious subjects, such as the "African Grove Theatre," "Black Seafarers," "Buffalo Soldiers," the "Catholic Church and African Americans," "Cemeteries and Burials," "Gender," "Midwifery," "New York African Free Schools," "Oratory and Verbal Arts," "Religion and Slavery," the "Secret Six," and much more. In addition, the Encyclopedia offers brief biographies of important African Americans - as well as white Americans who have played a significant role in African American history - from Crispus Attucks, John Brown, and Henry Ward Beecher to Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, Sarah Grimke, Sojourner Truth, Nat Turner, Phillis Wheatley, and many others.All of the Encyclopedia's alphabetically arranged entries are accessibly written and free of jargon and technical terms. To facilitate ease of use, many composite entries gather similar topics under one headword. The entry for Slave Narratives, for example, includes three subentries: The Slave Narrative in America from the Colonial Period to the Civil War, Interpreting Slave Narratives, and African and British Slave Narratives. A headnote detailing the various subentries introduces each composite entry. Selective bibliographies and cross-references appear at the end of each article to direct readers to related articles within the Encyclopedia and to primary sources and scholarly works beyond it. A topical outline, chronology of major events, nearly 300 black and white illustrations, and comprehensive index further enhance the work's usefulness.

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From Amos 'n' Andy to The Jeffersons to Family Matters to Chappelle's Show, this volume covers it all with entries on all different genres_animation, documentaries, sitcoms, sports, talk shows, and variety shows_and performers such as Muhammad Ali, Louis Armstrong, Bill Cosby, and Oprah Winfrey. Additionally, information can be found on general issues, ranging from African American audiences and stereotypes through the related networks and organizations. This book has hundreds of cross-referenced entries, from A to Z, in the dictionary and a list of acronyms with their corresponding definitions. The extensive chronology shows who did what and when and the introduction traces the often difficult circumstances African American performers faced compared to the more satisfactory present situation. Finally, the bibliography is useful to those readers who want to know more about specific topics or persons.

Alphabetically-arranged entries from O to T that explores significant events, major persons, organizations, and political and social movements in African-American history from 1896 to the twenty-first-century.

The geographical focus of the dictionary is the United States. The time frame for most essays is the period from the first English settlement in North America to Reconstruction after the Civil War. Selected biographies of prominent individuals involved in slavery, and of less-known but representative figures in Afro-American history add a variety of individual involvements with and responses to slavery in North America.

Disability is often mentioned in discussions of slave health, mistreatment and abuse, but constructs of how "able" and "disabled" bodies influenced the institution of slavery has gone largely overlooked. This volume uncovers a history of disability in African American slavery from the primary record, analyzing how concepts of race, disability, and power converged in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. Slaves with physical and mental impairments often faced unique limitations and conditions in their diagnosis, treatment, and evaluation as property. Slaves with disabilities proved a significant challenge to white authority figures, torn between the desire to categorize them as different or defective and the practical need to incorporate their "disorderly" bodies into daily life. Being physically "unfit" could sometimes allow slaves to escape the limitations of bondage and oppression, and establish a measure of self-control. Furthermore, ideas about and reactions to disability—appearing as social construction, legal definition, medical phenomenon, metaphor, or masquerade—highlighted deep struggles over bodies in bondage in antebellum America.

Since 1865 African-American architects have been designing and building houses and public buildings, but the architects are virtually unknown. This work brings their lives and work to light for the first time.