Liberation Historiography: African American Writers and the Challenge of History, 1794-1861As the story of the United States was recorded in pages written by white historians, early-nineteenth-century African American writers faced the task of piecing together a counterhistory: an approach to history that would present both the necessity of and the means for the liberation of the oppressed. In Liberation Historiography, John Ernest demonstrates that African Americans created a body of writing in which the spiritual, the historical, and the political are inextricably connected. Their literature serves not only as historical recovery but also as historical intervention. Ernest studies various cultural forms including orations, books, pamphlets, autobiographical narratives, and black press articles. He shows how writers such as Martin R. Delany, David Walker, Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, and Harriet Jacobs crafted their texts in order to resituate their readers in a newly envisioned community of faith and moral duty. Antebellum African American historical representation, Ernest concludes, was both a reading of source material on black lives and an unreading of white nationalist history through an act of moral imagination. |
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Contents
Introduction | 1 |
ONE The Theater of History | 39 |
Two Scattered Lives Scattered Documents Writing Liberation History | 95 |
Copyright | |
7 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Liberation Historiography: African American Writers and the Challenge of ... John Ernest Limited preview - 2004 |
Liberation Historiography: African American Writers and the Challenge of ... John Ernest No preview available - 2005 |
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abolitionists African American African American history American history antislavery argued argument asserts attempt authority Bancroft become begins Brown called cause chapter character Christian Civil claims collective Colored Colored American concerns condition Constitution construction continues convention course cultural defined Delany developing discourse documents Douglass early effect efforts emphasized establish example experience fact follows force fragments historians human identify identity imagined important includes individual interested language Lewis liberation liberty light lives look means mode moral narrative narrator nature Negro Nell North notes oppression oration origins past performance period political practice present Press principles published race racial readers reading recognized record relation representative response shaped significant simply slave slavery social Society speak story struggle suggests tell thought tion Truth understanding United University University Press various vision voice writing York
Bibliographic information
| Title | Liberation Historiography: African American Writers and the Challenge of History, 1794-1861 Liberation Historiography: African American Writers and the Challenge of History, 1794-1861, John Ernest |
| Author | John Ernest |
| Publisher | University of North Carolina Press, 2004 |
| Original from | the University of Michigan |
| Digitized | Jan 11, 2010 |
| ISBN | 0807855219, 9780807855218 |
| Length | 426 pages |
| Subjects | › › › History / United States / 19th Century Literary Criticism / American / African American & Black Social Science / Ethnic Studies / American / African American & Black Studies |
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