Ira Berlin

Traces the development of Black society from the 1600s through the 1800s, describing the social conditions of both slaves and free Blacks

The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America

Many Thousands Gone

New-York Historical Society

Leslie Maria Harris

A history of slavery in New York City is told through contributions by leading historians of African-American life in New York and is published to coincide with a major exhibit, in an anthology that demonstrates how slavery shaped the city's everyday experiences and directly impacted its rise to a commercial and financial power. Original. 10,000 first printing.

Slavery in New York

A 400-year history of the African-American experience traces four pivotal migrations including the violent relocation of one million slaves to the antebellum South, the movement of millions to industrial cities a century later and the arrivals of black immigrants since the 1960s. Reprint.

The Four Great Migrations

The Making of African America

Ira Berlin offers a framework for understanding slavery’s demise in the United States. Emancipation was not an occasion but a century-long process of brutal struggle by generations of African Americans who were not naive about the price of freedom. Just as slavery was initiated and maintained by violence, undoing slavery also required violence.

The Demise of Slavery in the United States

The Long Emancipation

This book "...examines the recruitment of black men into the Union Army and the experiences of black soldiers under arms"--Introd.

Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation 1861-1867: Series 11: The Black Military Experience

Philip D. Morgan

Slaves achieved a degree of economic independence, producing food, tending cash crops, raising livestock, manufacturing furnished goods, marketing their own products, consuming and saving the proceeds and bequeathing property to their descendants. The editors of this volume contend that the legacy of slavery cannot be understood without a full appreciation of the slaves' economy.

Independent Production by Slaves in the Americas

The Slaves' Economy

Barbara J. Fields

Steven F. Miller

Leslie S. Rowland

Joseph P. Reidy

Three essays present an introduction and history of the emancipation of the slaves during the Civil War.

Three Essays on Emancipation and the Civil War

Slaves No More

Joseph Patrick Reidy

A publication of the Freedmen and Southern Society Project.

The Black Military Experience in the Civil War

Freedom's Soldiers

Marc Favreau

Draws on archival recordings to document the lives of slaves and their adjustment to freedom.

African Americans Talk about Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Freedom

Remembering Slavery

When it was first published fifteen years ago, this startling--and bestselling--first-person history of slavery was heralded as "powerful and intense" (Atlanta Journal Constitution) and "invaluable" (Chicago Tribune). Drawing from the thousands of interviews conducted with ex-slaves in the 1930s by researchers working with the Federal Writers' Project, this astonishing collection makes available the only known recordings of people who lived through the enormity of slavery. The groundbreaking interviews with former slaves collected in the original book-and-audio set of Remembering Slavery are now available for a new generation of readers and listeners in both affordable paperback and enhanced audio e-book.

African Americans Talk about Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation

Ira Berlin traces the history of African-American slavery in the United States from its beginnings in the seventeenth century to its fiery demise nearly three hundred years later. Most Americans, black and white, have a singular vision of slavery, one fixed in the mid-nineteenth century when most American slaves grew cotton, resided in the deep South, and subscribed to Christianity. Here, however, Berlin offers a dynamic vision, a major reinterpretation in which slaves and their owners continually renegotiated the terms of captivity. Slavery was thus made and remade by successive generations of Africans and African Americans who lived through settlement and adaptation, plantation life, economic transformations, revolution, forced migration, war, and ultimately, emancipation. Berlin's understanding of the processes that continually transformed the lives of slaves makes Generations of Captivity essential reading for anyone interested in the evolution of antebellum America. Connecting the Charter Generation to the development of Atlantic society in the seventeenth century, the Plantation Generation to the reconstruction of colonial society in the eighteenth century, the Revolutionary Generation to the Age of Revolutions, and the Migration Generation to American expansionism in the nineteenth century, Berlin integrates the history of slavery into the larger story of American life. He demonstrates how enslaved black people, by adapting to changing circumstances, prepared for the moment when they could seize liberty and declare themselves the Freedom Generation. This epic story, told by a master historian, provides a rich understanding of the experience of African-American slaves, an experience that continues to mobilize American thought and passions today.

A History of African-American Slaves

Generations of Captivity

The prize-winning classic volume by acclaimed historian Ira Berlin is now available in a handsome new edition, with a new preface by the author. It is a moving portrait of the quarter of a million free black men and women who lived in the South before the Civil War and describes the social and economic struggles that were part of life within this oppressive society. It is an essential work for both educators and general readers. Berlin's books have won many prizes and he is widely recognized as one of the leading scholars on slavery and African American life.

The Free Negro in the Antebellum South

Slaves Without Masters

Steven Miller

"A Best Book of the Year" —Library Journal and Booklist Using excerpts from the thousands of interviews conducted with ex-slaves in the 1930s by researchers working with the Federal Writer's Project, this astonishing collection makes available in print the only known recordings of people who actually experienced slavery--recordings that had gathered dust in the Library of Congress until they were rendered audible for the first time specifically for this collection. Heralded as "a minor miracle" (Ted Koppel, Nightline), "powerful and intense" (Atlanta Journal Constitution), and "invaluable" (Chicago Tribune), Remembering Slavery is sure to enrich readers for years to come. "Gripping and poignant... Moving recollections fill a void in the slavery literature." —The Washington Post Book World "Chilling [and] riveting... This project will enrich every American home and classroom." —Publisher's Weekly "Quite literally, history comes alive in this unparalleled work." —Library Journal "Ira Berlin's fifty-page introduction is as good a synthesis of current scholarship as one will find, filled with fresh insights for any reader." —The San Diego Union Tribune

Ira Berlin

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