African American Voices: A Documentary Reader from Emancipation to the Present

Compelling and enlightening, this collection of primary source documents allows African-American voices to speak unmediated to today’s students. African American Voices includes documents that range from the emancipation to the present day. A vital addition to the Wiley-Blackwell series , “Uncovering the Past: Documentary Readers in American History,” this collection features a diversity of material revealing much about the evolution of African American history through speeches, photographs, essays, newspaper articles, minutes of meetings, and reports. The skilfully selected documents are supported by concise contextual commentary that includes thematic overviews as well as key notes on the documents and their authors.

Each chapter features a mix of accessible and more challenging documents, making the book suitable for a range of course levels and abilities. Arranged chronologically, it highlights central themes and provides students with opportunities for creative engagement and historical interpretation. As it deepens students’ appreciation of historical perspectives, it presents African Americans as key players in their own history, co-builders of a rising nation, and combatants in a communal struggle for their rights. In rendering diverse black voices - male and female; rural and urban; elite, middle- and working-class; radical and conservative - across regions and generations, African American Voices also explores how African Americans shaped, and were shaped by, one of American history’s greatest motifs: the realization of fundamental freedoms and rights.