From Timbuktu to Katrina: readings in African-American history

1. AFRICAN ORIGINS. The "Golden Age" of African history

Ibn Battuta describes The Sultan of Mali, Ca. 1354

Leo Africanus describes Timbucktu, Ca. 1515

John Barbot on The Government of Benin, 1682

Table: The slave trade over four centuries

Slavery In global perspective

The slave trade: A slaver's account

The enslavement of Venture Smith

Olaudah Equiano describes The Middle Passage

The Middle Passage: A slave Mutiny, 1704

Omar Ibn Seid: From Senegal to North Carolina

A defense of the African slave trade

2. THE EVOLUTION OF BLACK SOCIETY. Color consciousness In 16th century England

Esteban, The Black Katsina

Isabel De Olvera arrives In New Mexico

Virginia's first arrivals: The Anthony Johnson saga

A Quaker resolution against slavery, 1652

A New Netherlands peition for freedom, 1661

Marriage In colonial New Mexico: The Rodriguez saga

African Vs. Indian slavery

Of captains and kings: Slavery In colonial New York

Eighteenth century black slave codes

African slaves and the development of rice cultivation

Darien, Georgia protest against slavery, 1739

The Stono Rebellion, 1739

The New York City slave plot, 1741: Statement of a condemned man

3. SLAVERY AND FREEDOM IN THE REVOLUTIONARY ERA. A funeral for Crispus Attucks, Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick and James Caldwell

Massachusetts slaves petition for freedom, 1773

The Silver Bluff Baptist Church, 1773

Caesar Sarter's essay on slavery, 1774

Lord Dunmore's Proclamation

Colonel Tye: Black loyalist leader

Rhode Island enlists slaves In Its Militia, 1778

Petition of New Hampshire slaves

A Massachusetts tax protest petition, 1780

The founding of Los Angeles

The end of slavery In Massachusetts, 1783

Document: George Washington signs discharge papers for Pvt. Brister Baker

A North Carolina soldier's freedom petition 1784

The debate over the black mind

The poetry of Phillis Wheatley

Founding the African Methodist Episcopal Church

The Free African society

Benjamin Banneker writes Thomas Jefferson

Prince Hall speaks to black Masons, 179. 4. AMERICAN SLAVERY. The plantation complex

Haiti and the fears of slaveholders

A Northerner's description of slavery

Two views of slavery

An Alabama lynching, 1827

The importance of "breeding." Table: African American slavery in the United States, 1790-1820

Moses Grandy on slavery and social control

A North Carolina Act prohibiting the teaching of slaves to read

Slavery and sexual abuse: The saga of Louisa Picquet

The letters of enslaved women, 1840 to 1859

Solomon Northup describes a slave auction

Anti- slavery cartoon: Carrying slavery

African survivals: Slave religious music

Gabriel Prosser's conspiracy

Nat Turner's confession

Turner's revolt: The impact in the Slave Quarters

Slavery and freedom in Indian Territory

Harriet Elgin and Rebecca Jones on the Underground Railroad

Table: African American slavery in the United States, 1860

Two fugitive slaves respond to their former owners

Fanny Perry's letter to her husband

5. FREE BLACKS IN A SLAVE SOCIETY. Life in the shadows

Louisiana's free people of color pledge their loyalty to the United States, 1804

General Andrew Jackson praises a New Orleans Militia, 1815

African Americans and the American colonization Society

Grace Douglass calls for frugal living, 1819

Two Antebellum black women's Organizations

Freedom's Journal's first editorial

A black woman speaks on the education of women, 1827

David Walker's appeal, 1829

The Liberator: The first editorial, 1831

A library for New York' s people of color

Black Cincinnati children speak of slavery, 1834

Santa Anna and black freedom

Slavery and freedom in Indian Territory

"Let your motto be resistance." Celebrating West Indian emancipation Day

The North Star: The first editorial

The Fugitive Slave Act in practice: Rachel Parker's kidnapping

Harriet Tubman rescues a fugitive slave

Mary Ann Shad teaches in Canada

"A Nation within a Nation." Black self-esteem: The 19th century debate

Address to the people of California

An early history of African Americans

Celebrating the end of a segregated school

Sara G. Stanley addresses the Convention of disfranchised citizens of Ohio

The Dred Scott Decision

Philadephia African Americans protest the Dred Scott Decision

Wisconsin African Americans demand the vote

Supporting the New Republican party

A plea against mere money making

Osborne Anderson describes John Brown's Raid

John A. Copeland awaits his execution

6. THE CIVIL WAR. We are Americans

Seeking the right to fight, 1861-1862

Black "Contraband." The Victoria Club Ball, 1862

Robert Smalls commandeers the planter

David Hunter organizes African American troops in South Carolina

Charlotte Forten teaches the freedpeople

Susie King Taylor and black freedom

The Emancipation Proclamation

Table: A chronology of emancipation, 1772 1888

Men of color: To arms

The New York Draft Riot: eyewitness accounts

Lewis Douglass's letter to his sweetheart, 1863

Memphis African American proclaim the meaning of freedom, 1864

The Fort Pillow Massacre, 1864

The Second Kansas colored infantry at war

Sojourner Truth meets President Lincoln

A proposal to enlist blacks in the Confederate Army

A black soldier describes the fall of Richmond, 1865

Elizabeth Keckley and Mary Todd Lincoln at the White House

Frederick Douglass: What the black man wants

7. RECONSTRUCTION. Reconstruction amendments, 1865 1870

Felix Haywood remembers the Day of Jublio

The black codes in Louisiana

The Memphis Riot, 1866

"Send me some of the children's hair." President Johnson and black leaders

Cartoon: The Freedman's Bureau sharecropping emerges in the post Civil War South

Thaddeus Stevens demands black suffrage

Black voting rights: Two views from the far west

The rise of independent Black Churches

Hampton Institute: The founding of a black college

An anxious aunt writes to Nashville's Colored High School

Klan violence in the Reconstruction South: Three testimonies

The ordeal of Amanda Redmond

Frederick Douglass: The composite Nation

Helena citizens celebrate their New rights

Black women and work in Philadelphia, 1871

Table: Black Reconstruction office holders

Francis Cardoza urges the dissolution of the plantation system

Senator Hiram Revels calls for the end of segregated schools

"All we ask is equal laws, equal legislation and equal rights." Francis Rollin diary

Ben Tillman justifies Reconstruction violence

8. INTO THE 20TH CENTURY. Black women, Louisiana politics and the Kansas exodus

Willianna Hickman, bound for Nicodemus

A Mississippi teacher writes to the Governor of Kansas

Buffalo Soldiers rescue a New Mexico town

A washerwomen's strike in Atlanta, 1881

Della Irving Hayden, a teacher in rural Virginia

Lucy Parsons: "I am an anarchist." William Hannibal Thomas on reperations, 1887

A black worker calls for racial fairness and then worker solidarity

"Organized resistance is our best remedy." Eliza Grier: From enslaved woman to medical doctor

The Afro-American League, 1890

Labor and race: Strikebreaking black coal miners defend

Their actions

Ida B. Wells: Crusader for Justice

"Woman's cause is one and universal." Frederick Douglass & Anna J. Cooper on gender equality

In the 1890s

The Atlanta Compromise Speech

Plessy V. Ferguson, 1896

Jim Crow laws

The conservation of races

The lynching of a postmaster, 1898.