The civil rights and black power movements expanded popular
awareness of the history and culture of African Americans. But, as
Stephen Hall observes, African American authors, intellectuals,
ministers, and abolitionists had been writing the history of the
black experience since the 1800s. With this book, Hall recaptures
and reconstructs a rich but largely overlooked tradition of
historical writing by African Americans.
Hall charts the origins, meanings, methods, evolution, and
maturation of African American historical writing from the period
of the Early Republic to the twentieth-century professionalization
of the larger field of historical study. He demonstrates how these
works borrowed from and engaged with ideological and intellectual
constructs from mainstream intellectual movements including the
Enlightenment, Romanticism, Realism, and Modernism. Hall also
explores the creation of discursive spaces that simultaneously
reinforced and offered counternarratives to more mainstream
historical discourse. He sheds fresh light on the influence of the
African diaspora on the development of historical study. In so
doing, he provides a holistic portrait of African American history
informed by developments within and outside the African American
community.