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UNDERSTANDING NEGRO HISTORY by Dwight W.--Ed. Hoover

UNDERSTANDING NEGRO HISTORY

By

Pub Date: Oct. 1st, 1968
Publisher: Quadrangle

American Negro history, like the American Negro, has in general been either neglected or mistreated. To rectify this, editor/commentator Hoover rescues some of the more able contributions to the field from such sources as the Journal of Negro History and The American Scholar. The book begins with the historiography itself citing the blindness of major historians to Negro issues, a fact attributed to the difficulty of reconciling the Negro's history of failure with the American success syndrome. The essays reinforce the editor's demand for an integrated history of the nation, as nineteenth-century events are examined for latent social trends which have been unacknowledged in the general histories. Included are a study of Griffith's ""Birth of a Nation"" as a racist film and discussions of the Negro cowboy, the Vesey slave plot, early Northern attitudes toward slaves, the first civil rights battles, and the hidden prejudices of abolitionists. The authors, primarily prominent scholars, include Staughton Lynd and Richard Wade. A major contribution to American social history which stresses minor events for the editor omits known highlights in order to explore unfamiliar ground.