Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #421892 in Books
• Published on: 1999-11-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Synopsis
Chronicles the lives of Africans as slaves in America through the eve of the Civil War.

From the Publisher
Endorsement
AFRICANS IN AMERICA is a magnificent achievement, history at its superb best, brilliantly researched, poetically written, brimming over with original documents that cannot help but move the reader. It is a perfect example of history as a work of art. --Howard Zinn, Author of "A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES"

Customer Reviews

More content, less style
I have started reading Charles Johnson, Patricia Smith, and the WGBH Series Research Team, "African in American: America's Journey through Slavery" (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1998), and so far I am shocked and disappointed. While the book has a lot of good information, it contains inconsistencies, fictional material not marked a such. The only citation thus far has been to quotes from primary sources; all other material, including a long quote from historian David Northrup, whom I have used in my research on slavery, is not cited. Perhaps this is because Johnson and Smith are fictional writers and journalist, not historians. The result is a well-written, engaging book that omits important facts, is inconsistent, and glosses over debated subjects with no evidence or citation.

For example, the authors state at one point that 20 million Africans were captured, then states the more recent and widely accepted figure of 10 to 12 million, and then states 20 million again. They also state that the Portuguese dominated the trade at one point, then the Spainish without explaining the change. What really got my goat was that first thing, they try to dismiss Africans enslaving Africans as benign, using broad statements, without any critical examiniation, no examples to back it up, and not a single citation! They admit that Whites did not originally get Africans slaves out of racism, and hint at some similarities between White and Black experiences in how they came to the Americas, but they needed to explore that more thoroughly and directly. More effort could have been put into the facts and the analysis, and less into creative writing and style.

THIS IS A "MUST" READING FOR ALL AFRICANS
I am a Nigerian born American, and have lived in the US for 40-years. This is the first book I have ever read from the SLAVES point of view. I have been married for 30-years to an American born African American, and this book, for the first time, explains to me why my 91-year old mother-in-law who lives with us could not watch the movie "Color Purple" or the PBS broadcast of Africans in America. I can now associate the Black American in the street as someone from my village in Nigeria. I am humbled by the humiliation and suffering which was perpetrated on my people for no other reason than the color of their skin. This book must be read by all recent African immigrtants to the US, all heads of African Governments, as well as all editors of African news organizations, in the hope that the respective African country shall adopt this book as a required reading in African schools. I make this recommendation because any history of slavery, whatsoever, as taught in the African schools today, was written in the last 100-years, with the point of view of the SLAVEMASTER. The respective modern day African country has no record of Slavery in America from 1450 to 1900. Worse yet, all the conditions that lead to tribal conflict and genocide exist today in many parts of Africa. Those who have no sense of history will repeat the mistakes of yester-years. This should be the beginning of a new dialogue among Africans and African Americans.

Exceptional History
This book is an extraordinarily readable version of a dark and painful period in American history. It is concise, personal, historically accurate, and, most of all, interesting. I found that I could not put the book down, something that usually occurs only with fiction. I highly recommend the text for anyone who is interested in America's early days. And if you have seen the PBS series, buy the book anyway. It is superior to the video.