African War History

Slave narratives are extremely rare. Of the 100 or so of these testimonies that survive, a mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group.

Dos manuscritos completos en un audiolibro: Historia Afroamericana y Revolución Haitiana. La historia de los Afroamericanos es una larga crónica de eventos trágicos. Aquellos que tuvieron el coraje de rebelarse en contra de esta crueldad del sistema y de esta opresión eran normalmente brutalmente asesinados por este motivo. Este hecho ha creado una larga tradición de atrevidos líderes y seguidores que han sido los verdaderos motores de la evolución del pensamiento en los Estados Unidos de América.

The service of African-American soldiers during the Civil War is one of that conflict's most stirring, if still not completely understood, aspects. Riders in the Storm covers the story of the African-American cavalrymen of the 5th Massachusetts. Where the infantry regiments recruited largely free Blacks from the North, the 5th focused on escaped slaves, who it was believed would be better horsemen. Not only would the former slaves be fighting for themselves, but they would be fighting to liberate loved ones still enslaved.

The Italians were defeated at Adwa in 1898. But by 1935, they were playing for keeps. Learn more about the devastating Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Although the Ethiopians had beaten the Italians at their own game in the 1898 Battle of Adwa, when Italian armored divisions began pouring out of Italian-controlled Eritrea in 1935, the situation seemed almost impossible to overcome.

Late on the evening of October 16, 1859, John Brown and his band of 18 raiders descended on Harpers Ferry at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. In an ill-fated attempt to incite a slave insurrection, they seized the federal arsenal, took hostages, and retreated to a fire engine house. The raiders were routed, and several were captured. Soon after, they were tried, convicted, and hanged. Among Brown's raiders were five African Americans whose lives and deaths have long been overshadowed by their martyred leader and, even today, are little remembered.

This riveting biography of a Massachusetts slave boy who fought in the Revolutionary War illuminates race relations in the Northern colonies, early battles of the revolution, and the experiences of Black soldiers on both sides of the conflict.

A fascinating account by an eyewitness of the formation and heroic deeds of the first black regiment in the civil war.

In 1986, Ken and Julie Vaughan were living the American dream: good education, interesting career, nice home, and healthy, bright children. When God called them to teach in Africa, they turned their backs on financial and physical security to accept the challenge of living in a third world country. Through a series of God-initiated events, the Vaughans found themselves living in Cote d’Ivoire, teaching at an international boarding school. In 1997, Ken faced a bout with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. After completing treatment, Ken and Julie returned to Africa to resume the life they loved.

Freedom Flyers brings to life the legacy of a determined, visionary cadre of African American airmen who proved their capabilities and patriotism beyond question, transformed the armed forces - formerly the nation's most racially polarized institution - and jump-started the modern struggle for racial equality.

Ersula J. Ore scrutinizes the civic roots of lynching, the relationship between lynching and white constitutionalism, and contemporary manifestations of lynching discourse and logic today. From the 1880s onward, lynchings, she finds, manifested a violent form of symbolic action that called a national public into existence, denoted citizenship, and upheld political community.

Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House is the life story of Elizabeth Keckley, a shrewd entrepreneur who, while enslaved, raised enough money to purchase freedom for herself and her son. Working as a seamstress and dressmaker for the wives of influential politicians, Keckley helped organize an auction of dresses that belonged to Mary Todd Lincoln, the former first lady. The auction elicited strong criticism from the Washington elite.

At Milliken's Bend, Louisiana, a Union force composed predominantly of former slaves met their Confederate adversaries in one of the bloodiest small engagements of the war. This important fight received some attention in the North and South but soon drifted into obscurity. The fighting at Milliken's Bend occurred in June 1863, about fifteen miles north of Vicksburg on the west bank of the Mississippi River, where a brigade of Texas Confederates attacked a Federal outpost.

The Colonization and Establishment of Liberia looks at how the colony grew, the ideals behind it, what life was like there, and how a tenuous democracy lasted in the colony for over 100 years. You will learn about the settlement of Liberia like never before.

The story of the Confederate States of America, the proslavery, antidemocratic nation created by white Southern slaveholders to protect their property, has been told many times in heroic and martial narratives. Now, however, Stephanie McCurry tells a very different tale of the Confederate experience. Confederate Reckoning is the startling story of this epic political battle in which women and slaves helped to decide the fate of the Confederacy and the outcome of the Civil War.

Twelve Years a Slave is the autobiographical account of Solomon Northup, an African American who was born free in New York in the early 1800s. In 1841, Solomon Northup was captured and forced into slavery for a period of twelve years. Northup's account is detailed in its account of life on a cotton and sugar plantation and the daily routine of slave life during the first part of the 19th century.

In the early hours of June 6, 1944, the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, a unit of African American soldiers, landed on the beaches of France. Their orders were to man a curtain of armed balloons meant to deter enemy aircraft. One member of the 320th would be nominated for the Medal of Honor, an award he would never receive because the nation's highest decoration was not given to black soldiers in World War II.

After World War I, black Americans fervently hoped for a new epoch of peace, prosperity, and equality. Black soldiers believed their participation in the fight to make the world safe for democracy finally earned them rights they had been promised since the close of the Civil War. Instead, an unprecedented wave of anti-black riots and lynchings swept the country. From April to November of 1919, the racial unrest rolled across the South into the North and the Midwest, even to the nation's capital. Red Summer is the first narrative history about this epic encounter.

James Anderson critically reinterprets the history of southern Black education from Reconstruction to the Great Depression. By placing Black schooling within a political, cultural, and economic context, he offers fresh insights into Black commitment to education, the peculiar significance of Tuskegee Institute, and the conflicting goals of various philanthropic groups, among other matters.

In I Saw Death Coming, Kidada E. Williams offers a breakthrough account of the much-debated Reconstruction period, transporting listeners into the daily existence of formerly enslaved people building hope-filled new lives.

This book examines the complexities of life for African Americans in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley from the antebellum period through Reconstruction. Although the Valley was a site of fierce conflicts during the Civil War and its military activity has been extensively studied, scholars have largely ignored the Black experience in the region until now.