Milestone Documents in African American History: Exploring the Essential Primary Sources, 4 Volume Set

Publisher: Schlager Group, January 1, 2010.
Edition: First, Four Volume Set
Book Condition: New
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781935306054

This four-volume set covers 125 iconic primary documents from the 1600s to the present. Each entry includes the document's full text and an in-depth analytical essay that places it in historical context. Among the sources included in the set are important legislative documents such as the Reconstruction-era amendments; critical Supreme Court decisions; and iconic speeches and writings by leaders such as Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Barack Obama.

Among the documents included in the set are important legislative documents such as the Reconstruction-era amendments; critical Supreme Court decisions from Dred Scott v. Sandford to Plessy v. Ferguson to Brown v. Board of Education; and iconic speeches and writings by leaders such as Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Mary McLeod Bethune, Martin Luther King Jr., Shirley Chisholm, and Barack Obama. Key congressional reports, executive orders, and letters help round out our coverage, providing an invaluable collection of primary documents that is paired with extensive original commentary that helps students understand the documents.

From School Library Journal

Gr 8 Up–One hundred and twenty-five speeches, documents, and chapters or passages from longer works are fully analyzed in this collection of selected primary sources. Coverage includes John Rolfe's casual mention in correspondence of “20 and odd Negroes” delivered as indentured servants in 1619; President Obama's address to the 2009 NAACP Centennial Convention; the “Ohio Black Code”; the wrenching Confessions of Nat Turner from the 1831 pamphlet authored by Thomas Ruffin Gray; Martin Luther King, Jr.'s “I Have A Dream” address; and Clarence Thomas's acid “concurrence/dissent” in the Grutter v. Bollinger case. In each of the chronologically ordered entries, the document's text is preceded by a clear explanation of its significance, a context-placing essay, a biography of its author, a timeline, a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis, a discussion of its audience and impact, one or more contemporary black-and-white illustrations, a multimedia resource list, and several study questions. References readers may be unfamiliar with, and foreign words and phrases are outlined in glossaries following the texts. Back matter in volume 4 includes teacher activity guides keyed to national history standards. The set's full text is available online (through the end of 2011) in the “Salem History” database. As a print resource for upper-level students, this work substantially trumps Kai Wright's single-volume The African American Experience (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2009) as a primary-source supplement to Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates's Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (Oxford, 2005). John Peters, formerly at the New York Public Library
© Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* The latest installment in the award-winning Milestone Documents series lives up to the excellence of previous sets (Milestone Documents in American History, 2008; Milestone Documents of American Leaders, 2009; Milestone Documents in World History, 2010). Here, the chronologically arranged documents tell the story of African Americans from the introduction of slavery in the 1600s to President Barack Obama's inauguration. The 125 signed entries, which have been prepared by experts in history and law, include correspondence, essays, reports, tracts, manifestos, petitions, proclamations, legal opinions, legislation, military orders, narratives, presidential and executive documents, speeches and addresses, and testimony. In addition to the document text, each entry includes context, a timeline, a biographical profile, an explanation and analysis, the intended audience, impact, quotes, and more. This content helps readers understand each document’s role in shaping African American history. The 223 photographs and illustrations in the entries help engage readers' interest. Each entry is followed by citations from both general and academic sources. For example, the entry on Shirley Chisholm’s 1974 keynote speech for a national conference of black women at the University of Missouri is followed by citations that include Chisholm’s books, an entry in African American National Biography (2008), a scholarly journal article, a bibliography of Chisholm’s writings and life, and two Web sites. The documents and analyses will be useful to students and researchers of differing abilities and experience. History researchers will be interested in the quality of the documents, which retain original spelling and syntax. Novice history readers will appreciate the glossaries of terms that appear after documents using specialized language. High-school teachers will want to utilize the “Teacher’s Activity Guides,” in volume 4, which provide focus questions connecting the primary documents in the collection to the National History Standards established by the National Center for History in the Schools. Undergraduate and high-school students looking for paper topics will appreciate the “Questions for Further Study” provided for each document. Purchase of the print books also includes access to the online content at www.history.salempress.com. This resource is essential for high school, public, and undergraduate libraries. --Cynthia Crosser

Item #7965

Price: $249.97

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