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Product Description
This is a study of black history and thought, revealing the complex and vital role of African-American intellectuals in the USA. This book illuminates facets of this rich history, such as African tribal institutions, American slavery, and black schools, churches, politics and popular culture in America. The author discusses prominent black figures ranging from pioneers like Frederick Douglass, to intellectuals of the modern age, such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Toni Morrison. Many black scholars and artists people the pages of this imaginative study.
Amazon.com Review
Banks, a professor of African-American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, has written a scholarly history of black American intellectuals covering some 250 years of progress. The slave generations of African-Americans had precious little opportunity for intellectual pursuits. Initially the community's intellectuals were mostly Christian pastors struggling to reconcile Christianity with the barbarous oppression of their people. Later freed negroes agitating for abolition became more prominent, and the founding in 1827 of Freedom's Journal provided a literary outlet for their work. After reconstruction, a network of black colleges and the proliferation of black newspapers and magazines secured a solid base for an intellectual life that today is thriving more than ever before.
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