African American History (original) (raw)

American History Now, eds. Lisa McGirr and Eric Foner

African-American history keVIn GAInes A cademic historians have no monopoly on the production of historical narratives. Historians engage in lively public debates about the meaning of the past with many actors, including journalists, politicians, political and religious leaders, and members of civic associations. History is, thus, produced in a set of overlapping sites, including those outside of academia. History is also, as Michel-Rolph Trouillot observed, laden with silences. Academic historians and others with a stake in the matter are often selective in their interests, and not immune to blind spots. Such overlapping sites of production and silences have shaped the field of African-American history. In its formative period, the history of African Americans was written against the silences, evasions and propaganda of a U.S. historical profession that, until the mid-twentieth century, was dominated by those who had little regard for the humanity of blacks. Early historians of the African-American experience, including W.E.B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, and Benjamin Quarles, confronted either negative depictions of black people or their outright erasure from narratives about the American past. Excluded from the white-dominated academy, these historians recorded the integral contributions of African Americans to the development of constitutional freedom and democracy in the United States. Gaining a doctorate in history at Harvard in 1912, Woodson, the son of former slaves, assumed the vital task of building an infrastructure and audience for African-American history, founding the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in 1915 and the Journal of Negro History the following year, as well as a publishing company. In 1926, Woodson