Black Narratives of Slavery

Abstract Black Narratives of Slavery: A Very Short Introduction shows how slavery and its afterlife have shaped Black history, Black culture, Black politics, and Black freedom aspirations. It connects the pre-Emancipation era of slavery to forms of disenfranchisement, including Jim Crow segregation, to argue that American chattel slavery legally ends in 1865, but its legacies persist. This VSI brings together a wide range of sources, including oral, visual, and written, from the pre-Emancipation era to the twenty-first century to reveal how Black people and Black culture have used an array of strategies to respond to and fight against slavery and then other forms of discrimination. Finally, it insists that they do so not only to emphasize slavery’s enduring impact, significance, and meaning into the twenty-first century but also to imagine a world in which Black people possess their full citizenship rights and the power of anti-Black racism and white supremacy becomes less forceful.