Book Description

"I am awed by his achievements. It is a monumental volume that makes obsolete almost everything that has been written or said about the black experience in the United States; certainly no one will be able to think about race in the same way again. It will be a long time before I, and I imagine others, will be able to assimilate the full impact of the book, since it requires thorough re-examination of what I and they have written and thought." — Charles E. Silberman, Director, The Study of Law and JusticeHerbert Gutman's study of the black family represents an extraordinary amount of research and a major rewriting of history as we have hitherto known it. Basically, it shows that enslavement and poverty did not shatter black family ties, as has been argued so often by Daniel Moynihan and others. It explains why most slaves, not merely a tiny elite of fortunate survivors, maintained powerful familial and kin associations, and how these associations sustained the developing Afro-American culture. Citing materials of exceptional force, the book shows that America's blacks adapted to the harshness of enslavement with a remarkable degree of strength and solidarity, and faced freedom with a courage and an integrity that until now have not been credited to them.Few works in history have been as long and impatiently awaited as this book. For years historians have known of the extensive research that was going into its preparation, the use of historical documents such as plantation, birth, and death records, census reports, and other manuscript sources that have bene largely neglected. Covering the period of slavery, as well as that of emancipation, and going into twentieth-century Harlem, Professor Guutman gradually found the evidence to disprove the common assumptions about the effects of slavery that have been shared by historians and politicians.This is much more, though, than a book for historians. It is a book that will change our vision of the past and, by showing us an achievement so unexpected and so moving, may affect the way we all, black and white, think about ourselves.