Changes

The attempt to chronicle the African American past goes back to the 18th century. Free Black intellectuals traced the evolution of Black people in ways that contributed to the abolitionist movement and instilled a sense of identity for their free and enslaved brethren. By the late 19th century, professionally trained historians began to emerge, W.E.B. Du Bois being first among them. In 1915, Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, still the largest and most significant organization for the promotion of Black history. This association produced the earliest historical monographs. Their work also inaugurated an attempt to wield these formal tools in service to the continued assault against Jim Crow. Their efforts passed down to others in the twentieth century. By the 1980s, what some have dubbed the golden age of Black historiography, hundreds of Black historians began to rewrite the African American past. The tension between approaches resonant in mainstream American historiography and Black history remains. The idea has always suggested that something can be gained from a vantage point, drawn from the lives of African American works. This is a small sampling of this work.