Setting Down the Sacred Past : African-American Race Histories

Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp

ISBN 10: 0674050797 / ISBN 13: 9780674050792

Published by Harvard University Press Apr 2010, 2010

About this Item

Neuware - As early as the 1780s, African Americans told stories that enabled them to survive and even thrive in the midst of unspeakable assault. Tracing the narratives from the late eighteenth century to the 1920s, this work presents an extraordinary trove of sweeping race histories that African Americans wove together out of racial and religious concerns.

Seller Inventory # 9780674050792

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Setting Down the Sacred Past : African-American Race Histories
• Publisher: Harvard University Press Apr 2010
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674050797
• ISBN 13: 9780674050792
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 243W x 214H x 29D millimeters 243 millimeters width by 214 millimeters height by 29 millimeters depth
• Weight: 648 grams

About this title

Synopsis

As early as the 1780s, African Americans told stories that enabled them to survive and even thrive in the midst of unspeakable assault. Tracing previously unexplored narratives from the late eighteenth century to the 1920s, Laurie Maffly-Kipp brings to light an extraordinary trove of sweeping race histories that African Americans wove together out of racial and religious concerns. Asserting a role in God's plan, black Protestants sought to root their people in both sacred and secular time. A remarkable array of chroniclers-men and women, clergy, journalists, shoemakers, teachers, southerners and northerners-shared a belief that narrating a usable past offered hope, pride, and the promise of a better future. Combining Christian faith, American patriotism, and racial lineage to create a coherent sense of community, they linked past to present, Africa to America, and the Bible to classical literature. From collected shards of memory and emerging intellectual tools, African Americans fashioned stories that helped to restore meaning and purpose to their lives in the face of relentless oppression. In a pioneering work of research and discovery, Maffly-Kipp shows how blacks overcame the accusation that they had no history worth remembering. African American communal histories imagined a rich collective past in order to establish the claim to a rightful and respected place in the American present. Through the transformative power of storytelling, these men and women led their people-and indeed, all Americans-into a more profound understanding of their interconnectedness and their prospects for a common future.

About the Author

Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.