Customer Reviews

Africans in America: America's Journey Through Slavery

5 star:		(8)
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3 star:		(1)
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I am a Nigerian born American, and have lived in the US for 40-years. This is the first book I have ever read from the SLAVES point of view. I have been married for 30-years to an American born African American, and this book, for the first time, explains to me why my 91-year old mother-in-law who lives with us could not watch the movie "Color Purple" or the PBS broadcast of Africans in America. I can now associate the Black American in the street as someone from my village in Nigeria. I am humbled by the humiliation and suffering which was perpetrated on my people for no other reason than the color of their skin. This book must be read by all recent African immigrtants to the US, all heads of African Governments, as well as all editors of African news organizations, in the hope that the respective African country shall adopt this book as a required reading in African schools. I make this recommendation because any history of slavery, whatsoever, as taught in the African schools today, was written in the last 100-years, with the point of view of the SLAVEMASTER. The respective modern day African country has no record of Slavery in America from 1450 to 1900. Worse yet, all the conditions that lead to tribal conflict and genocide exist today in many parts of Africa. Those who have no sense of history will repeat the mistakes of yester-years. This should be the beginning of a new dialogue among Africans and African Americans.

I have started reading Charles Johnson, Patricia Smith, and the WGBH Series Research Team, "African in American: America's Journey through Slavery" (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1998), and so far I am shocked and disappointed. While the book has a lot of good information, it contains inconsistencies, fictional material not marked a such. The only citation thus far has been to quotes from primary sources; all other material, including a long quote from historian David Northrup, whom I have used in my research on slavery, is not cited. Perhaps this is because Johnson and Smith are fictional writers and journalist, not historians. The result is a well-written, engaging book that omits important facts, is inconsistent, and glosses over debated subjects with no evidence or citation.

For example, the authors state at one point that 20 million Africans were captured, then states the more recent and widely accepted figure of 10 to 12 million, and then states 20 million again. They also state that the Portuguese dominated the trade at one point, then the Spainish without explaining the change. What really got my goat was that first thing, they try to dismiss Africans enslaving Africans as benign, using broad statements, without any critical examiniation, no examples to back it up, and not a single citation! They admit that Whites did not originally get Africans slaves out of racism, and hint at some similarities between White and Black experiences in how they came to the Americas, but they needed to explore that more thoroughly and directly. More effort could have been put into the facts and the analysis, and less into creative writing and style.

I happen to have not only learned from this book but also enjoyed reading it. There's a lot of detail and even some inconsistencies but I've yet to come across a completely perfect representation of history. As far as inconsistencies noted by a fellow reviewer, there is no one official count of slaves...there are only estimates, and those estimates are also broken down into several sub-categories. You will find a variety of statistics on the slave trade but that should be expected by now...especially given the cruelty and inhuman conditions that existed. Who's to say how many slaves were killed that were never reported?

Point blank...this book is worth the money. It's a nice mix of fact that ties in your emotions with mini-storylines based on real occurrences.

Wow, this book was informative and yet extremely hard to put down, this is combination i very seldomly come across. There is so much to say about this book. Although it's not exaustive by any means, it pretty much gives you that complete sequential view that you find yourself saying "oohhhh" to. What struck me most about this book was the denial and the need for white christian men to feel less guilty about their exploitation and how, many of the "moral men" including a few of our founding fathers, found themselves often contradicting themselves on the issue of slavery. On the one side they would say and admit that slavery was wrong but then justify their actions by claiming that they (the slaves) were better off that way, being that according to the whites, slaves were incapable of taking care of themselves.
I enjoyed this book so much that i went ahead and bought the dvd as well to get a visisual of what i read.

bottom line,
if you want a straight foward book on slavery in america, look no further.

Simply, the research team covers everything from much needed basic history to indepth discussion in a conversational tone.

Great attention is given to documentation of facts. Written for all to enjoy, from the novice to the advanced scholar.

A literary masterpiece. MUST read!!

What struck me most about this book is the story of slaves during the Revoluntary War. I'm a RW buff and hardly ever, and never in school's histroy books was this subject touched upon and to me it really had an astounding effect on the war. I didn't know that people in the 13 states feared for their lives when the British offered freedom to the slaves if they joined up with them. And then after the long war, slave owners came up from the south looking for them and dragging them out of bed. The story was to the point with a lot of interesting personal stories. I think this book should be put in all schools and this side of history should not be avoided. I suspected Jefferson was a jerk long ago and this confirms it even more. All these leaders of our country spouting words of liberty and owning hundreds of slaves. How could they have thought it was part of God's plan and design? .

"Africans in America" is a great book that vitalizes the Black American's history, and paints a perspective on slavery as an economic horror, not a moral evil. I HIGHLY recommend to all.

I just finished reading this book and I was amazed, angered, heart-broken, and thrilled through it all. I was amazed how one group of people managed to survived all the indignities heaped upon them by their "masters" and still managed to know that this peculiar condition (slavery) was wrong. I was angered how one group of people misused the bible & God's word, proposed baseless scientific theories, and rationalized their way to exploit the millions of Africans and later black American born slaves to enrich their lives. I was heart-broken to read of all the injustices done to these slaves, the break-up of families, the rapes, the lynching, and the treatment of them as less than animals. I was thrilled that throughout this book, there arose individuals, from both sides of the racial divide that knew slavery was wrong to their very core. How they strove in their own ways, be it through violence, be it through the pulpit or be it through risking their own lives in trying to rid this fledging nation from such an amoral situation. This book opened my eyes to how the founding fathers failed to grasp how to handle this slave issue and how it is the basis for the social ills we face in this day and age. This is a must read for all Americans to see how through our fight for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" we trampled upon those same ideas for another group of people whose only difference was the color of their skin. This book should make you pause for a moment to ponder the question, what if things were differently. If the vile treatment done to those individual so long was done humanely or never done at all, how much different would our nation be today. Or, if this peculiar condition was allowed to exist through the years even to this day, would our nation be held in the high esteem it is today? This book has reinforced me to view each person I meet on their own individual merits and not judge them by their color, as was done to my ancestors so long ago.

This book is an extraordinarily readable version of a dark and painful period in American history. It is concise, personal, historically accurate, and, most of all, interesting. I found that I could not put the book down, something that usually occurs only with fiction. I highly recommend the text for anyone who is interested in America's early days. And if you have seen the PBS series, buy the book anyway. It is superior to the video.

Very well written. This is truely history that we don't read about in school, AND we should. There is another side to history that has to be told.