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Autobiography of a People: Three Centuries of African American History Told by Those Who Lived It

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This book is an anthology edited by Herb Boyd.It contains compelling material that is written by various authors who tell of the African American experience as they witnessed it.The book should be read by all those who would like to know what has occurred in the collective experience of the only Americans who were brought to this country against their will and treated as chattel. It may surprise many to learn that the African American community is not monolithic.The various voices selected by Mr.Boyd attest to this notion in the telling of the story.Again,this book is one that should be read by everyone who needs or wants to know of the tragedies and triumphs of a proud and glorious people and their multiple experiences in America.

Do you ever wonder how black people living as slaves described life in America? Herb Boyd, author and journalist, has been a professor of black studies for thirty years. Thus, he is uniquely qualified to distill from the reams of black thought that which might best stand as a fitting testament to African Americana. Editor Boyd has deftly woven the dark backstory to the glamorized myth on which the American Dream rests. The author establishes that blacks in America have never been that content underclass by and large depicted in this country's history books. He disputes the notion, central to American history, that Africans brought to America were docile, uncivilized, unintelligent and, thus, deserving of their lot. Culling from the words of those who did dare to speak out (often with disastrous consequences), Boyd has woven an eloquent, emotional tapestry of the black experience. Its power derives not from any self-conscious rage, but from the simplicity, the unguarded frankness of the voices. This is a timely book, sorely needed at a critical moment in this nation's history.

Twice I attempted to write this review of Herb Boyd's AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PEOPLE, with it's" three centuries of African American history told by those who lived it"

but soon realized I should finish reading it first. His collections (of excerpt) is so powerful so revealing; and each one seem to flow into the next. like a chronological change of events.

I can see how it may be differcult for some to believe (and easier to deny) the suffering and sacrificing our ancestors endured, to make possible the freedom and well being we now enjoy. Surely it'll instill pride in we Americans of African descent and Americans of goodwill..

Myself, more so being the fact that I too, made a contribution. An excerpt was selected from my Korean war memoir, WHAT'S A COMMIE EVER DONE TO PEOPLE? (Publishes by McFarland Publishers Inc.). Sure, at the time, I was politically ignorant to the reasons I was there fighting, like many others black soldiers, then we were fighting for our lives, the fight for our freedom, we who survived, was to come on our return t o America.

Hopefully, my story, alone with the many others that appears in AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PEOPLE will help enlighten other 17 & 18 year old American-American to the reality, that the freedom we now enjoy, others fought and died for it.

PS; In "AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PEOPLE" includes my favorite hero, the adventurous, explorer, scientist and author, Mr. Matthew Henson, who's life story inspired me to be an adventurer.. DARK COMPANION. It was the first book I read. I was nine years old.

Again, My Sincere Thanks to you Brother; Herb Boyd your book is a magnificent collection of excerpts. And no doubt it'll serve as an inspiration to many.

Peace & Pleasant Writing Curtis J. Morrow

Conversations with Herb Boyd

While I attended New York University in the late 80's, I majored in 18th Century Literature and minored in African American history. Hands down, my biggest challenge was being able to keep up with my reading, and retain all that was required of me by my professors. If only Autobiography of a People Three Centuries of African American History Told By Those Who Lived It, Herb Boyd's newest book had existed years ago when I was a student in college.

As I am still a student of African American history, Boyd's book is right on time. Booksellers and African American history buffs who live in Manhattan received a royal treat on Saturday, February 5, 2000 if they tuned in to "Books That Matter" with Leroy Baylor and listened to Boyd talk about his newest success. "Books That Matter," a public access program promotes reading and literacy to a diverse readership and interviews new and well-established authors. Recent guests include: Tavis Smiley, Sapphire, Johnnie Cochran, and William Loren Katz. The show airs on alternate Saturdays in Manhattan on Channel 34 at 10:30 p.m., in Brooklyn on Channels 34 &67 at 10 p.m. every Friday evening and each Monday evening on Bronx Net at 10:30 p.m.

I found Baylor's interview with Boyd enjoyable, and several times I felt like I as a student again learning about the great history of my people. The wonderful rapport between Baylor and Boyd was immediate and a treat for the viewer. The book, which is a compendium of 118 powerful African American voices is quickly being heralded as a New Classic in African American Literature --a compliment it rightly deserves.

Autobiography of a People is a survey of African American voices over time. The book's strengths are its weaknesses and it has a number of both. What a pleasure to be re-introduced to the variety of well thought out and articulate written works contained between the books covers. However, the length of many of the selections, some as short as only a page or two, threatens to reduce what could be a very important portable survey to a curiosity. So, I both enjoyed the book and felt disappointed in it but disappointed only by the size of the volume. Jenny Proctor, and Samuel Larken have voices with which I am unfamiliar but there are so many more important authors with something to say. Arranged in chronological order and separated by subject headings, this history both African American and American is comprehensive. It has been so long since I read this book that I am having a real problem remembering with detail what is contained in it but I know that I enjoyed the book very much. It is substantial and readable. The size small of the offerings is actually a plus. You can pick it up and put it down with ease. If something is not of interest to you it will not take much time to get through. You also have the option of jumping to an author whose work is of more interest to you. Yes, the book is a pleasure but it is also informative. There is a sense of pride when you read a book like this because you know that there must be so much more to find and read. This is a sampler and it leaves you wanting more.

The book provides a great deal of insight and it was made personal to me I was transported unfortunately to one of the most evil times in American history.Never the less it is AMERICAN HISTORY and it brought some honor to those who suffered through that time period . I Would like to thank the authors for caring enough about me for they felt the pain of the untold stories and stolen ,hidden memories. THANK YOU GENTLEMAN

Thank you for your expedient delivery!!! The book was in wonderful condition. I would definitely buy from this seller again!

With one sweep of the hand, one gets here a full panoramic view of the struggle of the last three centuries of Blacks in America. The author, Herb Boyd, has done a magnificent job of stitching together his version of a "quilt of firsthand accounts" of the Black struggle. That these selections are all autobiographical effectively cuts out the middleman - the political interpreters and spin doctors -- and goes right to the source without the normal "spin" or politically correct "color" and interpretations. These pieces thus are messages directly from the horses' mouths. And although the themes are already familiar to us, (as are many of the voices) hearing them first hand directly through the original voices, gives them freshness; a new depth of meaningfulness and an authenticity that could not have been acquired in any other way.

From the day our ancestors first set foot on this continent they were as concerned then as we all are now with three issues: religion, work and racism. Three centuries later these still remain the pivotal issues that animate Black communities.

On religion, we learn from Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Church, that having to sit in the "n-word pews" in the White Methodist Church is what led him to found the AME version of Black Methodism. The skepticism with which African Americans viewed the hypocritical white Church, white religion and the White God has not been fully told in the normally "overly pro-religious black narratives" since those narratives tend to "hedge" in the direction of acceptance of whatever is proffered by white society. However, here in these first hand accounts we see unvarnished that there was always a great deal of doubt about the hypocrisy of white religion. That doubt is eloquently captured in the following version of the "Lord's Prayer composed by a sharecropper of the 1860s: "Our father who art in heaven. White man owed me eleven, but pays me seven. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. If I hadn't tucked that away I wouldn't got none."

On the issue of work, as these testaments fully attest, working conditions in the North were only marginally better than those in the South. Everyone - poor whites, immigrants and Blacks -- were reduced to the level of "wage slavery" and "debt peonage." But Blacks were, as they still are today, at the bottom of that pack. They were excluded from employment by politics and economics, marginalized in unions and then despised by the very society that profited enormously from their labor. And this has been a long-running motif over the last three hundred years.

In fact it is through slavery -- working without the fruits of ones own labor -- that led blacks to resist America's racist and unfair treatment. Blacks, who as a matter of course were always forced to work from "sun up to sun down," knew who the "real" shirkers of work were: their masters, the genteel "soft-handed" slave owners. As a result Blacks perfected a whole range of resistance tactics beginning with malingering in the fields, running away, injuring or killing themselves or farm animals, burning down structures, and even killing slaveholders. These methods of resistance survived and became the impetus for the later Civil Rights movement. But to hear these stories from the mouths of Frederick Douglass or Nat Turner is to finally come to grips with the fullness of their meanings.

And finally, there is the theme of racism. Which with the exception of James Weldon Johnson, W.E. B. Du Bois, Malcolm X and Angela Davis, is cast in the normal way as a reflection (or more correctly, a projection) from whites onto blacks, as if racism is actually congruent with the way whites view it: as a Black problem. But clearly this editor, and these four authors saw it differently. I believe they correctly saw (and articulated it as such) racism as a "white sickness, " a white disease of the heart rather than a (projected) "black affliction." Of course, this "flipping" of the narrative context from one race to the other makes all the difference in the world. On the one hand racism is seen as a "cultural normality," one with which Blacks must always be resigned to deal; that is to say, one that they must always react to. From the other point of view, it is seen as a glaring defect in white humanity, a cancer on the white heart that can only be fixed through whites having a "come to Jesus" with themselves, individually and collectively. This author makes clear which side of that coin he falls on, and I agree with him. Altogether, this is a wonderful and rich way to review Black History. Five stars

Herb Boyd is well known to readers in New York for his hard-hitting, easy and informative journalistic style. He also deserves to become well-known for his award-winning book on the African American experience, "Brotherman -- The Odessy of Black Men in American," co-edited with Robert Allen. It displays a keen knowledge of African American documentation concerning the role of Black men in our society. His "Down the Glory Road" shows a fine sense of the sweep and force of the African American experience and how it can be rendered in easy-to-grasp prose. Now Boyd has given us the carefully researched and stirring documentary, "Autobiography of People: Three Centuries of African-American History Told by Those who Live it." This is no mere celebration of achievements nor is it a tale of woes and pain. What Boyd has meticulously constructed by ferreting documents famous and unknown from the dusty files of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and elsewhere is a powerful narrative of Black America told by those women and men who walked the miles, scaled the mountains, fought the battles, suffered the losses and achieved the victories. Here are Africans telling what it meant to be wrenched from peaceful villages and stuffed into suffocating slave ships for the terrifying and deadly voyage across the Atlantic, and then living to fight for their liberty and to tell their tales. Here is the lone African American, Osborne Perry Anderson, who survived the famous John Brown raid in 1859 on Harper's Ferry, and disclosing as no history books used in our schools does how the enslaved population rose up to fight and help Brown and his gallant band, which included four other free men of color. Here is the Harlem Renaissance told in the words of its legendary participants: Langston Hughes, Zora Neal Hurston and others. Here is the civil rights movement captured in its intensity, pain and triumph by Paul Robeson, Rosa Parks, Ella Baker and James Forman. Herb Boyd has given us an America our schools need to study and learn from.

The book was in good condition and arrived in a very reasonable amount of time. I was very pleased. Thank you.