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People of African descent have lived in the United States since the colonial period when most were brought over as slaves. Despite the long history of African Americans in America, the first person to question why American history largely ignored their presence in this country was Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the son of former slaves and a graduate of Harvard.
In 1926, Woodson decided to select a week to promote the study of African American history. He chose the second week in February because both Frederick Douglass's and Abraham Lincoln's birthdays fell during that week. Now, of course, we celebrate the entire month as African American History Month.
Here are some of our selections in honor of African American History Month:
 | The pre-eminent American slave narrative. Published in 1845, this autobiography powerfully details the life of the internationally famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass from his birth into slavery in 1818 to his escape to the North in 1838 - how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners and drivers, how he learned to read and write, and how he grew into a man who could only live free or die. In his introduction, Houston A. Baker, Jr., discusses the slave narrative as a distinct American literary genre and points out its social, political, historical, and literary significance, past and present. |
 | One of the most important books ever written documenting the traumas and horrors of slavery and the antebellum South A haunting, evocative recounting of her life as a slave in North Carolina and of her final escape and emancipation, Harriet Jacobs's classic narrative, written between 1853 and 1858 and published pseduonymously in 1861, tells firsthand of the horrors inflicted on slaves. In writing this extraordinary memoir, which culminates in the seven years she spent hiding in a crawl space in her grandmother's attic, Jacobs skillfully used the literary genres of her time, presenting a thoroughly feminist narrative that portrays the evils and traumas of slavery, particularly for women and children. |
 | Born a slave in Virginia in 1856, Booker T. Washington rose in prominence to become black America's foremost spokesman. This is the dramatic autobiographical account of Washington's struggle to succeed and prosper in a country that refused to acknowledge his existence. From his fight for an education to his founding of the world-renowned Tuskegee Institute, Up From Slavery is one of the most significant and defining works in American literature. |
 | In this widely praised history of an infamous institution, award-winning scholar Marcus Rediker shines a light into the darkest corners of the British and American slave ships of the eighteenth century. Drawing on thirty years of research in maritime archives, court records, diaries, and firsthand accounts, The Slave Ship is riveting and sobering in its revelations, reconstructing in chilling detail a world nearly lost to history: the "floating dungeons" at the forefront of the birth of African American culture. |
 | From the New York Times bestselling author, one of the most critically acclaimed novels of the year. In the days before the Civil War, a runaway slave named Liz Spocott breaks free from her captors and escapes into the labyrinthine swamps of Maryland's eastern shore, setting loose a drama of violence and hope among slave catchers, plantation owners, watermen, runaway slaves, and free blacks. Liz is near death, wracked by disturbing visions of the future, and armed with "the Code," a fiercely guarded cryptic means of communication for slaves on the run. Liz's flight and her dreams of tomorrow will thrust all those near her toward a mysterious, redemptive fate. |
 | An early masterwork among American literary treatments of miscegenation, Chesnutt's story is of two young African Americans who decide to pass for white in order to claim their share of the American dream. |
 | Fifty years after she made history by refusing to give up her seat on a bus, Rosa Parks at last gets the major biography she deserves. The eminent historian Douglas Brinkley follows this thoughtful and devout woman from her childhood in Jim Crow Alabama through her early involvement in the NAACP to her epochal moment of courage and her afterlife as a beloved (and resented) icon of the civil rights movement. Well researched and written with sympathy and keen insight, the result is a moving, revelatory portrait of an American heroine and her tumultuous times. |
 | Now with a new introduction by the author, Hip Hop America is the definitive account of the society-altering collision between black youth culture and the mass media.
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Posted by: Julie Schaeffer, Online Content Coordinator
Julie Schaeffer, 
Penguin Bloggers, 
African American History Month, 
Penguin Books
