Setting out to correct the inadequacies of many written accounts of slavery, teacher and social activist Octavia Albert added her own incisive commentary to the personal narratives of former slaves. Her early interviews, like many antebellum slave narratives, depict cruel punishments, divided families, and debilitating labour. Seeing herself as a public advocate for social change, Albert called for every Christian's personal acceptance of responsibility for slavery's legacies and lessons. As well as its historical value, the book has many merits as a work of literature, using dialogue and experiments with dialect, and incorporating songs and poems in the text.

Conventional wisdom says that marriage was rare or illegal for slaves and that if African Americans married at all, their vows were tenuous ones: "until death or distance do us part." It is believed that this history explains the dysfunction of the African American family to this day. In this groundbreaking book, Frances Smith Foster shows that this common wisdom is flawed as it is based upon partial evidence and it ignores the writings African Americans created for themselves. Rather than relying on documents produced for abolitionists, the state, or other biased parties, Foster draws upon a trove of little-examined alternative sources and in so doing offers a correction to this widely held but misinformed viewpoint. The works examined include family histories, folkloric stories, organizational records, personal memoirs, sermons and especially the fascinating and varied writings published in the Afro-Protestant Press of the times. She shows that "jumping the broom" was but one of many wedding rituals and that love, marriage and family were highly valued and central to early African American society. Her book offers a provocative new understanding of a powerful belief about African American history and sheds light on the roles of memory and myth, story and history in defining contemporary society and shaping the future.

The much-anticipated Third Edition brings together the work of 140 writers from 1746 to the present writing in all genres, as well as performers of vernacular forms from spirituals and sermons to jazz and hip hop. Fresh scholarship, new visuals and media, and new selections with an emphasis on contemporary writers combine to make The Norton Anthology of African American Literature an even better teaching tool for instructors and an unmatched value for students."

Conventional wisdom tells us that marriage was illegal for African Americans during the antebellum era, and that if people married at all, their vows were tenuous ones: "until death or distance do us part." It is an impression that imbues beliefs about black families to this day. But it's a perception primarily based on documents produced by abolitionists, the state, or other partisans. It doesn't tell the whole story.
Drawing on a trove of less well-known sources including family histories, folk stories, memoirs, sermons, and especially the fascinating writings from the Afro-Protestant Press, 'Til Death or Distance Do Us Part offers a radically different perspective on antebellum love and family life.
Frances Smith Foster applies the knowledge she's developed over a lifetime of reading and thinking. Advocating both the potency of skepticism and the importance of story-telling, her book shows the way toward a more genuine, more affirmative understanding of African American romance, both then and now.

The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers

General Editor: HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR.

The past two decades have seen a dramatic resurgence of interest in black women writers, as authors such as Toni Morrison and Alice Walker have come to dominate the larger African-American literary landscape. Yet the works of the writers who founded and nurtured the black women's literary tradition--nineteenth-century African-American women--have remained buried in research libraries or in expensive hard-to-find reprints, often inaccessible to twentieth-century readers.

Oxford University Press, in collaboration with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a research unit of The New York Public Library, rescued the voice of an entire segment of the black tradition by offering thirty volumes of these compelling and rare works of fiction, poetry, autobiography, biography, essays, and journalism. Responding to the wide recognition this series has received, Oxford now presents four more of these volumes in paperback (to add to the four already available). Each book contains an introduction written by an expert in the field, as well as an overview by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the General Editor.

The much-anticipated Third Edition brings together the work of 140 writers from 1746 to the present writing in all genres, as well as performers of vernacular forms from spirituals and sermons to jazz and hip hop. Fresh scholarship, new visuals and media, and new selections with an emphasis on contemporary writers combine to make The Norton Anthology of African American Literature an even better teaching tool for instructors and an unmatched value for students."

A breathtaking achievement, this Concise Companion is a suitable crown to the astonishing production in African American literature and criticism that has swept over American literary studies in the last two decades. It offers an enormous range of writers-from Sojourner Truth to Frederick Douglass, from Zora Neale Hurston to Ralph Ellison, and from Toni Morrison to August Wilson. It contains entries on major works (including synopses of novels), such as Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Richard Wright's Native Son, and Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. It also incorporates information on literary characters such as Bigger Thomas, Coffin Ed Johnson, Kunta Kinte, Sula Peace, as well as on character types such as Aunt Jemima, Brer Rabbit, John Henry, Stackolee, and the trickster. Icons of black culture are addressed, including vivid details about the lives of Muhammad Ali, John Coltrane, Marcus Garvey, Jackie Robinson, John Brown, and Harriet Tubman.

Here, too, are general articles on poetry, fiction, and drama; on autobiography, slave narratives, Sunday School literature, and oratory; as well as on a wide spectrum of related topics. Compact yet thorough, this handy volume gathers works from a vast array of sources--from the black periodical press to women's clubs--making it one of the most substantial guides available on the growing, exciting world of African American literature.

Teacher and social activist Octavia Albert added her own incisive commentary to the personal narratives of former slaves, and called for every Christian's personal acceptance of responsibility for slavery's legacies and lessons.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Cheryl Clarke, Angela Davis, bell hooks, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Alice Walker--from the pioneers of black women's studies comes "Still Brave," the definitive collection of race and gender writings today. Including Alice Walker's groundbreaking elucidation of the term "womanist," discussions of women's rights as human rights, and a piece on the Obama factor, the collection speaks to the ways that feminism has evolved and how black women have confronted racism within it.

Stanlie M. James is director of the African and African American Studies Program at Arizona State University, where she holds a joint appointment with the Women's and Gender Studies Program.

Frances Smith Foster is a professor of English and women's studies, the former director of the Emory Institute for Women's Studies, and current chair of the English Department at Emory University.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall is president of the National Women's Studies Association, the founding director of the Women's Research and Resource Center, and a professor of women's studies at Spelman College.

Frances Smith Foster has rediscovered three novels by Frances E.W. Harper, the best-known Africa-American writer of the nineteeny century and author of the classic Iola Leroy. Originally serialized in issues of THE CHRISTIAN RECORDER between 1868 and 1888, these works are the first written specifically for an African-American audience; they address issues of passing, social responsibility, courtship, sexuality, and temperance. Winner of the College Language Associateion Book Award, these novels make a profound contribution to our understanding of a crucial era in American history

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was the best known and best loved African American poet of her time, as well as a teacher and lecturer on abolition, suffrage, education, and many other topics. This anthology contains all of her extant poetry and generous selection of prose and letters, and provided moving portraits of suffering under slavery, as well as of freedom, love, infidelity, poverty, and heroism. As the New York Times Book Review notes, 'This anthology...not only provides the first modern biography of Harper, but also illuminates her connection to...20th-century writers like Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison.'. For course use in: abolition and slavery, African American studies, 19th-century US literature.