Ward, Former Director of Children's Services, Nassau Library System. Now comes Lynda R. Day with a compact history of African Americans on Long Island from the first non-indigenous settlements to the present. Lavishly illustrated, with informative notes, appendices, and an extensive bibliography, it represents an excellent fusion of scholarship and popular appeal. Day starts with a concise review of African origins, family types, religion, politics and skills. Once brought to America in the Dutch slave trade, Africans initially helped found the colony of New Amsterdam, but by the English takeover, free and enslaved people of color had spread eastward into nearby Kings and Queens counties.
Day also points out Sag Harbor's function as a slave port.
Next she offers capsule biographies of such well known enslaved people as Jupiter Hammon and lesser-known figures like Banjo Billy and his wife, Jinny, of Hempstead. Returning to her survey, Day ably inscribes the functions of blacks in the multi crop, small-farm economy of Long Island. Within this circumscribed world, blacks maintained African customs, expressed in folk culture and on such holidays as Pinkster. In succeeding chapters, Day covers the period of gradual emancipation, abolitionism, accompanied by nice, short biographies of local figures. Much of this material is familiar, but it is offered in an approachable, unpretentious manner valuable to the general reader.