The roots of African-American identity
Subtitle: memory and history in free antebellum communities
By: Elizabeth Rauh Bethel.
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 242
Subjects: Free African Americans -- History; African Americans -- History -- To 1863; African Americans -- Race identity; African Americans -- Historiography
Description: Spanning the eight decades between the American Revolution and the Civil War, The Roots of African-American Identity focuses on the lives of African Americans in the nominally free northern and western states. Examining race and the construction of a politicized racial identity, this book explores how a group of marginalized people crafted a uniquely New World ethnic identity that informed popular African-American historical consciousness.

Elizabeth Rauh Bethel examines the way in which that consciousness fueled collective efforts to claim and live a promised but undelivered democratic freedom, helping readers to understand how African Americans reformulated and perceived their collective past.

Bethel also reveals how this vision of freedom and historical consciousness shaped African-American participation in the Reconstruction, formed the spiritual and ideological foundation for the modern Pan-African movement, and provided the historical legacy for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.