Creating Black Americans: African-American History and its Meanings, 1619 to the Present

Course: Introduction to African American Culture & Society (AAS010).

I have used this text by preeminent scholar of African American History at Harvard University, Nell Irvin Painter. This text is both a history of the African American experience, beginning in Africa (which is essential in any Black History text), and it is an African/African American art history book. This allows the user to not only understand the history of how enslaved Africans became African Americans but chronicles their own expression of their thought, their understanding, and the meanings of those processes from their own perspective through their visual and other forms of art. Alone it would be a powerful history text, but the addition of the creative works makes this book every more valuable to the scholar, student, or the interested general reader. I use it in my courses and do highly recommend it as a visually stunning chronicle of Black creativity.