Juneteenth & Emancipation

Examines every effort to end slavery in the United States and the transatlantic world. It focuses on massive, broad-based movements, as well as specific incidents, events, and developments, and pulls together in one place information previously available only in a wide variety of sources.

When Columbus arrived in 1492, the first free black person --a sailor -set foot in the Americas. Over the next 400 years, as slavery spread and became entrenched in the Western Hemisphere, free blacks built communities throughout North and South America, playing a critical role in every region, colony, and country. From Canada to the Caribbean to Chile, they established vital economic and social institutions, championed the cause of abolition, and formed a bridge between the worlds of free whites and enslaved blacks.

Spanning nearly 400 years from the early abolitionists to the present, this guide book profiles people, places, and events that have shaped the history of the black struggle for freedom.

Covers iconic primary documents from the 1600s to the present. Each entry offers the full text of the document as well as an in-depth, analytical essay that places the document in its historical context. Among the sources included are important legislative documents such as the Reconstruction era amendments; critical Supreme Court decisions; and iconic speeches and writings by leaders such as Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Barack Obama.

Including a never-before published speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., this is the first compilation of its kind, bringing together the most influential and important voices from two hundred years of America's struggle for civil rights, including essential speeches from leaders, both famous and obscure.

Presents a detailed chronology of important events that occurred beginning with European colonization to the end of the Civil War as well as the Reconstruction period that followed.