Black Writers of the Founding Era (LOA #366)

“Amplifies the voices of many men and women whose words and deeds shaped the America we know and cherish today… . Remarkable stories like these enrich and expand our understanding of our nation’s earliest days.” —Wall Street Journal

“Editors Basker and Seary have assembled a diverse trove of legal documents, poems, letters, pamphlets, sermons, memoirs, and plentiful other source documents to provide much more than a glimpse of the struggles, triumphs, and tragedies of a diverse cross-section of Black people living in late 18th- and early 19th-century United States. Here are the words of Black Revolutionary War veterans fighting for the independence of a new nation, or joining the British side in sometimes desperate bids for freedom from their enslavers. Black men and women assert and petition for their rights with inspiring courage and agency against staggering odds, enlisting allies and creating networks of mutual aid in secular and church settings that can be directly traced down to the civil rights movements of the past and present. VERDICT: This extraordinary and unrivalled anthology of compelling primary sources adds vital and necessary background for the lay reader, recovering an often overlooked early era of the long arc of Black United States history. An essential purchase.”
—Library Journal

James G. Basker, editor, is President of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Richard Gilder Professor of Literary History at Barnard College, Columbia University. He has written and edited many books including, for Library of America, American Antislavery Writings- Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation (2012).

Nicole Seary is Senior Editor at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

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