Articles from Black History

Sojourner Truth, The Libyan Sibyl
by: Harriet Beecher Stowe
Many years ago, the few readers of radical Abolitionist papers must often have seen the singular name of Sojourner Truth, announced as a frequent speaker at Anti-Slavery meetings, and as travelling on a sort of self-appoi

Reconstruction
by: Frederick Douglass
The assembling of the Second Session of the Thirty-ninth Congress may very properly be made the occasion of a few earnest words on the already much-worn topic of reconstruction. Seldom has any legislative body been the subject of

An Appeal To Congress For Impartial Suffrage
by: Frederick Douglas
A very limited statement of the argument for impartial suffrage, and for including the negro in the body politic, would require more space than can be reasonably asked here. It is supported by reasons as broad as the nature of m

The Negro Exodus
by: James B. Runnion
A recent sojourn in the South for a few weeks, chiefly in Louisiana and Mississippi, gave the writer an opportunity to inquire into what has been so aptly called "the negro exodus." The emigration of blacks to Kansas began early

My Escape From Slavery
by: Frederick Douglass
In the first narrative of my experience in slavery, written nearly forty years ago, and in various writings since, I have given the public what I considered very good reasons for withholding the manner of my escape. In substance

The Goophered Grapevine
by: Charles W. Chesnutt
About ten years ago my wife was in poor health, and our family doctor, in whose skill and honesty I had implicit confidence, advised a change of climate. I was engaged in grape-culture in northern Ohio, and decided to look for a

Po' Sandy
by: Charles W. Chesnutt
On the northeast corner of my vineyard in central North Carolina, and fronting on the Lumberton plank-road, there stood a small frame house, of the simplest construction. It was built of pine lumber, and contained but one room,

Dave's Neckliss
by: Charles W. Chesnutt
"Have some dinner, Uncle Julius?" said my wife. It was a Sunday afternoon in early autumn. Our two women- servants had gone to a camp-meeting some miles away, and would not return until evening. My wife had served the dinne

The Awakening Of The Negro
by: Booker T. Washington
When a mere boy, I saw a young colored man, who had spent several years in school, sitting in a common cabin in the South, studying a French grammar. I noted the poverty, the untidiness, the want of system and thrift, that exist

The Story Of Uncle Tom's Cabin
by: Charles Dudley Warner
On the 29th of June, 1852, Henry Clay died. In that month the two great political parties, in their national conventions, had accepted as a finality all the compromise measures of 1850, and the last hours of the Kentucky statesm

Strivings Of The Negro People
by: W. E. Burghardt Du Bois
Berween me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a

The Wife Of His Youth
by: Charles W. Chesnutt
I. Mr. Ryder was going to give a ball. There were several reasons why this was an opportune time for such an event. Mr. Ryder might aptly be called the dean of the Blue Veins. The original Blue Veins were a little soci

The Bouquet
by: Charles W. Chesnutt
Mary Myrover's friends were somewhat surprised when she began to teach a colored school. Miss Myrover's friends are mentioned here, because nowhere more than in a Southern town is public opinion a force which cannot be lightly c

The Case Of The Negro
by: Booker T. Washington
All attempts to settle the question of the Negro in the South by his removal from this country have so far failed, and I think that they are likely to fail. The next census will probably show that we have nearly ten million blac

Hot-foot Hannibal
by: Charles W. Chesnutt
"I hate and despise you! I wish never to see you or speak to you again!" "Very well; I will take care that henceforth you have no opportunity to do either." These words--the first in the passionately vibrant tones of my si

A Negro Schoolmaster In The New South
by: W. E. Burghardt Du Bois
Once upon a time I taught school in the hills of Tennessee, where the broad dark vale of the Mississippi begins to roll and crumple to greet the Alleghanies. I was a Fisk student then, and all Fisk men think that Tennessee--beyo

The Capture Of A Slaver
by: J. Taylor Wood
From 1830 to 1850 both Great Britain and the United States, by joint convention, kept on the coast of Africa at least eighty guns afloat for the suppression of the slave trade. Most of the vessels so employed were small corvette

Mr. Charles W. Chesnutt's Stories
by: W. D. Howells
The critical reader of the story called The Wife of his Youth, which appeared in these pages two years ago, must have noticed uncommon traits in what was altogether a remarkable piece of work. The first was the novelty of the ma

Paths Of Hope For The Negro Practical Suggestions Of A Southerner
by: Jerome Dowd
It is too late in the day to discuss whether it would have been better had the Negro never been brought into the Southern States. If his presence here has been beneficial, or is ever to prove so, the price of the benefit has alr

Signs Of Progress Among The Negroes
by: Booker T. Washington
In addition to the problem of educating eight million negroes in our Southern States and ingrafting them into American citizenship, we now have the additional responsibility, either directly or indirectly, of educating and elevat

The March Of Progress
by: Charles W. Chesnutt
The colored people of Patesville had at length gained the object they had for a long time been seeking--the appointment of a committee of themselves to manage the colored schools of the town. They had argued, with some show of r

The Freedmen's Bureau
by: W. E. Burghardt Du Bois
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line; the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused

Of The Training Of Black Men
by: W. E. Burghardt Du Bois
From the shimmering swirl of waters where many, many thoughts ago the slave-ship first saw the square tower of Jamestown have flowed down to our day three streams of thinking: one from the larger world here and over-seas, saying,

The Fruits Of Industrial Training
by: Booker T. Washington
The political, educational, social, and economic evolution through which the South passed during, say, the first fifteen or twenty years after the close of the civil war furnishes one of the most interesting periods that any coun

The Negro In The Regular Army
by: Oswald Garrison Villard
When the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment stormed Fort Wagner July 18, 1863, only to be driven back with the loss of its colonel, Robert Gould Shaw, and many of its rank and file, it established for all time the fact that the

Baxter's Procrustes
by: Charles W. Chesnutt
Baxter's Procrustes is one of the publications of the Bodleian Club. The Bodleian Club is composed of gentlemen of culture, who are interested in books and book-collecting. It was named, very obviously, after the famous library

The Heart Of The Race Problem
by: Quincy Ewing
"And, instead of going to the Congress of the United States and saying there is no distinction made in Mississippi, because of color or previous condition of servitude, tell the truth, and say this: 'We tried for many years to li