African American Childhoods - by W King (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

African American Childhoods seeks to fill a vacuum in the study of African American children. Recovering the voices or experiences of these children, we observe nuances in their lives based on their legal status, class standing, and social development.

From the Back Cover

In African American Childhoods, historian Wilma King presents a selection of her essays, both unpublished and published, which together provide a much-needed survey of more than three centuries of African American children's experiences. Organized chronologically, the volume uses the Civil War to divide the book into two parts: part one addresses the enslavement of children in Africa and explores how they lived in antebellum America; part two examines the issues affecting black children since the Civil War and into the twenty-first century. Topics include the impact of the social and historical construction of race on their development, the effects of violence, and the heroic efforts of African American children when subjected to racism at its worst during the civil rights movement.

Review Quotes

"An indelible portrait of growing up black from the 18th to the 21st century. Sweeping, deeply researched, and powerfully written, this volume captures African American children's responses to the slave trade, the traumas of slavery, the Civil War, the Great Depression, and the civil rights movement. It offers fascinating insights into the evolution of African American childrens' play; the interactions of black, white, and Indian children; racial iconography in fiction and marketing; and the differences between African American girlhood and boyhood." - Steven Mintz, John and Rebecca Moores Professor of History, University of Houston, and author of Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood

About the Author

Wilma King is Strickland Professor of African American History and Culture at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She is the author and editor of several books on African American social history, including the definitive book on slave children in America, Stolen Childhoods: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America.