Black Writers of the Founding Era (LOA #366): A Library of America Anthology

Library of America #366

by James G. Basker (Editor), Nicole Seary (Editor), Annette Gordon-Reed (foreword)

A radical new vision of the nation's founding era and a major act of historical recovery 

Featuring more than 120 writers, this groundbreaking anthology reveals the astonishing richness and diversity of Black experience in the turbulent decades of the American Revolution

Black Writers of the Founding Era is the most comprehensive anthology ever published of Black writing from the turbulent decades surrounding the birth of the United States. An unprecedented archive of historical sources––including more than 200 poems, letters, sermons, newspaper advertisements, slave narratives, testimonies of faith and religious conversion, criminal confessions, court transcripts, travel accounts, private journals, wills, petitions for freedom, even dreams, by over 100 authors––it is a collection that reveals the surprising richness and diversity of Black experience in the new nation.

Here are writers both enslaved and free, loyalist and patriot, female and male, northern and southern; soldiers, seamen, and veterans; painters, poets, accountants, orators, scientists, community organizers, preachers, restaurateurs and cooks, hairdressers, criminals, carpenters, and many more. Along with long-famous works like Phillis Wheatley’s poems and Benjamin Banneker’s astonishing mathematical and scientific puzzles are dozens of first-person narratives offering little-known Black perspectives on the events of the times, like the Boston Massacre and the death of George Washington.

From their bold and eloquent contributions to public debates about the meanings of the revolution and the values of the new nation–– writings that dramatize the many ways in which protest, activism, and community organizing have been integral to the Black American experience from the beginning––to their intimate thoughts preserved in private diaries and letters, some unseen to the present day, the words of the many writers gathered here will indelibly alter our understandings of American history. 

A foreword by Annette Gordon-Reed and an introduction by James G. Basker, along with introductory headnotes and explanatory notes drawing on cutting edge scholarship, illuminate these writers’ works and to situate them in their historical contexts.

A 16-page color photo insert presents portraits of some of the writers included and images of the original manuscripts, broadside, and books in which their words have been preserved.

Genres: History, American, American History, Poetry, Anthologies, Essays, Nonfiction

991 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 12, 2023

About the author

James G. Basker is President of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Richard Gilder Professor of Literary History at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is the author or editor of several books, including Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems about Slavery 1600–1810; Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings 1760–1820; and Slavery in the Founding Era: Literary Contexts.

Reviews

[Patti · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never realized how many writings by early African-Americans existed. This book is fascinating.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great example of how we have a lot more to learn of history than our first perusals in grade school texts, or in the common parlance of America’s founding. This book is a particularly solid sourcebook of direct writing from the persons of these expressed times and places.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Editor James G. Basker has assembled a diverse trove of legal documents, poems, letters, pamphlets, sermons, memoirs and many more 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 America. 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. We find Black men and women asserting and petitioning for their rights with inspiring courage and agency against staggering odds, enlisting white 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. Adding to Library of America’s exemplary collections of Slave Narratives (LOA 114), Antislavery Writings (LOA 233), and writings from Reconstruction (LOA 303), 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 African American history. Essential.

[Sequella Coleman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anthology of early black writers. Very compact book covering the familar Phillis Wheatley and Benjamin Banneker to the voices of unknown slaves. Other pieces include a petition to the CT general Assembly from the blacks of New Haven city. Other New England jewels are very interesting. The early American history from the black perspective!

Great reference materials. A book to read in pieces or as a “novel”. Very small print.

[John Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

This compendium of myriad types of writing, from poems to slave narratives to petitions for freedom, is very informative and dispels many myths and stereotypes. The majority highlighted how educated and informed many of the writers were despite the oppression and slavery they endured. Reading this completely changed my knowledge of history. It is an extensive collection and gets somewhat tedious.