August Meier

Review Essay/Whither the Black Perspective in Afro-American Historiography?

Long Memory: The Black Experience in America. By Mary Frances Berry and John W. Blassingame. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. xxi + 486 pp. Illustrations, chart, table, bibliography, and index.

Afro-American History: State of the Art@@@Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915-1980@@@The State of Afro-American History: Past, Present, and Future

19.95.) There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America. By Vincent Harding. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981. xxvi + 416 pp. Illustrations, notes, select bibliography of books, articles, and congressional reports, and index.

A White Scholar and the Black Community, 1945-1965: Essays and Reflections.

19.95.)

Core: A Study in the Civil Rights Movement, 1942-1968

During the past thirty years or so, there has been a veritable explosion of the field of Afro-American history. The field expanded, as it had come into being, in connection with efforts to protect the rights and to improve the lives of American blacks. Civil rights advocates in the fifties and sixties enlisted history to support their cause. On the basis of history alone, they argued, black people deserved equal consideration with others in the enjoyment of economic, social, and political justice. Blacks, they said, had fought and died to eradicate racial and religious bigotry in the world, but the beneficiaries, aside from American whites, seemed to be the former adversaries of the United States, such as Germany and Japan. Even the conditions of darker peoples in faraway places had improved as the colonial yoke was lifted and newly independent states joined the family of nations. Schools and colleges, they insisted, must broaden their curriculum offerings to include courses on the black experience to enlighten the whites and inspire the blacks. Even litigants arguing their cases for equal treatment summoned history to prove that it was on the side of blacks. Since history validated their claims, Afro-Americans felt that their history should be studied more intensely, written about more extensively, and taught more vigorously.

From Plantation to Ghetto

To teachers of African-American history, August Meier is well respected as a first-rank scholar and editor. But few people are aware of his formative experiences in the two decades following World War II, as a white professor teaching at black colleges and as an activist in the civil rights movement. This volume brings together sixteen of his essays written between 1945 and 1965. Meier has added a substantial introduction, reflecting on those years and setting the context in which the essays were written. John H. Bracey, Jr., contributes an afterword which speaks to the uniqueness of Meiers experience among historians of African-American studies. The essays range from an analysis of the work of black sociologists in the twentieth century to an examination of race relations at predominantly black colleges in the 1950s, to case studies of nonviolent direct action in which Meier participated during the early 1960s. Of particular interest is an account of his debate with Malcolm X at Morgan State College in 1962, in which Malcolm X made the case for black nationalism and Meier defended the integrationist position. Collected for the first time, these essays provide a novel perspective on the early years of the civil rights movement and on the experience of historically black colleges such as Tougaloo, Fisk, and Morgan State.