African-American History: Origins, Development, and Current State of the Field

Abstract

Over the past three decades, African American history has matured as a scholarly field within United States history. Under the impact of the modern Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, studies of black life and history proliferated. Black history stimulated as well as drew suste nance larger trends in American histo riography, which emphasized the study of American society from the , bottom up (1). Despite the vital impact of what was sometimes re ferred to as the social history, scholars soon found this approach wanting, particularly its gender bias and insufficient attention to the ways that class and race unfolded within particular historical contexts. This scholarship nonetheless deepened our knowledge of life at the bottom, while slowly revamping our understanding of life in the middle, at the top, and between and within the sexes. A brief assessment of the origins, development, and current state of the field suggests the gradual ascent of a new African American synthesis. In a 1986 historiographical essay, John Hope Franklin argued that every generation of historians has the opportunity to write its own history and that it was obliged to do so. According to his calculations, four genera tions of unequal length characterized the development of Afro-American history. With some modifications, particularly dur ing the nineteenth century, this essay builds upon Franklin's general periodization (2). The first generation emerged before the Civil War and persisted through the 1890s. The nineteenth century pioneers included Robert Benjamin Lewis, William Wells