Wilderness Journey during the Jim Crow Era: A Review Essay

Abstract

In 1888 W. E. B. Du Bois, a senior at Fisk University writing for the student newspaper, reviewed the History of the Negro Race in America from 1916 to 1880: Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens (1883) by George Washington Williams. The budding scholar Du Bois announced that in Williams we finally had a historian, not just a black historian but one whose work-judged simply on scholarly merit-offered a su perb narrative. Years later, as a fully mature scholar himself, Du Bois would refer to Williams as the greatest historian of the black race.1 Williams was not a trained historian but rather a soldier, minister, and politician. He did not have the opportunity to study at Michi gan, Johns Hopkins, or one of the New England schools where a new, more scientific historiography was emerging. Innovations in teaching and research at these universities featured seminar instruc tion imported from Germany that utilized analysis and comparison of original sources in printed and manuscript collections. These ap proaches, in turn, necessitated an unprecedented growth in library book and archival holdings. Williams, on the other hand, essentially trained himself in the tradi tion of Frederic Bancroft, one of the nation's leading self-taught histori ans. Williams sought Bancroft's advice, and the older historian became a helpful mentor. But the younger historian would advance