Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery Updated, with a New Introduction and Bibliography

Subjects:

• History » American History -- Nineteenth Century
• Multicultural Studies » Black Studies

Reviews:

• This one-volume reference work seeks to provide a synthesis of the vast scholarly literature and make it accessible to the nonspecialist and general reader. The focus is on slavery in the U.S. from the time of the first English settlements until Reconstruction. . . . The essays, which range from a few paragraphs to over five pages, are arranged alphabetically. Each is signed by one of the over 200 contributors, primarily college professors, who are listed in an appendix with their affiliations. The essays treat both broad subjects, such as the slave trade, abolition, and education, as well as more focussed topics like the underground railroad, slavery in specific cities or states and biographies. Maps, charts and statistical tables are included where appropriate, for example, in the entry Economics of Slavery. The articles bring modern findings and debates and controversial opinions into the discussions, and each entry has a bibliography appended. The writing styles vary, but the text is for the most part accessible. . . . A chronology of events follows the entries . . . this is a very valuable reference tool, synthesizing a wealth of material on a complex subject. It is an essential addition for academic and public libraries; secondary school libraries should consider it too."
  
  
  Reference Books Bulletin
  "Written by a veritable 'who's who' among historians of the subject (some 200 of them), the nearly 300 signed, alphabetically arranged entries to people, places, and themes fluidly integrate narrative and interpretative history on slavery. Excellent indexing and cross-referencing, select bibliographies, and helpful tables, maps, and a chronology enhance this comprehensive work, which reflects the historiography of slavery over the past 25 years.
  —Library Journal
• The editors, recognized authorities on the subject of slavery (e.g., Smith's two-volume bibliography Black Slavery in the Americas), have filled a void in the literature by producing a magnificent reference compilation. Laboring over the past half decade, they have brought together nearly 300 individual articles covering the period from the first English settlement in America to Reconstruction after the Civil War. Each article includes a selected bibliography to lead readers to further scholarship on a given topic. The topics selected were chosen for their importance both to specialists and to general readers, and the articles were produced by contributors recognized for their special expertise in these assigned topics. Emphasis is placed on the social, institutional, intellectual, and political aspects of slavery. There are entries covering broad subjects as well as selected biographies of well-known persons involved in slavery. . . . [The] publication is so comprehensive and is sure to become a standard academic reference work on slavery, it should be a required purchase for academic libraries serving both undergraduate and graduate students.
  —Choice
• This is a thick book crowded with fascinating data. Libraries especially -- public, high school, and college -- should find it the first reference for people looking into any aspect on slavery. And yet there is enough detail for those who have already read widely on the subject. The "almost 300 articles" provide not just an overview of slavery, but innumerable details and a wealth of references. Contributors are some of the most noted scholars in the field and while the entries are inevitably of mixed quality, they are generally excellent. . . .
  —South Carolina Historical Magazine
• The Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery will be an enormously valuable historical reference tool. The editors have assembled a remarkable group of contributors to write the entries, and I was struck over and over again as I read the individual selections with the care, insight, and scholarly acumen the authors have brought to their topics. I think it is safe to say that no self-respecting reference library will want to be without this volume, and I would predict the same for anyone seriously interested in the history of slavery in the American South. The breadth of coverage in the Dictionary is extraordinarily comprehensive; every topic that came to my mind was covered and covered well, and the value of the entries is enhanced by the excellent select bibliographies that follow each entry. . . . This volume really will prove essential to all of us who think the study of southern slavery is vital for understanding the historical experience of both black and white America.
  —Charles B. Dew
  Professor of American Studies
  Williams College
• At the invitation of James T. Sabin of Greenwood Press, professors Miller and Smith undertook to create this dictionary of a most worthy historical topic. In the space of nearly 900 pages, these two fine scholars have produced one of the most outstanding works on the topic of Afro-American slavery to ever be published. . . . All of the articles are well-done, but a few stand out as exceptional. One such is the articles, `Slavery in Kentucky.' by Marion B. Lucas. . . . [T]his work is not just for the professional historian. It is a work which is written with the general public as well as the scholar in mind. Every library should have a copy and anyone who is interested in the topic of Afro-American slavery would do well to purchase it because it includes an excellent bibliography after each entry as well as the fine articles themselves.
  —Bowling Green Daily News
• Covering a wide selection of topics, terms, historical events, legal cases, and biographies, this reference work contains more than three hundred articles treating regional differences and significant changes in American slavery from the first English settlement to Reconstruction. Bibliographies are provided for most entries. For the researcher working on African-American subjects, this volume provides a convenient, almost comprehensive, encyclopedia of key people and events.
  —National Genealogical Society Quarterly
• This is a beautifully crafted reference book. Enlisting the talents of more than two hundred scholars, Randall Miller and John David Smith have compiled an invaluable interpretive and factual survey of Afro-American slavery. The list of contributors reads like a "Who's Who" of slavery studies, and the overall quality of the entries, of which there are nearly three hundred, is unusually high for a volume of this kind....Unlike most reference works, this is a book that can be read profitably from cover to cover. No one could come away from such a reading without appreciating the scope and sophistication of recent scholarship on Afro-American slavery.
  —Register of the Kentucky Historical Society
• It is hard to imagine better introductions to a whole variety of complex issues, each with its own hotly contested historiographical battlegrounds, than are provided by these authoritative, judicious and generally well-written essays....[T]he quality of the articles maintains an extremely high standard.
  —Times Literary Supplement
• This is a reprinting of and extraordinarily useful reference book (first published by Greenwood Press in 1988) that belongs on the personal bookshelf of everyone teaching southern history or the history of blacks in the United States....Having this volume available in paperback should make it accessible to the large audience that it deserves.
  —Journal of Southern History

• Endorsement From John Hope Franklin
  James B. Duke Professor Emeritus
  Duke University: ...an indispensable tool for all students of human bondage. In going through the volume and especially in reading the up-to-date essays on the legal, economic, and comparative aspects of slavery, one wonders how it was ever possible to get along without such a work.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction to the Paperback Edition
• Introduction
• A Note on Using the Dictionary
• The Dictionary
• Chronology of Afro-American Slavery
• Selected Topical Bibliography on Slavery, 1988-1996
• Index