Product Description

Here is a magnificent account of a past rich in beauty and creativity, but also in tragedy and trauma. Eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter blends a vivid narrative based on the latest research with a wonderful array of artwork by African American artists, works which add a new depth to our understanding of black history.
Painter offers a history written for a new generation of African Americans, stretching from life in Africa before slavery to today's hip-hop culture. The book describes the staggering number of Africans--over ten million--forcibly transported to the New World, most doomed to brutal servitude in Brazil and the Caribbean. Painter looks at the free black population, numbering close to half a million by 1860 (compared to almost four million slaves), and provides a gripping account of the horrible conditions of slavery itself. The book examines the Civil War, revealing that it only slowly became a war to end slavery, and shows how Reconstruction, after a promising start, was shut down by terrorism by white supremacists. Painter traces how through the long Jim Crow decades, blacks succeeded against enormous odds, creating schools and businesses and laying the foundations of our popular culture. We read about the glorious outburst of artistic creativity of the Harlem Renaissance, the courageous struggles for Civil Rights in the 1960s, the rise and fall of Black Power, the modern hip-hop movement, and two black Secretaries of State. Painter concludes that African Americans today are wealthier and better educated, but the disadvantaged are as vulnerable as ever.
Painter deeply enriches her narrative with a series of striking works of art--more than 150 in total, most in full color--works that profoundly engage with black history and that add a vital dimension to the story, a new form of witness that testifies to the passion and creativity of the African-American experience.
* Among the dozens of artists featured are Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Beauford Delaney, Jacob Lawrence, and Kara Walker
* Filled with sharp portraits of important African Americans, from Olaudah Equiano (one of the first African slaves to leave a record of his captivity) and Toussaint L'Ouverture (who led the Haitian revolution), to Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #264654 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This new study by Princeton historian Painter (Standing at Armageddon, etc.) aims not merely to provide an updated scholarly account of African-American history, but to enrich our understanding of it with the subjective views of black artists, which she places alongside the more objective views of academics. The result is a book that contains both a compelling narrative and numerous arresting images, but that does not always successfully tie the two together. To be fair, Painter is a historian, not an art critic. Her primary purpose in including artworks is to illustrate historical points and to show black Americans as creators of their own history. Nevertheless, readers will likely be frustrated by the lack of analysis accompanying the images—Painter simply summarizes most of the art works, leaving much of their complexity and ambiguity unexplored. Thus, she inadvertently diminishes their power as complicated pieces of individual expression. Painter is clearly adept at writing straightforward history, however, and on this front the book is lucid, engaging and topical. It does an excellent job revealing both the African and the American dimensions of African-American history. And her work has the additional merit of following the past into the present, tracing the history of black Americans all the way up to the hip-hop era, the controversies surrounding black voters in the 2000 presidential election and the ongoing issues of incarceration and health care. 148 images, 4 maps. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Painter, a Princeton professor of history, integrates art and history in this fascinating book, filled with powerful images of black art from photographs to paintings to quilts that tell the story of black America. The book begins with the history and imagery of slavery through the Civil War and emancipation, then traces the cultural influences of the civil rights movement, the black power era, and ends with the hip-hop era. Through each period, Painter offers historical context for the artistic expressions and examines how more contemporary sensibilities shaped remembrances of historical events. She explores the ways that context and historical interpretation influence the artist's perspective and is subject to great variation over time. Although most of the works presented were created after the mid-twentieth century, they reflect a broader historical span as black artists have attempted to fill in the void of black images from earlier American history. Readers interested in black American art and history will appreciate this beautiful and well-researched book. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"Nell Irvin Painter's Creating Black Americans is destined to become one of the most beautiful history textbooks in recent memory, with roughly 150 creative representations of the African-American experience ranging from painting and sculpture to graffiti art and quilts. Most of the images are in stunning color, some of them filling an entire page."--Ron Hogan, Beatrice.com
Read the entire interview here.
"...incorporates a sweeping, historic narrative with the emotional expression of more than 150 works of African-American art."--Ebony, February 2006
"Nell Irvin Painter brings her considerable skills and insight to Creating Black Americans. Her excellent introduction to the black American experience will serve any interested reader well....History, the author notes, exists in both the past and present. And Painter's compelling use of black art...emphasizes this point to great effect....Through word and image, [she] has produced a narrative of African-American history that will profit its readers."--Kenneth R. Janken, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in the New York Post

Customer Reviews

A creative approach
Nell Irvin Painter is the Edward Professor of American History at Princeton University. She is author of many books on the Black experience and African American history in the United States, including 'Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol' and 'Southern History across the Color Line'. This book, 'Creating Black Americans: African American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present', is a broad, sweeping text that stirs and involves the reader in the long and significant history of this people in North America. Beginning with the Middle Passage and slave trade that brought the majority of Africans to the Western Hemisphere, Painter continues her narrative through to very recent events, including the appointments of Colin Powell and Condaleeza Rice as Secretaries of State for the United States.

Painter draws on early stories and official histories, biographical accounts and legends, well-known events and little known incidents. One person highlighted is Olaudah Equiano, one of the earliest of the African slaves to write his account. As one might expect, Painter's pieces on Sojourner Truth and others of her generation are particularly good.

Painter also draws on the official history of the quest for civil rights. She looks at famous court cases, like the Dred Scott decision, Plessy v. Ferguson (which made 'separate but equal' a legal standard), Brown v. Board of Education (which knocked down the same 'separate but equal' as being unworkable), and other political and legal events in the quest for civil rights, even those sometimes viewed as separate from the Civil Rights Movement proper, which is also highlighted in good detail.

There is also a good discussion of the Black culture in terms of art, literature, film, music and other aspects. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s is highlighted, as are the figures who came out of this period - Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Wallace Thurman, and Zora Neale Hurston, not to mention the very influential Apollo Theatre, helped launch the careers of such talent as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and James Brown, and later Michael Jackson.

Painter's historical survey includes a good coverage of the Civil War and the Abolitionist movement, including the aftermath of the unfulfilled promises of Reconstruction.

This is a well-illustrated book, with over a hundred photographs and other graphics, and an engaging style of text that keeps the attention of the reader very much engaged.

Engaging and highly readable
The past isn't what it used to be.

That's one of the threads which runs throughout this engaging narrative of African American history from 1619 to the present. Too often students misconstrue history as being carved in stone but as this book illustrates - literally, for it includes nearly 150 works of art which provide comment upon on historical events - interpretations of the past change as new facts come to light, or are viewed through a more diverse lens and connected to current events.

For example, Painter frequently uses the word "terrorist" when referring to white supremacists who have used violence to limit the rights and economic development of black Americans for centuries. It's a word which is not only appropriate, but more meaningful to contemporary students.

Though not an art history book per se (it does not provide analysis of the art, only descriptions which place it in historical context) there is biographical information about each artist at the end of the book.

Engaging and highly readable, I recommend this book to anyone seeking a general overview of African American history and culture. I think it would be particularly useful as a text for high school Advanced Placement courses.

Great Book, highly recommend
This is a great book to read, covers everything from the origns of slavery to the rapid growth of hip-hop. The artwork that is included in the book is phenomenal and really adds to the reading experience. This book will be one of the few scholastic books that I don't sell back to the bookstore.