African American Historiography Archive of The Journal of Negro History with Landmark Essays on Reconstruction, Slavery, and Black Regional History

Carter G. Woodson

Ephemera and pamphlets

Woodson, Carter Godwin. The Journal of Negro History. Archive of three landmark issues published between 1924 and 1928 documenting the institutional development of African American historical scholarship during the early twentieth century. The material records Black intellectual production, historical recovery, and scholarly publishing through the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, founded by Carter G. Woodson and Jesse E. Moorland in 1915. These issues include Black scholarship challenging white supremacist interpretations of Reconstruction, slavery, labor, and African diasporic history through archival research and independent academic publication. The journal served as one of the central vehicles through which African American historians established scholarly networks, disseminated original research, and institutionalized the study of Black history within American intellectual life. The archive provides primary-source evidence for the emergence of modern African American historiography and the scholarly movement that later gave rise to Negro History Week and Black History Month.

Woodson, Carter Godwin, ed. The Journal of Negro History. Lancaster, PA, and Washington, D.C.: The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1924, 1926, and 1928. Three issues in publisher’s printed wrappers comprising Vol. IX, No. 3 (July 1924); Vol. XI, No. 3 (July 1926); and Vol. XIII, No. 3 (July 1928). Each issue measures approximately 10 x 6.5 inches and ranges between 120 and 176 pages. [1] Vol. IX, No. 3 (July 1924). Devoted primarily to Alrutheus Ambush Taylor’s major study “The Negro in South Carolina During the Reconstruction,” examining demographic change, labor transition, religion, education, and political organization in the post-emancipation South. Written while Taylor served as the first full-time Black researcher employed by Woodson’s organization, the study foregrounds African American agency during Reconstruction and anticipates interpretive frameworks later expanded by W.E.B. Du Bois in Black Reconstruction. [2] Vol. XI, No. 3 (July 1926). Continues Taylor’s Reconstruction scholarship with “The Negro in the Reconstruction of Virginia,” detailing Black political participation, church organization, disenfranchisement campaigns, and the reestablishment of white political control in Virginia after Reconstruction. The article constitutes one of the earliest extended scholarly treatments of Black Reconstruction politics in the state. [3] Vol. XIII, No. 3 (July 1928). Broadens the journal’s scope beyond the Reconstruction South through studies including N. Andrew N. Cleven’s “The First Panama Mission and the Congress of the United States,” W. Sherman Savage’s early survey “The Negro in the History of the Pacific Northwest,” and Jean Trapp’s “The Liverpool Movement for the Abolition of the English Slave Trade.” The issue additionally includes Ruth A. Fisher’s extensive 109-page documentary compilation “Extracts from the Records of the African Companies,” reproducing archival material relating to British commercial participation in the transatlantic slave trade.

These issues record the emergence of African American historical scholarship as an organized intellectual discipline during a period when Black historians faced systematic exclusion from mainstream academic institutions and publishing networks. The journal’s sustained attention to Reconstruction history preceded revisionist scholarship that later transformed the field, with early interpretations centered on Black political participation, labor, and institutional development rather than Lost Cause narratives dominant in white historiography of the era. Studies on the Pacific Northwest, Panama, and British antislavery movements extend the journal’s diasporic approach to Black history beyond the American South. Minor edgewear and faint toning to wrappers; overall very good condition. An archive of foundational African American historical scholarship and one of the central publishing achievements of twentieth-century Black intellectual life.

Item #21787

Price: $455.00