Our Lives, Our Images, Our Stories - books on African Americans - Brief Article - Bibliography

The following books of documentary, narrative and pictorial history were invaluable in shaping the concepts and identifying some of the images used in this special collector's edition of ESSENCE. We recommend them to readers seeking further information or looking for unique gifts to mark the turn of the millennium.

African Ceremonies by Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher, foreword by Malidoma Patrice Some (Harry N. Abrams, 1999, $150). A two-volume masterwork that documents, in some 850 stunning color photographs, the rites and rituals of traditional Africa--with an introduction by Some, a leading voice on African spirituality.

Beloved Sisters and Loving Friends: Letters From Rebecca Primus of Royal Oak, Maryland, and Addle Brown of Hartford, Connecticut (1854-1868), edited with commentaries throughout by Farah Jasmine Griffin (Alfred A. Knopf, 1999, $26). A rare and fascinating correspondence between two nineteenth-century African-American women: Primus goes South to teach newly freed Black people and writes back to her friend, a domestic worker in Hartford. Editor Griffin is a scholar of African-American literature at the University of Pennsylvania.

Feeling the Spirit: Searching the World for the People of Africa by Chester Higgins, Jr., (Bantam Books, 1994, $50). This 30-year retrospective from the award-winning photographer features exquisite black-and-white images of people of African descent from all over the world.

Hidden Witness: African-American Images From the Dawn of Photography to the Civil War by Jackie Napolean Wilson (St. Martin's Press, 1999, $27.50). An African-American attorney, historian and private collector who lives in Detroit has culled a treasury of images of nineteenth-century African-Americans dating back to 1840, when photography was first introduced in the United States.

The Face of Our Past: Images of Black Women From Colonial America to the Present, edited by Kathleen Thompson and Hilary Mac Austin, with an introduction by Darlene Clark Hine (Indiana University Press, 1999, with 302 black-and-white photos, $35). An unprecedented visual history of African-American women assembled from the nation's historical collections and archives, with an introduction by the dean of contemporary Black women scholars of Black women's history.

The following references were also used in compiling our timeline:

Black Saga: The African-American Experience, A Chronology by Charles M. Christian (Civitas, 1999, $20).

Crosscurrents: West Indian Immigrants and Race by Milton Vickerman (Oxford University Press, 1999, $20.95).

Spirits of the Passage: The Transatlantic Slave Trade in the Seventeenth Century by Madeleine Burnside and Rosemarie Robotham (Simon & Schuster, 1997, $35).

Timelines of African-American History: 500 Years of Black Achievement by Tom Cowan, Ph.D., and Jack Maguire (Roundtable Press/Perigee, 1994, $15).

1001 Things Everyone Should Know About African-American History by Jeffrey C. Stewart (Doubleday, 1996, $15.95).

ESSENCE editor-at-large Susan McHenry shaped the content of this collector's edition on family. "We need to remember and appreciate the deep well of wisdom in the African-American family," offers McHenry.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Essence Communications, Inc.
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