Knowing Him by Heart: African Americans on Abraham Lincoln
An unprecedented collection of African American writings on Lincoln
Though not blind to Abraham Lincoln's imperfections, Black Americans long ago laid a heartfelt claim to his legacy. At the same time, they have consciously reshaped the sixteenth president's image for their own social and political ends. Frederick Hord and Matthew D. Norman's anthology explores the complex nature of views on Lincoln through the writings and thought of Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary McLeod Bethune, Thurgood Marshall, Malcolm X, Gwendolyn Brooks, Barbara Jeanne Fields, Barack Obama, and dozens of others. The selections move from speeches to letters to book excerpts, mapping the changing contours of the bond--emotional and intellectual--between Lincoln and Black Americans over the span of one hundred and fifty years.
A comprehensive and valuable reader, Knowing Him by Heart examines Lincoln's still-evolving place in Black American thought.
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"No voice has been more important in speaking about Abraham Lincoln than the African American one. Yet, that voice has been often buried in obscure newspapers and magazines and long-forgotten collections of papers. It has been fervent in its admiration, and it has been strident in its resentment at condescension. The remarkable achievement of Frederick Hord and Matthew Norman is to bring these varied voices together in one place, offering an unprecedented resource for understanding the fraught relationship of a national image of emancipation with a people longing for redemption. 'I know Abraham Lincoln, ' declared one of these voices. Thanks to Hord and Norman, we can all 'know Lincoln' in an entirely new and multi-voiced way."--Allen C. Guelzo, author of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America
