INTERVIEW + AUDIO: Stephen G. Hall, “A Faithful Account of the Race: African American Historical Writing in Nineteenth-Century America” (UNC Press, 2009)

Stephen G. Hall

 A Faithful Account of the Race:

African American

Historical Writing in

Nineteenth-Century America

University of North Carolina Press, 2009

by Arika Easley-Houser on February 8, 2013

Stephen G. Hall

Historian Stephen Hall passionately engages in the history of nineteenth-century African American intellectual life in his first monograph, A Faithful Account of the Race: African American Historical Writing in Nineteenth-Century America (University of North Carolina Press, 2009). This work traces the long nineteenth-century and how black historical writers evoked various themes at different moments, including ancient African history, biblical history, the paradox of American slavery, and challenges to black citizenship during the Reconstruction era.  He unearths of a plethora of black historical sources in the nineteenth century in various forms, including speeches, sermons, newspapers, and literary texts,  which each serve as precursors to the black historical writing of the twentieth century.  His work reveals the complexities of African American intellectual history, and would be a great inclusion for undergraduate or graduate course, or for a general audience of readers who would be interested in learning more about the important history he illuminates. Listen in.