Spanning the eight decades between the American Revolution and the Civil
War, The Roots of African-American Identity focuses on the lives of
African Americans in the nominally free northern and western states.
This book explores how a group of marginalized people crafted a uniquely
New World ethnic identity that informed popular African American
historical consciousness. Elizabeth Rauh Bethel examines the way in
which that consciousness fueled collective efforts to claim and live a
promised but undelivered democratic freedom, helping readers to
understand how African Americans reformulated and perceived their
collective past. Bethel also reveals how this vision of freedom and
historical consciousness shaped African American participation in the
Reconstruction, formed the spiritual and ideological foundation for the
modern Pan-African movement, and provided the historical legacy for the
Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Comprehensive and engaging, The
Roots of African-American Identity is an absorbing account of an often
overlooked part of American history.