Anti-Racism in U.S. History: The First Two Hundred Years

This work examines the existence of anti-racism in the first 200 years of US history. Herbert Aptheker challenges the view that racism was universally accepted by whites. His book debunks the myth the white people never cared about the plight of African-Americans until just before the outbreak of the Civil War. Covering the period from the 1600s through the 1860s, Aptheker begins with a short introduction and a questioning of racism’s pervasiveness, taking examples of anti-racism from the literature. He then devotes sections to sexual relations, racism and anti-racism, to joint struggles to reject racism, and to a discussion of Gregoire, Banneker and Jeffersonianism. Next he considers inferiority as viewed by poets, preachers and teachers and by entrepreneuers, seamen and cowboys. After a consideration of the Quakers, he turns his attention to the American and French revolutions and racism and to the Republic’s early years and racism. Aptheker then devotes several sections to Abolitionism and concludes the work with the the Crisis Decade , the Civil War, emancipation and anti-racism. This book by a well-known scholar in the field should be of interest to all concerned with US history and African American history.