The compelling and wide-ranging tale that examines the moral choices made by blacks and whites of New York State to aid the newly freed slaves to secure the promise of freedom. The North Star was both an astronomical reference guiding slaves north to freedom, and a symbol of the moral enterprise that sought to end slavery. This crusade for freedom in the north was born of the religious revivals of the 1820s and 1830s in central and western New York - known as the Burned-Over District, which lit the fires that eventually burst into the conflagration of the Civil War. Milton C. Sernett begins...

Chronicling the career of Beriah Green (1795-1874), theologian, educator, reformer and one of Now York's most important abolitionists, this book is a history of Green and his attempt to create a model biracial society.

Discusses the migration of African-Americans from the south to the north after WWI through the 1940s and the effect this had on African-American churches and religions.

"Bound for the Promised Land" is the first extensive examination of the impact on the American religious landscape of the Great Migration--the movement from South to North and from country to city by hundreds of thousands of African Americans following World War I. In focusing on this phenomenon's religious and cultural implications, Milton C. Sernett breaks with traditional patterns of historiography that analyze the migration in terms of socioeconomic considerations.
Drawing on a range of sources--interviews, government documents, church periodicals, books, pamphlets, and...

This widely-heralded collection of remarkable documents offers a view of African American religious history from Africa and early America through Reconstruction to the rise of black nationalism, civil rights, and black theology of today. The documents--many of them rare, out-of-print, or difficult to find--include personal narratives, sermons, letters, protest pamphlets, early denominational histories, journalistic accounts, and theological statements. In this volume Olaudah Equiano describes Ibo religion. Lemuel Haynes gives a black Puritan's farewell. Nat Turner confesses. Jarena Lee...

Harriet Tubman is one of America s most beloved historical figures, revered alongside luminaries including Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. "Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and History" tells the fascinating story of Tubman s life as an American icon. The distinguished historian Milton C. Sernett compares the larger-than-life symbolic Tubman with the actual historical Tubman. He does so not to diminish Tubman s achievements but rather to explore the interplay of history and myth in our national consciousness. Analyzing how the Tubman icon has changed over time, Sernett shows that the...

Harriet Tubman is one of America's most beloved historical figures, revered alongside luminaries including Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. "Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and History" tells the fascinating story of Tubman's life as an American icon. The distinguished historian Milton C. Sernett compares the larger-than-life symbolic Tubman with the actual "historical" Tubman. He does so not to diminish Tubman's achievements but rather to explore the interplay of history and myth in our national consciousness. Analyzing how the Tubman icon has changed over time, Sernett shows that the...

Offers a view of African American religious history from Africa and early America through Reconstruction to the rise of black nationalism, civil rights, and the black theology. This work includes documents, such as personal narratives, sermons, letters, protest pamphlets, early denominational histories, and theological statements.