Each of these essays illuminates an important dimension of the complex array of Black male experiences as workers, artists, warriors, and leaders. The essays describe the expectations and demands to struggle, to resist, and facilitate the survival of African American culture and community. Black manhood was shaped not only in relation to Black womanhood, but was variously nurtured and challenged, honed and transformed against a backdrop of white male power and domination, and the relentless expectations and demands on them to struggle, resist, and to facilitate the survival of...

A Question of Manhood: A Reader in Black Men's History and Masculinity, is the first anthology of historical studies focused on themes and issues central to the construction of Black masculinities. The editors identified these essays from among several hundred articles published in recent years in leading American history journals and academic periodicals. Volume II picks up where volume I left off, continuing to focus on gender by examining the lives of African American men in the tumultuous period following the Civil War through the end of the nineteenth century. The writings included in...