Historian Rayford Logan was part of a circle of intellectuals at Howard University in the 1930s-1950s. In 1944, he gathered together essays by 15 prominent black intellectuals. The outspoken views expressed in the essays helped to set the agenda for the civil rights movement.

Historian Rayford Logan was part of a circle of intellectuals at Howard University in the 1930s-1950s. In 1944, he gathered together essays by 15 prominent black intellectuals. The outspoken views expressed in the essays helped to set the agenda for the civil rights movement.

Between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and the end of World War I in 1918, African Americans experienced their nadir. The Betrayal of the Negro (originally published as The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877-1901 and subsequently expanded) is the only full-scale account to document with encyclopedic research this neglected phase in American history. The author examines every aspect of our country's post-Reconstruction retreat from equality: the economic factors, the Supreme Court decisions, Booker T. Washington and his "Era of Compromise," and, in a unique...

Born around 1817 in Maryland, Frederick Douglass was a former plantation slave who went on to become a brilliant writer and eloquent orator. In this amazing first-hand narrative, published in 1881, he vividly recounts his early years, which were filled with physical abuse, deprivation, and tragedy; his dramatic escapes to the North, recapture, and eventual freedom; his work for the Anti-Slavery Society and influential role in speaking for other African-Americans; his abolitionist campaigns, and crusade for full civil rights for former slaves.