Winner of an Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Award
Though not blind to Abraham Lincoln's imperfections, Black Americans long ago laid a heartfelt claim to his legacy. At the same time, they have consciously reshaped the sixteenth president's image for their own social and political ends. Frederick Hord and Matthew D. Norman's anthology explores the complex nature of views on Lincoln through the writings and thought of Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary McLeod Bethune, Thurgood Marshall, Malcolm X, Gwendolyn Brooks, Barbara Jeanne Fields, Barack Obama, and dozens of others. The selections move from speeches to letters to book excerpts, mapping the changing contours of the bond--emotional and intellectual--between Lincoln and Black Americans over the span of one hundred and fifty years.
A comprehensive and valuable reader, Knowing Him by Heart examines Lincoln’s still-evolving place in Black American thought.
Introduction by: Fred Lee Hord, Matthew D. Norman
Contributions by: Rodney O. Davis, Douglas L. Wilson, Michael Burlingame, Richard Carwardine, Edna Greene Medford, James Oakes, Matthew Pinsker, Gerald J Prokopowicz, John R Sellers, Jennifer L Weber, Frederick Douglass, H. Ford Douglas, Thomas Hamilton, Robert Hamilton, Jabez P Campbell, Henry McNeal Turner, Daniel Alexander Payne, Henry Highland Garnet, Philip A Bell, Edward M Thomas, Alfred P Smith, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, George B Vashon, Thomas Strother, Ezra R Johnson, CPS, James Smith, Alexander T Augusta, Jeremiah B Sanderson, Osborne P Anderson, Thomas Morris Chester, James H Hudson, John Proctor, Robert Purvis, Hannah Johnson, Leonard A Grimes, Jeremiah Asher, John Willis Menard, African Civilization Society, William Florville, Henry Johnson, Thomas R Street, John H Morgan, Mattild Burr, Amos G Beman, Richard H Cain, Jean Baptiste Roudanez, Arnold Bertonneau, North Carolina Freedmen, Don Carlos Rutter, George E Stephens, James W.C Pennington, "Africano", Annie Davis, S.W. Chase, Sojourner Truth, Martin Delany, George Washington, Isaac J Hill, Alexander H Newton, Jacob Thomas, Angeline R Demby, Henry O Wagoner, George W Le Vere, Elizabeth Keckley, Paul Trevigne, Thomas N.C Liverpool, H Cordelia, George Washington Williams, Emmanuel K Love, William S Scarborough, John Mercer Langston, Peter H Clark, EWS Hammond, Charles W Anderson, Booker T Washington, Harriet Tubman, Julius F Taylor, Ida B Wells-Barnett, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Elizabeth Thomas, Archibald H Grimke, Elizabeth Keckly, William A Sinclair, Jesse Max Barber, Mary Church Terrell, T. Thomas Fortune, Reverdy C Ransom, W. E. B Du Bois, William Monroe Trotter, Maude K Griffin, Hightower T Kealing, Silas X Floyd, George L Knox, Thomas S Inborden, George W Henderson, William Pickens, Kelly Miller, Etta M. T. Cottin, John M Gandy, Fred R Moore, Sylvanie F Williams, Harry C Smith, James H Magee, James L Curtis, John W. E. Bowen Sr, Cora J Ball, Thomas Nelson Baker, Josephine Silone Yates, James Weldon Johnson, William H Lewis, John H Murphy Sr, Robert R Wright Sr, Theophile T Allain, Oliva Ward Bush-Banks, Richard W Gadsden, Edward A Johnson, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Hubert H Harrison, Carter G Woodson, Robert R Moton, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Langston Hughes, Charles Chesnutt, Walter White, Lamar Perkins, Samuel A Haynes, William E Lilly, Robert L Vann, William Lloyd Imes, Eugene Gordon, Arthur W Mitchell, Grace Evans, Aaron H Payne, Claude McKay, Roscoe Conkling Simmons, Joel A Rogers, Mary McLeod Bethune, John Hope Franklin, Ella Baker, Luther Porter Jackson, Willard Townsend, Ralph J Bunche, Roy Wilkins, Mordecai W Johnson, Carl J Murphy, Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King Jr, Thurgood Marshall, Edith Sampson, Benjamin Quarles, St. Clair Drake, Charles H Wesley, Daisy Bates, Malcolm X, Gwendolyn Brooks, Julius Lester, Lerone Bennett Jr, Henry Lee Moon, John H Sengstacke, Norman E. W. Hodges, Arvarh E. Strickland, Mary Frances Berry, Vincent Harding, Clarence Thomas, Barbara Jeanne Fields, Henry Louis Gates Jr, Barack Obama