Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery by Randall M. Miller; John David SmithReview by: Wilma KingThe Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 114, No. 1 (Jan., 1990), pp. 136-138Published by: The Historical Society of PennsylvaniaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20092452 .

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136 BOOK REVIEWS January

The second half of Wilkinson's book is a series of historical case studies.

For each of his selections, he tests the ways in which his four fears received

practical application or illustration. In political history the four fears were

most decisive in the Civil War when they escalated the dispute over slavery and "free soil" into a set of holy hatreds. Later, the four fears surfaced in

the post-World War I rise of the second Ku Klux Klan. The author, however, does not stress, as well he might, the post-World War II phenomenon of

McCarthyism. A common theme in both the commentaries and case studies is the conflict

between individualism and community. From the Puritans to ourselves

there has been the tension between freedom and conformity. Much of the

scholarly agonizing over the American character has reflected the national

ambivalence toward these two goals. Popular fears or neuroses have become

excuses for our failure to cope meaningfully with important social and

political problems. Concentration on the author's four fears accordingly may be less helpful than the older concerns of Tocqueville and his successors

over the American passion for conformity and materialism, at the expense of freedom and individuality. Meanwhile, Wilkinson's four fears offer a

unique, but also very subjective, and even pretentious, analysis of the pursuit of the American character.

State University of New York at Albany Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr.

Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery. Edited by Randall M. Miller and

John David Smith. (New York, Westport, and London: Greenwood

Press, 1988. xvi, 866p. Introduction, note on use, chronology, index.

$95.00.)

At the outset, Randall M. Miller and John David Smith promise a

synthesis of the vast array of literature on slavery. They fulfill their com

mitment with the Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery, the results of five

years of labor to forge nearly 300 essays on slavery into a comprehensive reference for use by scholars and general readers. Commencing with "Ab

olitionism" and ending with "Slave Women," the dictionary reflects a

change of focus in studies on slavery over much of the past century. Such

traditional subjects as housing, clothing, and punishments are included along with such newly conceived topics as demography, genealogy, and material

culture. Essays on source materials and photographs add a fresh dimension.

The treatment of slavery in popular literature and films are of equal interest.

Well-known slaves (e.g., Frederick Douglass and Olaudah Equiano) are

present along with the less-known free men of color (e.g., Andrew Durnford

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1990 BOOK REVIEWS 137

and William Ellison). Attempts to create gender balance in this study by

including the well-known Ellen Craft, Sally Hemings, Harriet Tubman,

Sojourner Truth, and Phillis Wheatley succeed on one hand, but fail on

another. Aside from Silvia Dubois, the majority of ordinary females remain

nameless, faceless "mammies," "house servants," or "slave women." Failure

to include Harriet Jacobs, Lucy A. Delaney, Kate Drumgoold, or Mattier

Jackson means that readers will not hear the voices of little-known slave

women. Is it possible that their writings are viewed as literature rather than

history? Certainly this is not the case with Charlotte Forten.

Time and space receive attention as authors chronicle events from the

earliest British settlement to Reconstruction in major cities, slaveholding states, and regions. This facet of the work allows not only for an examination

of change over time, but it also delineates differences in geographical lo

cations. In short, the dictionary "ranges both widely and plumbs deeply"

(p. X).

Varying in length from several paragraphs to several pages, essays focus

upon social and cultural aspects of slavery, evidence of scholars "charting new areas of inquiry and applying new methods of analysis" (p. x). Chil

dren's history, for example, is a relatively new area of investigation, and

no substantial study has been published on slave children to date. In an

attempt to fill that abyss and provide directions for generational studies, the dictionary includes essays on youthful as well as elderly slaves. Both

entries are appropriate

since "slavery was

primarily an economic system that

valued slaves, young as well as old, in accordance with their economic worth

and productivity" (p. 213). The selection of authors was based upon their publications or publication

potential in the field. Catharine Clinton, Robert L. Hall, Sam B. Hilliard, Linda O. McMurray, Benjamin Quarles, Richard C. Sutch, and Norman

R. Yetman are among the more than 200 contributors. Of this number, there is a dearth of black women who provided essays.

Aside from editing the Dictionary of Afro-American Slavery, Miller and

Smith contributed essays, "Slavery and the American Revolution" and

"Historiography of Slavery," respectively. Most authors, with few excep

tions, have one entry. Todd L. Savitt's three essays?"Health Care," "In

fanticide," and "Life insurance"?are related. The same is true of Charles

Joyner's "Burial Practice," "Folklore," and "Gullah." Duplication is min

imized.

Valued features of the dictionary are cross-references and bibliographies

following each essay. Cross-references assist readers in finding related data, while selected bibliographies feature the most recent and useful scholarship on a subject. Although John W. Blassingame does not have entries in the

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138 BOOK REVIEWS January

dictionary, his Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South is cited frequently.

The editors deserve commendation for producing the Dictionary of Afro American Slavery. The high degree of accessibility into the ever-growing body of scholarship on slavery will make it a much-used resource.

Indiana University of Pennsylvania Wilma King

Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century. Edited by Leon Litwack and August Meier. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press,

1988. xii, 344p. Bibliographical essay, index. $24.95.)

Over the last seven years the University of Illinois Press has initiated an

important series of biographical studies focusing on black leadership. This book?like its companion volumes, Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century (1982, co-edited by John Hope Franklin and Meier) and Southern Black

Leaders of the Reconstruction Era (1982, edited by Howard N. Rabinowitz)? fills an important gap in African-American historiography. In spite of the

large number of biographical and monographic studies devoted to blacks since the 1960s, too few have the analytical and contextual sophistication contained in the essays in this volume.

The editors selected seventeen influential black leaders based primarily on the grounds of their importance and significance. Subjects of the essays include Richard Allen, Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass,

Mary Ann Shadd, John Mercer Langston, Henry Highland Garnet, Martin R. Delany, Peter Humphries Clark, Blanche K. Bruce, Robert Brown

Elliott, Holland Thompson, Alexander Crummell, Henry McNeal Turner, William Henry Steward, Isaiah T. Montgomery, and Mary Church Terrell. The book also includes Eric Foner's extremely valuable essay on grass roots

black leaders during Reconstruction.

Several of the articles offer fresh interpretations of black leaders who have been the subjects of previous books and articles. For example, in his

piece on Nat Turner, Peter H. Wood underscores the importance of non

Christian and Christian cultures on the first-generation African-American leader. West African belief systems and evangelical Christianity formed a

syncretic "braid that gave . . . Turner his unusual perspective and intense vision" (p. 40). According to Waldo E. Martin, Jr., the struggles encoun

tered by Frederick Douglass symbolized those that faced African-American

leadership generally. "The central paradox oP' Douglass's "leader

ship . . . consisted of the promotion of black integration into a nation

dominated by whites who essentially despised the rejected black people."

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