Reviews for Lessons Learned from the Gullah Experience : Powerful Forces in Educating African-American Youth

The average rating for Lessons Learned from the Gullah Experience : Powerful Forces in Educating African-American Youth based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-09-27 00:00:00 William Hocker Writing over 100 years ago when memories of slavery, the Civil War and the betrayal of emancipation were still first hand experiences for many, this was a groundbreaking attempt to summarise the history of the peoples of Africa and their diaspora in the Americas. As Du Bois states in his first paragraph, there was much more research still to be done before a fully, detailed, accurate history could be written - that may still today be the case - but he felt the need to write this book and share the theories and knowledge already then available. Why? It seems he wanted to educate and inform both sides of the racial divide in the US on a number of very important issues: Is it correct to think of all Africans as a single, separate ethnic unit? A clearly defined race? His answer is a firm "No". Using the limited information then available he demonstrates the immense diversity and intermingling of groups and cultures in Africa. While his conclusion on the unity of the sapiens species is correct, based on more modern DNA analysis and ethnographic research, his writing reflects the then mistaken view that mankind developed in Asia and migrated to Africa. Is it correct to believe Africa was a primitive and uncivilised place with no culture, no social institutions, no economic progress. In short to believe Africans themselves are inferior. Again, no. He provides very little detail on the great African civilisations - probably because so little research was available to him - but he succeeds in showing that Africa had developed and could've developed further were it not for the enormous disruption and violence of the slave trade and internal conflicts caused by mass migrations of peoples. Why and how were the slave trade and slavery so destructive and so debilitating on both sides of the Atlantic? Did the failure of African Americans to free themselves and then take the opportunities offered by emancipation just provide evidence that they were not equal or fit to be given full rights? Here he is at his strongest and most informative, showing with clear concise facts and examples that colonisation and slavery were not some kind of benevolent, civilising force and that numerous attempts were made by black people to escape or overthrow the restrictions put upon them. When given fair rights, people did develop and improve themselves. He also demonstrates how post emancipation reconstruction quickly was subverted and became the oppressive segregation which still colours racial politics today. In his final pages he is however very positive about the future of both Africa and black people elsewhere in the world. In some ways he is right to expect and hope for more but we see all too clearly that it is not yet the utopia he envisioned. This is an important historical record but obviously not the last word on African and African American history, nor should we expect it to be. It is at first a little hard to read because he writes using the common terms (mostly disparaging and degrading) of the mostly white society around him. Seeing negro, coloured, kaffir, mulatto, hottentot and so on written in a book by a black historian is unsettling. It's a symptom of the society he was writing in that he had to use those terms. He also assumes his readers have at least a reasonable level of 19th century US history - referring to the 15th Amendment, John Brown, the SS Creole mutiny, David Walker's appeal and other important events without any explanation. Wikipedia became a useful background source for me - perhaps future ebooks editions could provide footnotes with more detail on some of this?

Review # 2 was written on 2011-10-16 00:00:00 Louise C Bergevin I began this book because I've been a lot of Civil War history and CW fiction and hope to gain insight into those who were held in slavery. I got this classic 1912 history of the black race free on Kindle and was, frankly, expecting a dry read. I was pleasantly surprised and enlightened as I explored W.E.B. DuBois's account of his people's talents, religions and ever-expanding presence across Africa and, ultimately, around the world. Like a cheerleader, he praises as he informs and I get the feeling that it is the negro that he is trying to inform, indulge and teach of the greatness within themselves. I recommend reading an actual paper book of The Negro because the Kindle version doesn't have the maps for easy reference that the real book contains.