Presenting a new perspective on the saga of the enslavement of the Jewish people and their departure from Egypt, this study compares the Jewish experience with that of African-American slaves in the United States, as well as the latter group’s subsequent fight for dignity and equality. This consideration dives deeply into the biblical narrative, using classical and modern commentaries to explore the social, psychological, religious, and philosophical dimensions of the slave experience and mentality. It draws on slave narratives, published letters, eyewitness accounts, and recorded interviews with former slaves, together with historical, sociological, economic, and political analyses of this era. The book explores the five major needs of every long-term victim and journeys through these five stages with the Israelite and the African-American slaves on their historical path toward physical and psychological freedom. This rich, multi-dimensional collage of parallel and contrasting experiences is designed to enrich readers’ understanding of the plight of these two groups.

AcknowledgementsPart One: Exodus History1. "Bent Twigs and Broken Backs": An Introduction2. Of the Black Church and the Making of a Black Public3. Exodus, Race, and the Politics of Nation4. Race, Nation, and the Ideology of Chosenness5. The Nation and Freedom CelebrationsPart Two: Exodus Politics6. The Initial Years of the Black Convention Movement7. Respectability and Race, 1835-18428. "Pharaoh's on Both Sides of the Blood-Red Waters": Henry Highland Garnet and the National Convention of 1843Epilogue: The Tragedy of African American PoliticsNotesIndex Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

With essays by Blyden Jackson, Dernoral Davis, Stewart E. Tolnay and E. M. Beck, Carole Marks, James R. Grossman, and William Cohen and Neil R. McMillen What were the causes that motivated legions of black southerners to immigrate to the North? What was the impact upon the land they left and upon the communities they chose for their new homes? Perhaps no pattern of migration has changed America's socioeconomic structure more than this mass exodus of African Americans in the first half of the twentieth century. Because of this exodus, the South lost not only a huge percentage of its inhabitants to northern cities like Chicago, New York, Detroit, and Philadelphia but also its supply of cheap labor. Fleeing from racial injustice and poverty, southern blacks took their culture north with them and transformed northern urban centers with their churches, social institutions, and ways of life. In Black Exodus eight noted scholars consider the causes that stimulated the migration and examine the far-reaching results.

"Shows how writers such as Absalom Jones, Daniel Coker, and W.E.B. Du Bois employed the Exodus metanarrative to ask profound, difficult questions of the African experience in America from the eighteenth century onward."--Jacket flap.

The first major migration to the North of ex-slaves.

The Civil War was just days old when the first enslaved men, women, and children began fleeing their plantations to seek refuge inside the lines of the Union army as it moved deep into the heart of the Confederacy. In the years that followed, hundreds of thousands more followed in a mass exodus from slavery that would destroy the system once and for all. Drawing on an extraordinary survey of slave refugee camps throughout the country, Embattled Freedom reveals as never before the everyday experiences of these refugees from slavery as they made their way through the vast landscape of army-supervised camps that emerged during the war. Amy Murrell Taylor vividly reconstructs the human world of wartime emancipation, taking readers inside military-issued tents and makeshift towns, through commissary warehouses and active combat, and into the realities of individuals and families struggling to survive physically as well as spiritually. Narrating their journeys in and out of the confines of the camps, Taylor shows in often gripping detail how the most basic necessities of life were elemental to a former slave's quest for freedom and full citizenship. The stories of individuals--storekeepers, a laundress, and a minister among them--anchor this ambitious and wide-ranging history and demonstrate with new clarity how contingent the slaves' pursuit of freedom was on the rhythms and culture of military life. Taylor brings new insight into the enormous risks taken by formerly enslaved people to find freedom in the midst of the nation's most destructive war.

“An intriguing narrative . . . A complementary blend of scripture, ancient legends, history, and archaeology, it will stir your curiosity.” —Lorraine Evans, Egyptologist and author of Burying the Dead In this groundbreaking work, the authors reexamine humanity’s most enduring account of bondage, emancipation, and freedom. The Great Exodus is the story of how one man, empowered by divine epiphany, brought the mighty ancient kingdom of Egypt to its knees. For thousands of years, this story has bolstered the faithful of three major religions, though little historical data confirms it. So the question must be asked: Did it ever really happen? Roberts, a historian and theologian, and Ward, an archaeologist, Egyptologist, and anthropologist, dig deeply into historical records to answer the most vexing questions: Is there any historical evidence for the biblical account of the Great Exodus? Was Moses a real person? Where is the Biblical Mount Sinai? What is the Ark of the Covenant, and where did it come from? Why did Moses write about the Serpent and the Nephilim? Is there a Templar and Masonic connection to the events and personages in the story? Did the Exodus take place under Amenhotep II or Amenhotep III, two pharaohs of the same royal house separated by two generations and eighty-odd years? Or were Thutmoses III, Hatshepsut, and Amenhotep Son of Hapu at the core of the action? The authors present two opposing, yet strangely interlaced historical accounts for the Exodus, naming the historical pharaohs and surprising candidates for the historical Moses. While Roberts presents an account that finds its moorings in the efficacy of scriptural historicity, Ward presents a new and completely unique theory for the Exodus and its cast of characters.