Black History
Go to:
A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
The Life of Toussaint L'Overture by John R. Beard
The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective by Margaret Sanger
A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin: Presenting the Original Facts and Documents upon which the Story is Founded Together with Corroborative Statements Verifying the Truth of the Work (Facsimile) by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)
When President Abraham Lincoln met the author of this work, he is said to have remarked that she was, "the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!" That book was Stowe's 1851 bestseller, Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Unable to answer either her arguments against slavery or the emotional appeal of her story, Stowe's critics charged that she had misrepresented Southern slavery. It would have been easy for her to reply that her critics should read the book. Tom's first two owners were decent Southerners. Only the third, the infamous Simon Lagree, was cruel, and he was a transplanted New Englander. Her book didn't say that Southerners were bad. It said that slavery was so inherently evil that it corrupted and defeated even the good intentions of good people.
But Stowe did not end her campaign against slavery with Uncle Tom's Cabin. In 1853 she published this fact-filled book, A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, to demonstrate that what happened in her novel was precisely what was happening under slavery. Events in her story have exact parallels in real events.
In the interest of historical accuracy, this book is a facsimile of an 1853 original, with its small time enlarged to make reading easier. The book is also released under a special education license to ensure that it reaches the largest number of people. "Teachers may freely make copies of up to 25 pages from this book for each student taking courses from them without written permission or royalty payment as long as at least one printed copy of the Inkling edition of this work is available for students in the school's library."
Here is how the author explained what she intended to do with A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin.
The work which the writer here presents to the public is
one which has been written with no pleasure, and with
much pain. In fictitious writing, it is possible to find
refuge from the hard and the terrible, by inventing
scenes and characters of a more pleasing nature. No such
resource is open in a work of fact; and the subject of
this work is one on which the truth, if told at all, must
needs be very dreadful. There is no bright side to
slavery, as such. These scenes which are made bright by
the generosity and kindness of masters and mistresses,
would be brighter still if the element of slavery were
withdrawn. There is nothing picturesque or beautiful, in
the family attachments of old servants, which is not to
be found in countries where these servants are legally
free. The tenants on an English estate are often more
fond and faithful than if they were slaves. Slavery,
therefore, is not the element which forms the picturesque
and beautiful of Southern life. What is peculiar to
slavery, and distinguishes it from free servitude, is
evil, and only evil, and that continually.--From the
Preface
ISBN: 1-58742-038-4 (paperback)
Amazon US: Paperback
Amazon Canada: Paperback
Amazon France: Paperback
Amazon Germany: Paperback
Amazon Japan: Paperback
Amazon UK: Paperback
Barnes & Noble: Paperback
Return to Top
The Life of Toussaint L'Overture: The Negro Patriot of Hayti by John R. [Relly] Beard (1800-1876)
There's perhaps nothing more foolish than believing that wisdom was born with us or, put another way, that those who went before us have nothing to teach. In fact, improvements in technology and a growing cultural sophistication have little to do with the wisdom it takes to organize our lives, discipline our thoughts, and set our goals in ways that will not only achieve success, but the sort of success that endures. Thinking otherwise does not mean we repeat the mistakes of the past. It means we will make mistakes--often painful and costly ones--that wiser ancestors would never have made.
That's why this book is so important. It not only describes events that took place some two centuries ago, it gives them from the perspective of someone who died before anyone now living was born. It is a voice out of the past, and one that should be heard.
When the topic of this book, Toussaint L'Overture, was born slavery seemed one the 'givens' of history, as much a part of modern life as traffic congestion and noise. All great civilizations, many educated people would have told you, are built on sweated labor of slaves. Toussaint dared to challenge that, not just with a belief that slaves should be free, but with the far more radical idea that slaves had within themselves the power to break their chains and reorder their lives in freedom. He dared to demonstrate that truth, not against a corrupt and decadent colonial government, but against the very same French military leaders and troops who had overrun Europe with ease. The defeat he and his people handed the French was so great that the nation abandoned its most valuable overseas possession for a pitance rather than risk another colonial war. That's why the United States owes its possession of all the land west of the Alleganies and east of the Mississipi River to a Haitian slave whose name most Americans have never heard.
When this book was published in 1853, slavery was fighting for its existence. Modern Britain never permitted slavery on its shores and, after a long and bitter political struggle, banned slavery in its colonies. In the sort of unilateral projection of force that is the prerogative of superpowers, the navies of Britain and, oddly enough, of the United States sought to end the seaborne slave trade that remained, particularly along the coasts of Africa. But the United States, the 'peculiar institution' of slavery remained. This book was written to destroy the prejudices upon which that slavery was built, using as an example the marvelous life of Toussaint L'Overture. Here's how the book's author stated his purpose.
I am about to sketch the history and character of one of
those extraordinary men, whom Providence, from time to
time, raises up for the accomplishment of great, benign,
and far-reaching results. I am about to supply the
clearest evidence that there is no insuperable barrier
between the light and the dark-coloured tribes of our
common human species. I am about to exhibit, in a series
of indisputable facts, a proof that the much
misunderstood and downtrodden negro race are capable of
the loftiest virtues, and the most heroic efforts. I am
about to present a tacit parallel between white men and
dark men, in which the latter will appear to no
disadvantage. Neither eulogy, however, nor disparagement
is my aim, but the simple love of justice. It is a
history--not an argument--that I purpose to set forth. In
prosecuting the narrative, I shall have to conduct the
reader through scenes of aggression, resistance, outrage,
revenge, bloodshed, and cruelty, that grieve and wound
the hear, and exciting the deepest pity for the
sufferers, raise irrepressible indignation against
ambition, injustice and tyranny--the scourges of the
world, and specially the sources of complicated and
horrible calamities to the natives of Africa.--From the
introduction to Chapter 1
ISBN: 1-58742-010-4 (paperback) 159 pages, 14 tables, 2 graphics
Amazon: Paperback
Amazon Canada: Paperback
Amazon France: Paperback
Amazon Germany: Paperback
Amazon Japan: Paperback
Amazon UK: Paperback
Barnes & Noble: Paperback
Return to Top
The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective: The Birth Control Classic
by Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) with an Introduction by H. G. Wells (1866-1946). With articles by others, including Victoria Woodhull Martin, George Bernard Shaw, Theodore Roosevelt, Ellen Key, Henry Goddard, G. K. Chesterton, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Archbishop Patrick Hayes, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Margaret Sanger was one of the most influential women of the twentieth century and for many decades her name was a household word. The organization she founded, Planned Parenthood, has received hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. government and draws generously from the world's largest foundations. With close ties to similar organizations around the world, its influence is truly global. Yet few Americans know anything about Margaret Sanger, the ideals to which she dedicated her life, or the purpose for which Planned Parenthood was founded.
Unlike any book that has come before, this new study of Margaret Sanger takes her seriously as a thinker and provides a definitive reference to what she believed. It places what she said and did in the proper historical context with no less than thirty chapters of prologue to prepare readers readers to understand the concluding twelve chapters, which are the full text of Sanger's own best-selling 1922 classic, The Pivot of Civilization, introduced by the noted science fiction writer, H. G. Wells.
To give one example, Sanger constantly clashed with a once influential movement that fretted about something called 'race suicide.' A typical biography of Sanger might have a few paragraphs in which the author gives an opinion about that movement that's likely to be only partially accurate. This book does not leave its readers captive to the scholarly fashions and prejudices of the moment. It takes you back to the time when race suicide was fiercely debated and lets you listen in on what was said. It has no less than eleven chapters quoting extensively from all sides of that once heated debate. It takes you back to the first written mention of the term and shows how the concept expanded, year by year, until it became a weapon to alter what was being taught at elite women's colleges and to change what was expected of educated, professional women. Those century-old issues still affect how present-day feminism views the world for good and ill.
These are not isolated quotes that might be taken out of context. Each writer is allowed to argue his point of view in great detail, only irrelevant distractions have been removed. Two of these preliminary chapters are long out-of-print articles by Sanger herself and two are by her arch-foe in the race suicide debate, President Theodore Roosevelt. You would have to spend weeks searching through a large university library to find even part of what's in this provocative book. That makes this book an excellent resource for students with research papers to be written.
Why, you ask, is that long ago clash important? That's like asking why slavery, outlawed almost a century and a half ago, matters to race relations. When you hear a feminist warn of those who intend to "force motherhood" on unwilling women, knowingly or not, she is reacting to that once heated debate. And when she complains that men simply "don't get it" about reproductive issues, she is referring, yet again, to an era when who would and would not have children was an all too public issue. You see that in H. G. Well's own introduction to Pivot, where he notes that as a man interested in promoting a "New Civilization," he can't attach the same importance Sanger does to birth control. This book brings that once familar debate out of its closet and into the cleansing light of day. And, most important of all, it helps you to understand contemporary debates about issues such as abortion and sex. Today's events are based largely on past event.. What happened then influences how each of us thinks and acts today. Understand that, and we better understand ourselves and those around us.
Quotes from Margaret Sanger in The Pivot of Civilization
"But there is a special type of philanthropy or
benevolence, now widely advertised and advocated, both as
a federal program and as worthy of private endowment,
which strikes me as being more insidiously injurious than
any other. This concerns itself directly with the
function of maternity, and aims to supply gratis medical
and nursing facilities to slum mothers."
"On its scientific side, Eugenics suggests the
reestablishment of the balance between the fertility of
the 'fit' and the 'unfit.' The birth-rate among the
normal and healthier and finer stocks of humanity, is to
be increased by awakening among the 'fit' the realization
of the dangers of a lessened birth-rate in proportion to
the reckless breeding among the 'unfit.' . . . . But the
scientific Eugenists fail to recognize that this
restraint of fecundity is due to a deliberate foresight
and is a conscious effort to elevate standards of living
for the family and the children of the responsible--and
possibly more selfish--sections of the community. The
appeal to enter again into competitive child-bearing, for
the benefit of the nation or the race, or any other
abstraction, will fall on deaf ears."
"Our great problem is not merely to perfect machinery, to
produce superb ships, motor cars or great buildings, but
to remodel the race so that it may equal the amazing
progress we see now making in the externals of life. . .
. Every single case of inherited defect, every malformed
child, every congenitally tainted human being brought
into this world is of infinite importance to that poor
individual; but it is of scarcely less importance to the
rest of us and to all of our children who must pay in one
way or another for these biological and racial mistakes."
More on The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective
(including a detailed table of contents)
ISBN: 1-58742-004-X (paperback) 1-58742-008-2 (hardback)
Amazon US: Paperback Hardback
Amazon Canada: Paperback Hardback
Amazon France: Paperback Hardback
Amazon Germany: Paperback Hardback
Amazon Japan: Paperback Hardback
Amazon UK: Paperback Hardback
Barnes & Noble: Paperback Hardback
Return to Top