Introduction: A Consideration of Afro-American Historical Scholarship

摘要

For two generations historians of the New Jersey Afro-American experiencehave examined the problems posed by racial injustice in an evolvingdemocracy. Beginning with the pioneering work of Marion ThompsonWright in the 1930s, scholars reconsidered the state's history from thevantage point of African enslavement and the years of racial injustice whichfollowed that profound ordeal. As a result of their work, we know that NewJersey's legal traditions, labor systems, communities, and political behaviorwere deeply influenced by racial intolerance. We know, too, that long afterAfricans settled the state, they were treated with a disdain largely unknownto recently arrived European immigrants. Their story, at once tragic andpoignant, is .one that many students of the past easily recognize as anenduring metaphor for the larger history of the American nation.