February 2021 Catalogue

B a u m a n R a r e B o o k s B l a c k A m e r i c a n a 2 0 2 1 43 “An Epic Chapter In The History Of The American People” 58. TAYLOR, Alrutheus Ambush. The Negro in Tennessee, 1865-1880. Washington, 1941. Octavo, original green cloth, dust jacket. $650. C lick for M ore I nfo First edition of Dr. Taylor’s Reconstruction history of Tennessee, where “hostility to the war amendments was possibly more bitter and determined than it was in the other Confederate states,” the third and final work in his important series on the Reconstruction, countering “the negative stereotypes that dominated previous writing.” “To describe the end of slavery in the South is to re-create a profound human drama… Never before had black people in the South found any reason to view the future with more hope… The struggles they would be forced to wage to shape their lives and destinies as free men and women remain to this day an epic chapter in the history of the American people” (Litvack, Been in the Storm ). This is one of the first Reconstruction histories by an African American historian—Dr. A.A. Taylor, “a painstaking scholar and authority on Negro history” ( Crisis ). Only lightest toning to spine of scarce dust jacket. A fine copy.