In the Image of God: Religion, Moral Values, and Our Heritage of SlaveryIn this broad-ranging book, the preeminent authority on the history of slavery meditates on the orgins, experience, and legacy of this "peculiar institution." David Brion Davis begins with a substantial and highly personal introduction in which he discusses some of the major ideas and individuals that have shaped his approach to history. He then presents a series of interlocking essays that cover topics including slave resistance, the historical construction of race, and the connections between the abolitionist movement and the struggle for women's rights. The book also includes essays on such major figures as Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as appreciations of two of the finest historians of the twentieth century: C. Vann Woodward and Eugene D. Genovese. Gathered together for the first time, these essays present the major intellectual, historical, and moral issues essential to the study of New World slavery and its devastating legacy. Book jacket. |
Contents
From Religion to Slavery | 12 |
An American Jeremiah | 19 |
Martin Luther King Jr | 29 |
Religion and American Culture | 37 |
American Jews and the Meritocratic Experiment | 47 |
The Slave Trade and the Jews | 63 |
Jews and Blacks in America | 73 |
Historians of Two Generations | 93 |
The Labyrinth of Slavery | 178 |
The Significance of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 | 189 |
The Benefit of Slavery | 205 |
Capitalism Abolitionism and Hegemony | 217 |
The Violence of Slavery as Experienced | 235 |
The White World of Frederick Douglass | 237 |
Life and Death in Slavery | 248 |
The Ends of Slavery | 260 |
C Vann Woodward | 95 |
A Tribute to Woodward | 108 |
Eugene D Genovese | 110 |
Origins | 121 |
At the Heart of Slavery | 123 |
Slaves in Islam | 137 |
A Big Business | 151 |
The Triumph of the Country | 165 |
White Wives and Slave Mothers | 277 |
Terror in Mississippi | 290 |
From the Construction of Race to the American Dilemma | 305 |
The Culmination of Racial Polarities and Prejudice | 323 |
The American Dilemma | 330 |
The Other Revolution | 359 |
Credits | 377 |
Common terms and phrases
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