xxviii, 664 p. : ill., genealogical tables ; 24 cm.
Notes
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
African American Resources at Lancaster County Historical Society.
Summary
"Herbert G. Gutman uses quantitative records from the United States census intermixed with qualitative materials such as letters slaves wrote each other, testimony given to Government Commissions, and observations of foreign travelers to assure us that the black family was never disorganized by slavery. He aptly refutes the theory that the slave experience resulted in broken black families. He insists that the black family has always been an effective means for transmitting a black cultural heritage...The volume was stimulated by the public and academic controversy surrounding Daniel P. Moynihan's The Negro Family in America: The Case for National Actions (1965). Moynihan argued that American blacks were caught in a "tangle of pathology" resulting from the deterioration of the black family." [from Endnotes.com]
