2. The Negro in American Life
3. Face to Face




PREFACE

In the following pages an effort is made to give fresh treatment to the
history of the Negro people in the United States, and to present this
from a distinct point of view, the social. It is now forty years since
George W. Williams completed his _History of the Negro Race in America_,
and while there have been many brilliant studies of periods or episodes
since that important work appeared, no one book has again attempted to
treat the subject comprehensively, and meanwhile the race has passed
through some of its most critical years in America. The more outstanding
political phases of the subject, especially in the period before the
Civil War, have been frequently considered; and in any account of
the Negro people themselves the emphasis has almost always been upon
political and military features. Williams emphasizes this point of view,
and his study of legal aspects is not likely soon to be superseded. A
noteworthy point about the history of the Negro, however, is that laws
on the statute-books have not necessarily been regarded, public opinion
and sentiment almost always insisting on being considered. It is
necessary accordingly to study the actual life of the Negro people in
itself and in connection with that of the nation, and something like
this the present work endeavors to do. It thus becomes not only a Social
History of the race, but also the first formal effort toward a History
of the Negro Problem in America.