Knowing Him by Heart: African Americans on Abraham Lincoln by Hord, Fred Lee

Winner of an Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Award

Though not blind to Abraham Lincoln's imperfections, Black Americans long ago laid a heartfelt claim to his legacy. At the same time, they have consciously reshaped the sixteenth president's image for their own social and political ends. Frederick Hord and Matthew D. Norman's anthology explores the complex nature of views on Lincoln through the writings and thought of Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary McLeod Bethune, Thurgood Marshall, Malcolm X, Gwendolyn Brooks, Barbara Jeanne Fields, Barack Obama, and dozens of others. The selections move from speeches to letters to book excerpts, mapping the changing contours of the bond--emotional and intellectual--between Lincoln and Black Americans over the span of one hundred and fifty years.

A comprehensive and valuable reader, Knowing Him by Heart examines Lincoln's still-evolving place in Black American thought.

Author: Fred Lee Hord
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 12/20/2022
Pages: 576
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 2.10lbs
Size: 8.70h x 6.30w x 2.10d
ISBN: 9780252044687

About the Author
Frederick Hord is a professor of Black studies and director of the Department of African Studies at Knox College. He is the editor of I Am Because We Are: A Black Philosophy Reader and Reconstructing Memory: Black Literary Criticism. Matthew D. Norman is an associate professor of history at the University of Cincinnati, Blue Ash College.