Daily Life of African Americans in Primary Documents takes readers on an insightful journey through the life experiences of African Americans over the centuries, capturing African American experiences, challenges, accomplishments, and daily lives, often in their own words.

This two-volume set provides readers with a balanced collection of materials that captures the wide-ranging experiences of African American people over the history of America. Volume 1 begins with the enslavement and transportation of slaves to North America and ends with the Civil War; Volume 2 continues with the beginning of Reconstruction through the election of Barack Obama to the American presidency.

Each volume provides a chronology of major events, a historic overview, and sections devoted to domestic, material, economic, intellectual, political, leisure, and religious life of African Americans for the respective time spans. Volume 1 covers a wide variety of topics from a multitude of perspectives in such areas as enslavement, life during the Civil War, common foods, housing, clothing, political opinions, and similar topics. Volume 2 addresses the civil rights movement, court cases, life under Jim Crow, Reconstruction, busing, housing segregation, and more.

Each volume includes 100–110 primary sources with suggested readings from government publications, court testimony, census data, interviews, newspaper accounts, period appropriate letters, Works Progress Administration interviews, sermons, laws, diaries, and reports.

• Includes more than 200 primary sources unchanged from the originals and accompanied by introductions that inform readers of the significance of the primary source
• Incorporates the perspectives of former enslaved African Americans through Works Progress Administration interviews
• Identifies some of the challenges of being black in American society
• Provides readers with a sense of the contexts in which African Americans have lived in America
• Highlights some of the success stories involving African Americans and some of their contributions to the advancement of American society
• Provides broad sweeping historic overviews for each volume as well as chronologies of significant events in African American history that shaped everyday life