Knowing Him by Heart: African Americans on Abraham Lincoln

An unprecedented collection of African American writings on Lincoln 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. Fred Lee Hord and Matthew D. Norman’s anthology explores the complex nature of views on Lincoln through the writings and thoughts 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.

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.