Jubilee: The Emergence of African-American Culture

The word jubilee means, among other things, a celebration in anticipation of future happiness. Based on new scholarship by the Schomburg Center, Jubilee presents a fresh, new perspective on how enslaved Africans triumphed over slavery. Working as creative agents of their own destiny within the shackles of slavery, enslaved Africans reinvented themselves as a new people - a new American people - laying the foundations for truly unique African-American social, cultural, political, and economic expressions throughout the Western Hemisphere. With almost two hundred illustrations, including early slave ship manifests, manumission papers, early photographs of slaves and of freed African-Americans, paintings, and artifacts from shackles to freedom quilts.