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    The Original Black Elite: Daniel Murray and the Story of a Forgotten Era
    The Original Black Elite: Daniel Murray and the Story of a Forgotten Era
    The Original Black Elite: Daniel Murray and the Story of a Forgotten Era
    Audiobook16 hours

    The Original Black Elite: Daniel Murray and the Story of a Forgotten Era

    Written by Elizabeth Dowling Taylor

    Narrated by Karen Chilton

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    From New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Dowling Taylor comes this riveting chronicle of a critical yet overlooked chapter in American history: the inspiring rise and calculated fall of the black elite, from Emancipation through Reconstruction to the Jim Crow Era-embodied in the experiences of an influential figure of the time, academic, entrepreneur, and political activist and black history pioneer Daniel Murray. "Brilliantly researched... Taylor knows how to weave an emotional story of how race and class have long played a role in determining who succeeds and who fails."-New York Times Book Review. This cultural biography tells the enthralling story of the high-achieving black elites who thrived in the nation's capital during Reconstruction. Daniel Murray (1851-1925), an assistant librarian at the Library of Congress, was a prominent member of this glorious class. Murray's life was reflective of those who were well-off at the time. This social circle included African American educators, ministers, lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, US senators and representatives, and other government officials. Among the luminaries were Francis and Archibald Grimke, Blanche Bruce, Pinckney Pinchback, Robert and Mary Church Terrell, Booker T. Washington, and W. E. B. DuBois. The elite were primed to assimilate into the cultural fabric as Americans first and people of color second. Education was a pearl of great pride, and they sent their children to the best schools-Phillips Academy, Cornell, and Harvard. They belonged to exclusive clubs, cultivated genteel manners, owned opulent homes, threw elaborate parties, dressed to the nines, and summered in special enclaves. The rug was pulled from under all African Americans when they were betrayed by the federal government as the cost of reconciliation with the South. In response to renewed oppression, Murray and others in his class fought back, establishing themselves as inspiring race activists. Elizabeth Dowling Taylor's powerful work brings to light a dark chapter of race relations that too many have yet to own.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJan 15, 2018
    ISBN9781501986758
    Author

    Elizabeth Dowling Taylor

    Elizabeth Dowling Taylor is the New York Times bestselling author of A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons. She received her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley, and over her twenty-two-year career in museum education and research has held the positions of director of interpretation at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and director of education at James Madison’s Montpelier. She is now an independent scholar and lecturer and a fellow at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities in Charlottesville.

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    • 3/5
      This book tells the story of upwardly mobile African Americans who prospered and formed their own upper class in Washington, DC during Reconstruction and then how it declined as Jim Crow laws became the rule in the United States.The book uses one family, that of Daniel Murray (1851 - 1925) to illustrate how the success of this group of African-Americans became regarded as a threat to the larger white society and how laws (as well as institutional norms) were erected to hold them back and to assure the superiority of white Americans. They more I read books about black history in this country, the more I wonder why white people in this country are so insecure and afraid.