Black American Studies: Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Segregation

These texts present a collected history of the way Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life. Coverage begins with white churches' conversion efforts, especially in the post-Revolutionary period, and depicts the tensions and contradictions between the egalitarian potential of evangelical Christianity and the realities of slavery. It focuses, through slave narratives and observations by other African American authors, on how the black community adapted evangelical Christianity, making it a metaphor for freedom, community, and personal survival.

Downes' latest entry is Migration Music, a three-part series focused on music about the Great Migration of the late 19th and 20th centuries. Migration Music weaves together beautiful work from the past and present — capturing the experiences of those who lived through the history-shifting flight of Black Americans from the rural South, and of those reflecting back on it.