African American History and the JAEH: The First Twenty-Five Years

JOE W. TROTTER

WHEN THE IMMIGRATION History Society published its first number of the Journal of American Ethnic History (JAEH), African American history had emerged as a major influence in the study of U.S. history. In fundamental ways, race and the role of black people in American society represented perhaps the most exciting trend in U.S. historiography at the time. The pages of the JAEH (particularly its book reviews) would call attention to these shifts in African American history, but the journal's embrace of race and the black experience was somewhat uneven. Featured articles, special thematic issues, and topical forums rarely focused directly on the African American experience during the journal's first twenty-five years. This essay discusses the early twentieth-century roots of immigration and ethnic history's engagement with African Americans and the race theme; pinpoints the role of the JAEH in helping to bring the two fields closer together; and concludes with a focus on the challenges that the African American experience continues to pose for immigration history and the JAEH in the twenty-first century.