“A Narrative to the Colored Children in America”: Lelia Amos Pendleton, African American History Textbooks, and Challenging Personhood

Numerous research studies have investigated the racist undertones of traditional history textbooks of the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century. Few studies, however, have thoroughly and theoretically explored how African American history textbooks and African American educators have responded to these racist textbooks. Utilizing the theory of revisionist ontology, this study sought to fill this gap by examining Lelia Amos Pendleton’s history textbook, A Narrative of the Negro. This article explicates Pendleton’s approach to historical writing and argues that her approach went beyond typical contributionist approaches to narration. It provides an example of a written account of history that reinvented African American personhood.