Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery

Leon Litwack's Been in the Storm So Long is a Pulitzer Prize winning scholarly history of the experience of formerly enslaved African Americans during and immediately after emancipation, published by Alfred A. Knopf. Litwack was a recognized historian of American slavery and its aftermath, and the book's authority rests on extensive use of firsthand testimony, including interviews and letters from formerly enslaved people themselves, alongside the traditional documentary record. Its recognition with the Pulitzer Prize and its lasting place in the historiography of emancipation reflect that combination of rigorous research and close attention to the voices of the people it describes. Its limit is period, the emancipation era specifically, so a claim about a later period of African American religious or social history needs a source covering that different period.