The Treatment of Black Americans in Current Encyclopedias, First Edition. Curricular Viewpoints Series.

Nine sets of encyclopedias are reviewed and evaluated for their treatment of the life and history of the black American. While all nine sets surveyed include comprehensive general articles on the topic of the Afro-American, each is believed to be a summary treatment offering limited information and little understanding to the student reader on researcher. The number of pages of the general article and the eminence of the black historian author is not considered as real a measure as how much material about the black American appears within separate entries on other topics. Another criteria in this connection, apart from integration of relevant material, is the number and range of separate and specific entries on blacks of significance. An important factor in the evaluation is the question of whether the major school topics in which the role of black Americans has been commonly distorted reflect the lastest historical scholarship and revisionist interpretations. Only one set is found to fulfill the goal of a truly integrated general reference encyclopedia which succeeds in doing historical justice to the black Americans and demonstrates that this can be done without diminishing its overall quantitative and qualitative standards. (Author/KSM)