African-American Religion:
A Documentary History Project

General Editor: David W. Wills, Amherst College
Editor Emeritus: Albert J. Raboteau, Princeton University

Funded by the Lilly Endowment
with additional past support from the Ford Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts

African-American Religion: A Documentary History Project was founded in 1987 and is headquartered at Amherst College. Its goal is to produce a comprehensive history of African-American religion, from the earliest African-European encounters along the west coast of Africa in the mid-fifteenth century to the present day. This history will be presented in a three-part, multi-volume series that will include representative documents and interpretive commentary. This work, provisionally titled African-American Religion: A Historical Interpretation with Representative Documents, is under contract to the University of Chicago Press and will begin appearing in 2010.

The story the project will tell falls into three periods:

African-American Religion in the Atlantic World: 1441–1808

African-American Religion—The Continental Phase: 1808–1906

African-American Religion—The Global Phase: 1906–Present

The project plans to publish an initial series of three volumes,
followed by a second series of up to thirteen volumes.