Hord Fred Lee Hord & Norman Matthew D. Norman 
Knowing Him by Heart 
African Americans on Abraham Lincoln

Winner of the 2024 Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Award An unprecedented collection of African American writings on Lincoln Though not blind to Abraham Lincoln’s imperfections, Black Americans long ago laid a heartfelt claim to his legacy. At the same time, they have consciously reshaped the sixteenth president’s image for their own social and political ends. Frederick Hord and Matthew D. Norman’s anthology explores the complex nature of views on Lincoln through the writings and thought of Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary Mc Leod Bethune, Thurgood Marshall, Malcolm X, Gwendolyn Brooks, Barbara Jeanne Fields, Barack Obama, and dozens of others. The selections move from speeches to letters to book excerpts, mapping the changing contours of the bond–emotional and intellectual–between Lincoln and Black Americans over the span of one hundred and fifty years.A comprehensive and valuable reader, Knowing Him by Heart examines Lincoln s still-evolving place in Black American thought.