ISSN 0021-8723 Fulltext: History Cooperative Ernest, John. "Liberation Historiography: African-American Historians before the Civil War," American Literary History 14(3), Fall 2002, pp. 413–443 in Project Muse Eyerman, Ron. Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity (2002) argues that slavery emerged as a central element of the collective identity of African Americans in the post-Reconstruction era.