To Make Our World Anew by
To Make Our World Anew reconstructs U.S. history through the experiences and struggles of black Americans. Written by a team of historians, this volume offers a view of black life, with first-person accounts that invite readers to view the past through the eyes of African Americans.
Creating Black Americans: African-American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present by
A vibrant history of African Americans, combining an authoritative narrative by a leading black historian with a spectacular gallery of African-American art.
Historic Speeches of African Americans by
Presents speeches by various African American religious and political leaders from the days of slavery to the present, along with biographical information and historical background.
The Columbia Guide to African American History Since 1939 by
This book is a multifaceted approach to understanding the central developments in African American history since 1939. It combines a historical overview of key personalities and movements with essays by leading scholars on specific facets of the African American experience, a chronology of events, and a guide to further study.Marian Anderson's famous 1939 concert in front of the Lincoln Memorial was a watershed moment in the struggle for racial justice.
Living Black History: How Reimagining the African-American Past Can Remake America's Racial Future by
Essays examine the challenges faced by African Americans in preserving and shaping African-American history.
The African-American Odyssey by
The African-American Odyssey illuminates the central place of African-Americans in U.S. history by telling the story of what it has meant to be black in America and how African-American history is inseparably woven into the greater context of American history.
Transformation of the African American Intelligentsia, 1880-2012 by
After Reconstruction, African Americans found themselves largely excluded from politics, higher education, and the professions. Martin Kilson explores how a modern African American intelligentsia developed amid institutionalized racism. He argues passionately for an ongoing commitment to communitarian leadership in the tradition of Du Bois.
Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women by
Beyond Respectability charts the development of African American women as public intellectuals and the evolution of their thought from the end of the 1800s through the Black Power era of the 1970s.
Race and the Writing of History: Riddling the Sphinx by
espite increased interest in recent years in the role of race in Western culture, scholars have neglected much of the body of work produced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by black intellectuals. Keita examines the controversial legacy of writing history in America and offers a new perspective on the challenge of building new historiographies and epistemologies. As a result, this book sheds new light on how ideas about race and racism have shaped the stories we tell about ourselves.
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by
As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power--which groups have it and which do not. In this book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people's lives and behavior and the nation's fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people--including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others--she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity
The New Negro: Readings on Race, Representation, and African American Culture, 1892-1938 by
The New Negro collects more than one hundred canonical and lesser-known essays published between 1892 and 1938 that examine the issues of race and representation in African American culture.
W. E. B. du Bois's Data Portraits by
The colorful charts, graphs, and maps presented at the 1900 Paris Exposition by famed sociologist and black rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois offered a look behind the veil into the lives of black Americans to convey a literal and figurative representation of what Du Bois famously termed "the color line," and became the talk of the Expo. From advances in education to the lingering effects of slavery, these prophetic infographics--beautiful in design and powerful in content--make visible a wide spectrum of black experience.
Gateway to Equality: Black Women and the Struggle for Economic Justice in St. Louis by
Ervin presents a stunning account of the ways in which black working-class women creatively fused racial and economic justice. By illustrating that their politics played an important role in defining urban political agendas, her work sheds light on an unexplored aspect of community activism and illuminates the complexities of the overlapping civil rights and labor movements during the first half of the twentieth century.
Smoketown: the Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance by
The other great Renaissance of black culture, influence, and glamour burst forth joyfully in what may seem an unlikely place--Pittsburgh, PA--from the 1920s through the 1950s. Today black Pittsburgh is known as the setting for August Wilson's famed plays about noble but doomed working-class strivers. But this community once had an impact on American history that rivaled the far larger black worlds of Harlem and Chicago.
The African American Press in World War II by
The African American Press in World War II explores press coverage of international affairs in more depth than similar works. The African American press tended to conflate the civil rights movement with the anti-colonial struggle taking place in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. Alkebulan demonstrates how George Padmore and W.E.B. Du Bois were instrumental in this trend.
Humane Insight: Looking at Images of African American Suffering and Death by
Baker traces how proponents of black freedom and dignity used the visual display of violence against the black body to galvanize action against racial injustice. An innovative cultural study that connects visual theory to African American history, Humane Insight asserts the importance of ethics in our analysis of race and visual culture, and reveals how representations of pain can become the currency of black liberation from injustice.
Collective Courage: a History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice by
Chronicles the achievements and challenges of African American collective economic action and social entrepreneurship in the struggle for civil rights and economic equality
The Harlem Renaissance: a Very Short Introduction by
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural awakening among African Americans between the two world wars. It was the cultural phase of the "New Negro" movement, a social and political phenomenon that promoted a proud racial identity, economic independence, and progressive politics. In this Very Short Introduction, Cheryl A. Wall captures the Harlem Renaissance's zeitgeist by identifying issues and strategies that engaged writers, musicians, and visual artists alike.
Black Women of the Harlem Renaissance Era by
This reference work includes representatives not only from the literary scene but also: activists,actors,artists, educators, musician, and political leaders. By acknowledging the women who played vital—if not always recognized—roles in this movement, this book shows how their participation helped set the stage for the continued transformation of the black community well into the 1960s.
Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City's Underground Economy by
During the early twentieth century, a diverse group of African American women carved out unique niches for themselves within New York City's expansive informal economy. LaShawn Harris illuminates the labor patterns and economic activity of three perennials within this kaleidoscope of underground industry: sex work, numbers running for gambling enterprises, and the supernatural consulting business.
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval by
An exploration of the lives of young black women in the early twentieth century. Hartman examines the revolution of black intimate life that unfolded in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. Free love, common-law and transient marriages, serial partners, cohabitation outside of wedlock, queer relations, and single motherhood were among the sweeping changes that altered the character of everyday life and challenged traditional Victorian beliefs.
The Young Lords: A Radical History by
Against the backdrop of America's escalating urban rebellions in the 1960s, an unexpected cohort of New York radicals unleashed a series of urban guerrilla actions against the city's racist policies and contempt for the poor. Their dramatic flair, uncompromising vision, and skillful ability to link local problems to international crises riveted the media, alarmed New York's political class, and challenged nationwide perceptions of civil rights and black power protest. The group called itself the Young Lords.
Lighting the Fires of Freedom: African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement by
hrough wide-ranging conversations with nine African American women-- several now in their nineties-- Bell has created an oral history that shines a light on their significant contributions in the twentieth-century fight for civil rights. An enduring testament to the vitality of women's all-too-often overlooked achievements while doing the work that needed to be done.
African American Urban History since World War II by
Historians have devoted surprisingly little attention to African American urban history ofthe postwar period, especially compared with earlier decades. Correcting this imbalance, African American Urban History since World War II features an exciting mix of seasoned scholars and fresh new voices whose combined efforts provide the first comprehensive assessment of this important subject.
April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Death and How It Changed America by
Dyson examines how King fought, and faced, his own death, and how America can draw on his legacy in the twenty-first century. April 4, 1968 celebrates the leadership of Dr. King, and challenges America to renew its commitment to his vision.
We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85, New Perspectives by
Illustrated volume to accompany an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum opening April 2017, including an introduction by the exhibition co-curators; three scholarly critical essays; remarks from a symposium held in conjunction with the exhibition on April 21, 2017, consisting of personal reminiscences of the theater group Rodeo Caldonia.
The Black Campus Movement: Black students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965-1972 by
Between 1965 and 1972, African American students at upwards of a thousand historically black and white American colleges organized, demanded, and protested for Black Studies, Black universities, new faces, new ideas--a relevant, diverse higher education. Black power inspired these black students, who were supported by white, Latino, Chicana, Asian American, and Native American students. The Black Campus Movement provides the first national study of this intense and challenging struggle.
Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors by
Finney looks beyond the discourse of the environmental justice movement to examine how the natural environment has been understood, commodified, and represented by both white and black Americans. Bridging the fields of environmental history, cultural studies, critical race studies, and geography, Finney argues that the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, and racial violence have shaped cultural understandings of the "great outdoors" and determined who should and can have access to natural spaces.
What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and our Unfinished Conversation about Race in America by
In 1963 Attorney General Robert Kennedy sought out James Baldwin to explain the rage that threatened to engulf black America. Every big argument about race that persists to this day got a hearing in that room. Dyson believes we need a return to that discussion, talking across the chasm of color, with hope as our guide.
Freedom Dreams: the Black Radical Imagination by
Kelley unearths freedom dreams in this exciting history of renegade intellectuals and artists of the African diaspora in the twentieth century. Focusing on the visions of activists from C.L.R. James to Aime Cesaire and Malcolm X, Kelley writes of the hope that Communism offered, the mindscapes of Surrealism, the transformative potential of radical feminism, and of the four-hundred-year-old dream of reparations for slavery and Jim Crow.
Hope and History: Why We Must Share the Story of the Movement by
An impassioned call to the clergy, community activists, and educators to remember and keep alive the story of the black-led freedom movement. Harding argues the importance of knowing for ourselves, incorporating into our lives, and teaching to others the events and goals of this historic movement.