Tracing the religious history of Siler City, North Carolina, Chad E. Seales argues that southern whites cultivated their own regional brand of American secularism and employed it, alongside public religious performances, to claim and regulate public spaces. Over the course of the twentieth century, they wielded secularism to segregate racialized bodies, to challenge local changes resulting from civil rights legislation, and to respond to the arrival of Latino migrants. Combining ethnographic and archival sources, Seales studies the themes of industrialization, nationalism, civility, privatization, and migration through the local history of Siler City; its neighborhood patterns, Fourth of July parades, Confederate soldiers, minstrel shows, mock weddings, banking practices, police shootings, Good Friday processions, public protests, and downtown mural displays. Offering a spatial approach to the study of performative religion, The Secular Spectacle presents a generative narrative of secularism from the perspective of evangelical Protestants in the American South.

A Matter of Black and White is the personal story of an Oklahoma woman whose fight to gain an education formed a crucial episode in the civil rights movement. Born in Chickasha, Oklahoma, of parents only one generation removed from slavery, Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher became the plaintiff in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that laid the foundation for the eventual desegregation of schools (and much else) in America.

A Matter of Black and White resounds with almost universal human themes-childhood, school, friends, colleagues, community, and a love that lasted a lifetime.

With the emergence of popular culture phenomena, such as reality television, blogging, and social networking sites, it is important to examine the representation of Black women and the potential implications of those images, messages, and roles. Black Women and Popular Culture: The Conversation Continues provides such a comprehensive analysis. Using an array of theoretical frameworks and methodologies, this anthology features cutting edge research from several scholars interested in the relationship among media, society, perceptions, and Black women. The uniqueness of this book is that it serves as a compilation of hot topics such as ABC s Scandal, Beyonce s Visual Album, and Oprah s Instagram page. Other themes explored are rooted in reality television, film, and hip hop, as well as issues of gender politics, domestic violence, and colorism. The discussion also extends to the presentation and inclusion of Black women in advertising, print, and digital media."

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Lynched-at-Law speaks to American life. Ambition encounters nuances of race, racism, religion, money, law, lawful conspiracy, criminal and the political forces that shape "reality."

This collection of comparative critical and theoretical essays examines James Baldwin and Toni Morrison's reciprocal literary relationship. By reading these authors side-by-side, this collection forges new avenues of discovery and interpretation related to their representations of African American and American literature and cultural experience.

This book provides both a comprehensive cross-reference to modern Afro-American short stories published from 1950-1982 and an analysis and commentary on modern short fiction. Over 850 stories written by approximately 300 authors are indexed. It also provides an extensive guide to many of the stories published in anthologies, collections, and periodicals during this period. Part I, the Chronology, lists the stories by year of publication and alphabetically by title within each year. An index code, which cross-references the Chronology to the author and title indexes, precedes each story. The author, the point of view, a description, and all of the known sources for the story are given. Part II lists, in standard bibliographical format, the anthologies and collections in which the stories appear and lists each story in the anthologies/collections. Part III consists of approximately 100 analyses/commentaries/critiques of selected stories in accordance with traditional literary genres: comedy, epic, tragedy, tragi-comedy, and unresolved struggle, as well as generally accepted types of Afro-American literature: celebrative-commemorative, militant, protest, personal experience, and universal concerns. Title and author indexes complete the book.

Statistics indicate that African American females , as a group, fare poorly in the United States. Many live in single-parent households - either as the single parent mother or as the daughter. Many face severe economic hurdles. Yet despite these obstacles, some are performing at exceptional levels academically. Based on interviews with hundreds of successful young women and their families, Overcoming the Odds provides a wealth of information about how and why they have succeeded - what motivates them, how their backgrounds and family relationships have shaped them, even how it feels to be a high academic achiever.

Dean Nisbett has crafted an excellent book that is carefully researched. He is a masterful storyteller, combining theology, sociology, history, scripture and church architecture into a masterpiece. Writing about the struggle of a suburban parish to build an edifice, the author cites numerous parallels between the Israelites' history and that of the parish. He recasts the Israelites' story into the contemporary, making the Bible relevant in demonstrating the ongoing work of God. Nisbett explores the struggle of African Americans to be integrated into the United States of America. He addresses the tension between West Indians and black Americans and notes the latter's significant contribution to the Episcopal Church. He recognizes the indelible contribution of the first African Americans who penetrated the white enclave of Cambria Heights. Recognition is also made of black Episcopalians for their valuable contribution to the society and for challenging the church to be honest to its Catholicity, insisting that they (black Episcopalians) be included into the "Body of Christ."The author explicates the concept of vocation, the "call" to serve God in His church. He shares his personal experience. Very inspiring A must read for those contemplating the ordained ministry.The book integrates the Church into the life of the community. It is an excellent tool for congregational development, and could serve as a model for congregations to chronicle their history from a theological perspective. In addition, the book will be useful to those researching the history of the ordination of black Episcopalians and the birth of the black Episcopal congregation in the United States. It is a wonderful resource for those considering church construction. Finally, the author theologizes the building and provides a helpful manual for every worshiper whom the author (in" reference to 1st Peter") describes as "living stones" built upon the foundation of Jesus Christ, "The chief Corner Stone."

"Slavery is terrible for men, but it is far more terrible for women," Harriet Jacobs states plainly in this riveting account of her life as a slave, and then sets out to recount, in chilling detail, the particular horrors for women caught in that terrible snare. Published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, Incidents was the first account of slavery to explore the sexual abuse female slaves endured... in Jacobs' case, a catalog of harassment she suffered while working in the home of a doctor known to have sold children he'd fathered with slave women. Long believed to have been written by a white author as a fictional novel, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl rings with a ghastly truth that still has the power to haunt modern readers.

University racial quotas have caused strong reactions in Brazil, where ideals of racial and cultural mixture are crucial components of national identity. Focusing on an in-depth ethnographic study of a Rio de Janeiro public university and its students, Andre Cicalo examines the practical and symbolic potential that affirmative action has to redress historically-produced and territorialized inequalities in the urban space. By engaging with the relevant literature on Brazilian race relations, this volume discloses novel considerations, crucial for a possible future reading of race relations, racial classification, and affirmative action in Brazil.

African Americans today face a systemic crisis of mass underemployment, mass imprisonment, and mass disfranchisement. This comprehensive reader makes clear to students the mutual constitution of these three crises. NEW SERIES ANNOUNCEMENT Critical Black Studies Series Editor: Manning Marable

The Critical Black Studies Series features readers and anthologies examining challenging topics within the contemporary black experience--in the United States, the Caribbean, Africa, and across the African Diaspora. Under the general editorial supervision of Manning Marable, the readers in the series are designed both for college and university course adoption, as well as for general readers and researchers. The Critical Black Studies Series seeks to provoke intellectual debate and exchange over the most critical issues confronting the political, socioeconomic and cultural reality of black life in the United States and beyond.

2012 Honorable mention for the Book Award in Cultural Studies from the Association for Asian American Studies Arkansas, 1943. The Deep South during the heart of Jim Crow-era segregation. A Japanese-American person boards a bus, and immediately is faced with a dilemma. Not white. Not black. Where to sit? By elucidating the experience of interstitial ethnic groups such as Mexican, Asian, and Native Americans-groups that are held to be neither black nor white-Leslie Bow explores how the color line accommodated-or refused to accommodate-"other" ethnicities within a binary racial system. Analyzing pre- and post-1954 American literature, film, autobiography, government documents, ethnography, photographs, and popular culture, Bow investigates the ways in which racially "in-between" people and communities were brought to heel within the South's prevailing cultural logic, while locating the interstitial as a site of cultural anxiety and negotiation. Spanning the pre- to the post- segregation eras, Partly Colored traces the compelling history of "third race" individuals in the U.S. South, and in the process forces us to contend with the multiracial panorama that constitutes American culture and history.

This new critique of contemporary African-American fiction explores its intersections with and critiques of the Gothic genre. Wester reveals the myriad ways writers manipulate the genre to critique the gothic's traditional racial ideologies and the mechanisms that were appropriated and re-articulated as a useful vehicle for the enunciation of the peculiar terrors and complexities of black existence in America. Re-reading major African American literary texts-such as Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Of One Blood, Cane, Invisible Man, and Corregidora-African American Gothic investigates texts from each major era in African American Culture to show how the gothic has consistently circulated throughout the African American literary canon.

Leading African American scholars examine the often neglected cultural context in research and policy development in African American higher education in this collection of essays. Past research has most often been conducted by individuals unfamiliar with the historical and cultural considerations of specific ethnic groups. Therefore, the outcomes of research and the development of programs have been based on deficit models, that is, what is wrong with African Americans, or what they cannot achieve. The book examines the questions; what is the relationship between African Americans' culture and experiences, and how should their culture be integrated into research and practice? How do African Americans' intra- and interrelations differ in higher education? How does understanding African American culture as it relates to higher education research enhance policy-making and practice? What role do HBUCs play in African Americans' participation in higher education? What are the policy and practice implications of past and current research? Scholars and practitioners of education, culture, and race relations will find this collection informative and interesting.

Chronicling over forty years of critical changes in African-American expressive and popular culture, covering diverse forms of music, dance, and comedy, the Regal Theater (1928-1968) was the largest and most architecturally splendid movie-stage-show venue ever constructed for a black community. In this history of that theater, Clovis E. Semmes reveals the political, economic, and business realities of cultural production and the institutional inequalities that circumscribed black life.

Tropes ranging from Houston Baker's "bluesman," to Henry Louis Gates' "signifyin'" to Geneva Smitherman's "talkin' and testifyin'" to bell hooks' "talking back" to Cheryl Wall's "worrying the line" all affirm the power of sonance and sound in the African American literary tradition. The collection of essays in Speaking in Tongues and Dancing Diaspora contributes to this tradition by theorizing the preeminence of voice and narration (and the consequences of their absence) in the literary and cultural performances of black women. Looking to work by such prominent black female authors as Alice Walker, Sherley Anne Williams, Toni Morrison, Zora Neal Hurston, among many others, Mae G. Henderson provides a deeply felt reflection on race and gender and their effects within the discourse of speaker and listener.