This thought-provoking work examines the dehumanizing depictions of black males in the movies since 1910, analyzing images that were once imposed on black men and are now appropriated and manipulated by them. Moving through cinematic history decade by decade since 1910, this important volume explores the appropriation, exploitation, and agency of black performers in Hollywood by looking at the black actors, directors, and producers who have shaped the image of African American males in film. To determine how these archetypes differentiate African American males in the public's subconscious, the book asks probing questions-for example, whether these images are a reflection of society's fears or realistic depictions of a pluralistic America. Even as the work acknowledges the controversial history of black representation in film, it also celebrates the success stories of blacks in the industry. It shows how blacks in Hollywood manipulate degrading stereotypes, gain control, advance their careers, and earn money while making social statements or bringing about changes in culture. It discusses how social activist performers-such as Paul Robeson, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, and Spike Lee-reflect political and social movements in their movies, and it reviews the interactions between black actors and their white counterparts to analyze how black males express their heritage, individual identity, and social issues through film. Discusses the social, historical, and literary evolution of African American male roles in the cinema Analyzes the various black images presented each decade from blackface, Sambo, and Mandingo stereotypes to archetypal figures such as God, superheroes, and the president Shows how African American actors, directors, and producers manipulate negative and positive images to advance their careers, profit financially, and make social statements to create change Demonstrates the correlation between political and social movements and their impact on the cultural transformation of African American male images on screen over the past 100 years Includes figures that demonstrate the correlation between political and social movements and their impact on cultural transformation and African American male images on screen

The two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of W. E. B. Du Bois from renowned scholar David Levering Lewis, now in one condensed and updated volume

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois--the premier architect of the civil rights movement in America--was a towering and controversial personality, a fiercely proud individual blessed with the language of the poet and the impatience of the agitator. Now, David Levering Lewis has carved one volume out of his superlative two-volume biography of this monumental figure that set the standard for historical scholarship on this era. In his magisterial prose, Lewis chronicles Du Bois's long and storied career, detailing the momentous contributions to our national character that still echo today.

Author Serguei Blinov grew up in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as the son of an engineer and a high school history teacher. Early on in life, he set his sights on becoming a medical doctor. He also met the love of his life, Lioudmila Vertiasheva. She graduated before him as a pediatric medical doctor before getting a job at a maternity hospital. Soon thereafter, Blinov also found himself working in medicine.In this, his memoir, Blinov recalls the hard work it took for him to succeed, the good times, and the bad--as well as what led him and his family to the United States of America. His honest assessment of life in both the Soviet Union and the United States showcases cultural differences and the positives and negatives of communism and capitalism.If you're interested in learning more about the former Soviet Union and what life there was really like, this personal narrative offers firsthand accounts of villages, agriculture, the educational system, and everyday life. What's more, Blinov relives his experiences from his first memory to the present, recounting in great detail each event that shaped him into the man he is today.

The Pinkster King and the King of Kongo presents the history of the nation's forgotten Dutch slave community and free Dutch-speaking African Americans from seventeenth-century New Amsterdam to nineteenth-century New York and New Jersey. It also develops a provocative new interpretation of one of America's most intriguing black folkloric traditions, Pinkster. Jeroen Dewulf rejects the usual interpretation of this celebration of a ""slave king"" as a form of carnival. Instead, he shows that it is a ritual rooted in mutual-aid and slave brotherhood traditions. By placing these traditions in an Atlantic context, Dewulf identifies striking parallels to royal election rituals in slave communities elsewhere in the Americas, and he traces these rituals to the ancient Kingdom of Kongo and the impact of Portuguese culture in West-Central Africa. Dewulf's focus on the social capital of slaves follows the mutual aid to seventeenth-century Manhattan. He suggests a much stronger impact of Manhattan's first slave community on the development of African American identity in New York and New Jersey than hitherto assumed. While the earliest works on slave culture in a North American context concentrated on an assumed process of assimilation according to European standards, later studies pointed out the need to look for indigenous African continuities. The Pinkster King and the King of Kongo suggests the necessity for an increased focus on the substantial contact that many Africans had with European - primarily Portuguese - cultures before they were shipped as slaves to the Americas. The book has already garnered honors as the winner of the Richard O. Collins Award in African Studies, the New Netherland Institute Hendricks Award, and the Clague and Carol Van Slyke Prize.

It helps to know where we came from in order to understand ourselves. We have eight branches or four generations in our family tree as far back as our great-grandparents. The author was able to trace her ancestors even further back. Though she knew a lot about her ancestors, she did not know a lot about their struggles and little about the contributions they made toward advancing the African American race. This book will be of particular interest to those who find they are connected to this family tree. For those unrelated, it will serve immensely as a blueprint for one's own ancestral journey. For others, it is simply interesting and historical and a point of reference in time. Some prominent and determined people are a part of this family tree. In addition to portraying this particular family, this book captures ancient and historical events focused particularly on the enslavement, servitude, segregation and the ultimate success of the African American people. The author's goal is to document her family history and to locate her distant relatives. Simultaneously she desires to help others in search of their past since our past is a part of who we are as a people.

More than one million people from all walks of life have been uplifted and entertained by Heaven Bound, the folk drama that follows, through song and verse, the struggles between Satan and a band of pilgrims on their way down the path of glory that leads to the golden gates. Staged annually and without interruption for more than seventy years at Big Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Atlanta, Heaven Bound is perhaps the longest running black theater production. Here, a lifelong member of Big Bethel with many close ties to Heaven Bound recounts its lively history and conveys the enduring power and appeal of an Atlanta tradition that is as much a part of the city as Coca-Cola or Gone with the Wind.

One of the most relevant social problems in contemporary American life is the continuing HIV epidemic in the Black population. With vivid ethnographic detail, this book brings together scholarship on the structural dimensions of the AIDS epidemic and the social construction of sexuality to assert that shifting forms of sexual stories--structural intimacies--are emerging, produced by the meeting of intimate lives and social structural patterns. These stories render such inequalities as racism, poverty, gender power disparities, sexual stigma, and discrimination as central not just to the dramatic, disproportionate spread of HIV in Black communities in the United States, but to the formation of Black sexualities.
Sonja Mackenzie elegantly argues that structural vulnerability is felt--quite literally--in the blood, in the possibilities and constraints on sexual lives, and in the rhetorics of their telling. The circulation of structural intimacies in daily life and in the political domain reflects possibilities for seeking what Mackenzie calls "intimate justice" at the nexus of cultural, economic, political, and moral spheres. "Structural Intimacies" presents a compelling case: in an era of deepening medicalization of HIV/AIDS, public health must move beyond individual-level interventions to community-level health equity frames and policy changes