Punishing the Black Body examines the punitive and disciplinary technologies and ideologies embraced by ruling white elites in nineteenth-century Barbados and Jamaica. Among studies of the Caribbean on similar topics, this is the first to look at the meanings inscribed on the raced, gendered, and classed bodies on the receiving end of punishment. Dawn P. Harris uses theories of the body to detail the ways colonial states and their agents appropriated physicality to debase the black body, assert the inviolability of the white body, and demarcate the social boundaries between them.,br> Noting marked demographic and geographic differences between Jamaica and Barbados, as well as any number of changes within the separate economic, political, and social trajectories of each island, Harris still finds that societal infractions by the subaltern populations of both islands brought on draconian forms of punishments aimed at maintaining the socio-racial hierarchy. Her investigation ranges across such topics as hair-cropping, the 1836 Emigration Act of Barbados and other punitive legislation, the state reprisals following the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica, the use of the whip and the treadmill in jails and houses of correction, and methods of surveillance, policing, and limiting free movement. By focusing on meanings ascribed to the disciplined and punished body, Harris reminds us that the transitions between slavery, apprenticeship, and post-emancipation were not just a series of abstract phenomena signaling shifts in the prevailing order of things. For a large part of these islands' populations, these times of dramatic change were physically felt.

Hospitality as a cultural trait has been associated with the South for well over two centuries, but the origins of this association and the reasons for its perseverance of ten seem unclear. Anthony Szczesiul looks at how and why we have taken something so particular as the social habit of hospitality which is exercised among diverse individuals and is widely varied in its particular practices and so generalized it as to make it a cultural trait of an entire region of the country. Historians have offered a variety of explanations of the origins and cultural practices of hospitality in the antebellum South. Economic historians have at times portrayed southern hospitality as evidence of conspicuous consumption and competition among wealthy planters, while cultural historians have treated it peripherally as a symptomatic expression of the southern code of honor. Although historians have offered different theories, they generally agree that the mythic dimensions of southern hospitality eventually outstripped its actual practices. Szczesiul examines why we have chosen to remember and valorize this particular aspect of the South, and he raises fundamental ethical questions that underlie both the concept of hospitality and the cultural work of American memory, particularly in light of the region's historical legacy of slavery and segregation.

"Segregation now, Segregation tomorrow, Segregation forever". Was there some truth behind this famous speech given by George Wallace? Did African Americans truly benefit from the results of Brown v. the Board of Education or did they get the short end of the stick? Over the years, the Black community has suffered major loses in the areas of education, business and gender identity due to integration. The founders of the NAACP objectives were to unite and educate a suppressed race that would fight against social injustice and bring capital into the Black community. Initially, these ideologies were well represented by this noble organization; however during and after the decision of the Brown versus the Board of Education case things drastically changed. The once unified organization began to have major conflicts with Black educators. Some rejoiced over this landmark victory, citing that justice had finally prevailed, while other embraced for the worst, believing that the outcome from the case was only a Pyrrhic victory. This book aims to understand the effects of integration on the African American community and offers inspiration to those who want to change and build a better and strong Black community.

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

Fifty years after Freedom Summer, "To Write in the Light of Freedom" offers a glimpse into the hearts of the African American youths who attended the Mississippi Freedom Schools in 1964. One of the most successful initiatives of Freedom Summer, more than forty Freedom Schools opened doors to thousands of young African American students. Here they learned civics, politics, and history, curriculum that helped them instead of the degrading lessons supporting segregation and Jim Crow and sanctioned by White Citizen's Councils. Young people enhanced their self-esteem and gained a new outlook on the future. And at more than a dozen of these schools, students wrote, edited, printed and published their own newspapers. For more than five decades, the Mississippi Freedom Schools have served as powerful models of educational activism. Yet, little has been published that documents black Mississippi youths' responses to this profound experience.

John Kasper was a militant far-right activist who first came to prominence with his violent campaigns against desegregation in the Civil Rights era. Ezra Pound was the seminal figure in Anglo-American modernist literature and one of the most important poets of the 20th century. This is the first book to comprehensively explore the extensive correspondence - lasting over a decade and numbering hundreds of letters - between the two men. John Kasper and Ezra Pound examines the mutual influence the two men exerted on each other in Pound's later life: how John Kasper developed from a devotee of Pound's poetry to an active right-wing agitator; how Pound's own ideas about race and American politics developed in his discussions with Kasper and how this informed his later poetry. Shedding a disturbing new light on Ezra Pound's committed engagement with extreme right-wing politics in Civil Rights-era America, this is an essential read for students of 20th-century literature.

Kim Jai Sook Martin entered the world in 1935, during the Japanese occupation of her native Korea. She was the second daughter of an ordinary family, born to parents who had hoped for a boy; they dressed her as one until she was three, when her brother was born. By the age of six, she had already learned the price of her fierce independence: refusing to acknowledge the Japanese flag as the Korean national flag, she was denied entrance to her first year of school.

This early conflict set Kim Jai Sook on a lifetime quest to understand her obligations to her family, her culture, her country, herself, and, ultimately, to God. Hers is a story of perseverance, turmoil, and love, as she fought to maintain balance between duty and her own desires.

She set her goals high. As the survivor of Japanese subjugation and two wars, she committed herself to living as a responsible and worthy person. As an adult, in pursuit of her deep desire to become a teacher, she left Korea and built a new life in Canada, where her father's advice on dealing with people became her guiding principles.

This is her story.