Our Portion of Hell: Fayette County, Tennessee: An Oral History of the Struggle for Civil Rights offers an unrivalled account of how a rural Black community drew together to combat the immense forces aligned against them. Author Robert Hamburger first visited Fayette County as part of a student civil rights project in 1965 and, in 1971, set out to document the history of the grassroots movement there. Beginning in 1959, Black residents in Fayette County attempting to register to vote were met with brutal resistance from the white community. Sharecropping families whose names appeared on voter registration rolls were evicted from their homes and their possessions tossed by the roadside. These dispossessed families lived for months in tents on muddy fields, as Fayette County became a "tent city" that attracted national attention. The white community created a blacklist culled from voter registration rolls, and those whose names appeared on the list were denied food, gas, and every imaginable service at shops, businesses, and gas stations throughout the county. Hamburger conducted months of interviews with residents of the county, inviting speakers to recall childhood experiences in the "Old South" and to explain what inspired them to take a stand against the oppressive system that dominated life in Fayette County. Their stories, told in their own words, make up the narrative of Our Portion of Hell. This reprint edition includes twenty-nine documentary photographs and an insightful new afterword by the author. There, he discusses the making of the book and reflects upon the difficult truth that although the civil rights struggle, once so immediate, has become history, many of the core issues that inspired the struggle remain as urgent as ever.

Christopher Z. Hobson offers the first in-depth study of prophetic traditions in African American religion. Drawing on contemporary speeches, essays, sermons, reminiscences, and works of theological speculation from 1800 to 1950, he shows how African American prophets shared a belief in a ''God of the oppressed:'' a God who tested the nation's ability to move toward justice and who showed favor toward struggles for equality. The Mount of Vision also examines the conflict between the African American prophets who believed that the nation could one day be redeemed through struggle, and those who felt that its hypocrisy and malevolence lay too deep for redemption. Contrary to the prevalent view that black nationalism is the strongest African American justice tradition, Hobson argues that the reformative tradition in prophecy has been most important and constant in the struggle for equality, and has sparked a politics of prophetic integrationism spanning most of two centuries. Hobson shows too the special role of millennial teaching in sustaining hope for oppressed people and cross-fertilizing other prophecy traditions. The Mount of Vision incorporates a wide range of biblical scholarship illuminating diverse prophetic traditions as well as recent studies in politics and culture. It concludes with an examination of the meaning of African American prohecy today, in the time of the first African American presidency, the semicentenary of the civil rights movement, and the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War: paradoxical moments in which our ''post-racial'' society is still pervaded by injustice, and prophecy is not fulfilled but endures as a challenge.

Nearly a week after George Zimmerman was found not guilty of killing Trayvon Martin, President Obama walked into the press briefing room and shocked observers by saying that "Trayvon could have been me." He talked personally and poignantly about his experiences and pointed to intra-racial violence as equally serious and precarious for black boys. He offered no sweeping policy changes or legislative agendas; he saw them as futile. Instead, he suggested that prejudice would be eliminated through collective efforts to help black males and for everyone to reflect on their own prejudices. Obama's presidency provides a unique opportunity to engage in a discussion about race and politics. In The Race Whisperer, Melanye Price analyzes the manner in which Barack Obama uses race strategically to engage with and win the loyalty of potential supporters. This book uses examples from Obama's campaigns and presidency to demonstrate his ability to authentically tap into notions of blackness and whiteness to appeal to particular constituencies. By tailoring his unorthodox personal narrative to emphasize those parts of it that most resonate with a specific racial group, he targets his message effectively to that audience, shoring up electoral and governing support. The book also considers the impact of Obama's use of race on the ongoing quest for black political empowerment. Unfortunately, racial advocacy for African Americans has been made more difficult because of the intense scrutiny of Obama's relationship with the black community, Obama's unwillingness to be more publicly vocal in light of that scrutiny, and the black community's reluctance to use traditional protest and advocacy methods on a black president. Ultimately, though, The Race Whisperer argues for a more complex reading of race in the age of Obama, breaking new ground in the study of race and politics, public opinion, and political campaigns.

This study of the construction of race in American culture takes its title from a central story thread in Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huck, who resolves to ""go to hell"" rather than turn over the runaway slave Jim, in time betrays his companion. Jeff Abernathy assesses cross-racial pairings in American literature following Huckleberry Finn to show that this pattern of engagement and betrayal appears repeatedly in our fiction?notably southern fiction?just as it appears throughout American history and culture. He contends that such stories of companionship and rejection express opposing tenets of American culture: a persistent vision of democracy and the racial hierarchy that undermines it. Abernathy traces this pattern through works by William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Harper Lee, Kaye Gibbons, Sara Flanigan, Elizabeth Spencer, Padgett Powell, Ellen Douglas, and Glasgow Phillips. He then demonstrates how African American writers pointedly contest the pattern. The works of Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, and Richard Wright, for example, ""portray autonomous black characters and white characters who must earn their own salvation, or gain it not at all.

The untold story of the Black nationalist group behind the growing popularity of Kwanzaa In spite of the ever-growing popularity of Kwanzaa, the story of the influential Black nationalist organization behind the holiday has never been told. Fighting for Us explores the fascinating history of the US Organization, a Black nationalist group based in California that played a leading role in Black Power politics and culture during the late 1960s and early '70s whose influence is still felt today. Advocates of Afrocentric renewal, US unleashed creative and intellectual passions that continue to fuel debate and controversy among scholars and students of the Black Power movement. Founded in 1965 by Maulana Karenga, US established an extensive network of alliances with a diverse body of activists, artists and organizations throughout the United States for the purpose of bringing about an African American cultural revolution. Fighting for US presents the first historical examination of US' philosophy, internal dynamics, political activism and influence on African American art, making an elaborate use of oral history interviews, organizational archives, Federal Bureau of Investigation files, newspaper accounts, and other primary sources of the period. This book also sheds light on factors contributing to the organization's decline in the early '70s-government repression, authoritarianism, sexism, and elitist vanguard politics. Previous scholarship about US has been shaped by a war of words associated with a feud between US and the Black Panther Party that gave way to a series of violent and deadly clashes in Los Angeles. Venturing beyond the lingering rhetoric of rivalry, this book illuminates the ideological similarities and differences between US's "cultural" nationalism and the Black Panther Party's "revolutionary" nationalism. Today, US's emphasis on culture has endured as evidenced by the popularity of Kwanzaa and the Afrocentrism in Black art and popular media. Engaging and original, Fighting for US will be the definitive work on Maulana Karenga, the US organization, and Black cultural nationalism in America.

Maria Stewart is believed by many to have been the first American woman of any race to give public political speeches. In "Word, Like Fire, " Valerie C. Cooper argues that the religious, political, and social threads of Maria Stewart's thought are tightly interwoven, such that focusing narrowly on any one aspect would be to misunderstand her rhetoric. Cooper demonstrates how a certain kind of biblical interpretation can be a Rosetta Stone for understanding various areas of African American life and thought that still resonate today.

James E. Dellroy or "Great Ezomo" the venerable head of the Dellroy clan, is getting old. He has raised his family up to become one of the most powerful families in the U.S., certainly the most powerful black family...and the most dangerous. He is a man of tradition like his father and all who came before him and carried on a warrior tradition that goes all the way back to his most revered ancestor...and even further. But some of these traditions are under stress and his descendants begin to worry him. When an obscure African slave dies in a slave revolt, he leaves behind a legacy of defiance, pride, and resistance to his children, over the generations, many defiant Dellroys have met a premature end in America...but none of them ever went down easily. Others survived to continue the line, but many bore scars to prove their defiance and continued warrior spirit. Abiola left three other things behind that would shape the mentality and direction of his descendants. His name, Abiola, a small carving of his god, and a strict order obeyed faithfully by his children and children's children all the way to the present at all cost... "Never allow my bloodline to be tainted by that of the White Man " The Dellroys' don't even marry other black people if they show any signs of white ancestry. Although the Dellroys' have mixed with Native Americans and even later, Asians, no Dellroy of the main bloodline has ever voluntarily mated with a Caucasian or at least given birth to a child of one if the opposite occurred, not if they wanted to stay a Dellroy...that is about to change. America is now a different place from what it once was and there are those who believe that some practices of the family have long outlived their day...but not everyone agrees, and there are those who may yet prove them right One of Tawanna's sons is about to cross a line that will challenge old ignorance's, but at the same time set in motion events that will cause upheaval in the Dellroy hierarchy, send war drums sounding throughout the African Diaspora from Harlem to Argentina and set the Dellroys' and their kin on a collision course with one of the most powerful mafia families in the country. Tawanna Dellroy must now earn the name that Ezomo gave her all those years ago...Queen Dellroy

Reading Contemporary African American Literature focuses on the subject of contemporary African American popular fiction by women. Bragg's study addresses why such work should be the subject of scholarly examination, describes the events and attitudes which account for the critical neglect of this body of work, and models a critical approach to such narratives that demonstrates the distinctive ways in which this literature captures the complexities of post-civil rights era black experiences. In making her arguments regarding the value of popular writing, Bragg argues that black women's popular fiction foregrounds gender in ways that are frequently missing from other modes of narrative production. They exhibit a responsiveness and timeliness to the shifting social terrain which is reflected in the rapidly shifting styles and themes which characterize popular fiction. In doing so, they extend the historical function of African American literature by continuing to engage the black body as a symbol of political meaning in the social context of the United States. In popular literature Beauty Bragg locates a space from which black women engage a variety of public discourses.

C. Vann Woodward is one of the most significant historians of the post-Reconstruction South. Over his career of nearly seven decades, he wrote nine books; won the Bancroft and Pulitzer Prizes; penned hundreds of book reviews, opinion pieces, and scholarly essays; and gained national and international recognition as a public intellectual. Even today historians must contend with Woodward's sweeping interpretations about southern history. What is less known about Woodward is his scholarly interest in the history of white antebellum southern dissenters, the immediate consequences of emancipation, and the history of Reconstruction in the years prior to the Compromise of 1877. Woodward addressed these topics in three mid-century lecture series that have never before been published. The Lost Lectures of C. Vann Woodward presents for the first time lectures that showcase his life-long interest in exploring the contours and limits of nineteenth-century liberalism during key moments of social upheaval in the South. Historians Natalie J. Ring and Sarah E. Gardner analyze these works, drawing on correspondence, published and unpublished material, and Woodward's personal notes. They also chronicle his failed attempts to finish a much-awaited comprehensive history of Reconstruction and reflect on the challenges of writing about the failures of post-Civil War American society during the civil rights era, dubbed the Second Reconstruction. With an insightful foreword by eminent Southern historian Edward L. Ayers, The Lost Lectures of C. Vann Woodward offers new perspectives on this towering authority on nineteenth- and twentieth-century southern history and his attempts to make sense of the past amidst the tumultuous times in which he lived.

More than the story of one man's case, this book tells the story of entire generations of people marked as "mixed race" in America amid slavery and its aftermath, and being officially denied their multicultural identity and personal rights as a result. Contrary to popular misconceptions, Plessy v. Ferguson was not a simple case of black vs. white separation, but rather a challenging and complex protest for U.S. law to fully accept mixed ancestry and multiculturalism. This book focuses on the long struggle for individual identity and multicultural recognition amid the dehumanizing and depersonalizing forces of American Negro slavery-and the Anglo-American white supremacy that drove it. The book takes students and general readers through the extended gestation period that gave birth to one of the most oft-mentioned but widely misunderstood landmark law will cases in U.S. history. It provides a chronology, brief biographies of key figures, primary documents, an annotated bibliography, and an index all of which provide easy reading and quick reference. Modern readers will find the direct connections between Plessy's story and contemporary racial currents in America intriguing.

This remarkable story of one black man's struggle to break free from the shackles of his skin color to reveal the true color of his soul, against all odds in a white man's business world, will warm the heart in knowing that tenacity and persistance in concert with the truth will indeed bring good success.

This book is my translation of the Bible's prophecy as well as how it ties into today's events. It breaks down a couple of books within the Bible. You don't have to be a priest or a pastor or attend a Bible school to have a better understanding of the word of God. You can read this book and follow along with your Bible. All you need is time and a clear mind. Follow along, read, and prepare for what's coming in the future.

Focusing on the contributions of civic reformers and political architects who arrived in New York in the early decades of the 20th century, this book explores the wide array of sweeping social reforms and radical racial demands first conceived of and planned in Harlem that transformed African Americans into self-aware U.S. citizens for the first time in history. When the first slave escaped bondage in the American South and migrated to the Northeast region of the United States, this act of an individual started what became known as the "great migration" of African Americans fleeing the feudal South for New York and other Northern cities. This migration fueled an intellectual, social, and personal pursuit-the long-standing quest for identity by a lost tribe of African Americans-by every black man, woman, and child in America. In Harlem, that quest was anchored by a wide array of civic, business, and prominent leaders who succeeded in establishing what we now know as modern African American culture. In Harlem: The Crucible of Modern African American Culture, author Lionel C. Bascom examines the accuracy of the established image of Harlem during the Renaissance period-roughly between 1917 and the 1960s-as "heaven" for migrating African Americans. He establishes how mingled among the former tenant farmers, cotton pickers, maids, and farmhands were college-educated intellectuals, progressive ministers, writers, and lecturers who formed various organizations aimed at banishing images of Negroes as bumbling, ignorant, second-class citizens. The book also challenges unfounded claims that political and social movements during the Harlem Renaissance period failed and dramatizes numerous attempts by government authorities to silence black progressives who spearheaded movements that eventually ended segregation in the armed forces, drafted plans that led to the first sweeping civil rights legislation, and resulted in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that finally made racial segregation in schools a federal crime. Documents the Harlem Renaissance period's important role in one of the greatest transformations of American citizens in the history of the United States-from slavery to a migration of millions to parity of achievement in all fields Extends the definition of one of the most progressive periods in African American history for students, academics, and general readers Provides an intriguing reexamination of the Harlem Renaissance period that posits that it began earlier than most general histories of the period suggest and lasted well into the 1960s