"Thoughtful, provocative . . . a first-rate study."
--"Library Journal"

"Not the least of this book's many virtues is the way in which . . . it bridges the gap between the concern's of Du Bois's day and those of the civil rights era."
--Times Literary Supplement

"A rich and moving account of the complex life of one of the most influential black figures in twentieth-century America."
"aHerbert Hill, Evjue-Bascom Professor of African-American Studies, University of Wisconsin"

"We need this book to remind us of the competent leadership that we enjoyed in the past."
--"Black Issues Book Review"

"This work is a welcome addition to African American studies as well as to social and cultural history..."
--"Choice"

Activist, international statesman, reluctant black leader, scholar, icon, father and husband, Ralph Bunche is one of the most complicated and fascinating figures in the history of twentieth- century America. Bunche played a central role in shaping international relations from the 1940s through the 1960s, first as chief of the Africa section of the Office of Strategic Services and then as part of the State Department group working to establish the United Nations. After moving to the U.N. as Director of Trusteeship, he became the first black Nobel Laureate in 1950 and was subsequently named Undersecretary of the U.N.

For nearly a decade, he was the most celebrated contemporary African American both domestically and abroad. Today he is virtually forgotten.

Charles Henry's penetrating biography counters this historical tragedy, recapturing the essence of Bunche's service to America and the world. Moreover, Henry ably demonstrates how Bunche's riseand fall as a public symbol tells us as much about America as it does about Bunche. His iconic status, like that of other prominent, mainstream black figures like Colin Powell, required a constant struggle over the relative importance of his racial identity and his national identity. Henry's biography shines as both the recovered story of a classic American, and as a case study in the racial politics of public service.

White Self-Criticality beyond Anti-racism powerfully emphasizes the significance of humility, vulnerability, anxiety, questions of complicity, and how being a "good white" is implicated in racial injustice. This collection sets a new precedent for critical race scholarship and critical whiteness studies to take into consideration what it means specifically to be a white problem rather than simply restrict scholarship to the problem of white privilege and white normative invisibility. Ultimately, the text challenges the contemporary rhetoric of a color-blind or color-evasive world in a discourse that is critically engaging and sophisticated, accessible, and persuasive.

Hip-Hop Within and Without the Academy explores why hip-hop has become such a meaningful musical genre for so many musicians, artists, and fans around the world. Through multiple interviews with hip-hop emcees, DJs, and turntablists, the authors explore how these artists learn and what this music means in their everyday lives. This research reveals how hip-hop is used by many marginalized peoples around the world to help express their ideas and opinions, and even to teach the younger generation about their culture and tradition. In addition, this book dives into how hip-hop is currently being studied in higher education and academia. In the process, the authors reveal the difficulties inherent in bringing this kind of music into institutional contexts and acknowledge the conflicts that are present between hip-hop artists and academics who study the culture. Building on the notion of bringing hip-hop into educational settings, the book discusses how hip-hop is currently being used in public school settings, and how educators can include and embrace hip-hop s educational potential more fully while maintaining hip-hop s authenticity and appealing to young people. Ultimately, this book reveals how hip-hop s universal appeal can be harnessed to help make general and music education more meaningful for contemporary youth."

African-American athletes have played a significant role in the development and popularity of American professional sports, and have encountered numerous obstacles on the road to athletic success. This is the first comprehensive multi-sport biographical dictionary of African Americans who reached the pinnacles of success in their sport. It contains more personal and career profiles of African-American sports greats than are found in any other single source. Biographical profiles of 166 noted athletes, coaches, and administrators in team and individual sports include both Ristorical figures such as Jesse Owens and Satchel Paige and contemporary stars such as Charles Barkley, Ken Griffey, Jr., Michael Jordan, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Shaquille O'Neal, and Emmitt Smith. Forty-four sports historians contributed the colorfully written biographies, which blend both personal background information and athletic career accomplishments. All information is current through the middle of 1995. The dictionary covers the contributions made by African-American greats in football, baseball, basketball, track and field, boxing, wrestling, auto and stock car racing, golf, thoroughbred racing, tennis, cycling, and figure skating. More than two-thirds of the entries represent team sports. The dictionary is organized alphabetically by person. Each colorfully written profile is 800-1,000 words in length and traces the subject's personal life, family and educational background, personal struggles, career accomplishments, records set, statistical data, awards and honors, and overall impact; and features lively quotations by and about the sports luminaries. Each entry contains a handy bibliography of books and articles about the subject. Biographies of managers, coaches, and club executives describe their teams, statistical achievements, accomplishments, strategy, and sports impact. A general introduction traces the historic struggle of African-American athletes in professional and Olympic sports and appendices provide alphabetical listings of biographical entries and entries by sport. A selection of photos complement the profiles. For the sports fan or librarian, this is a first stop for biographical information that captures the personality of the athlete and includes all the pertinent information about his or her accomplishments. It is an essential addition to the reference sections of junior high, high school, and public libraries.

No other word in the English language is more endemic to contemporary Black American culture and identity than "Soul." Since the 1960s Soul has been frequently used to market and sell music, food, and fashion. However, Soul also refers to a pervasive belief in the capacity of the Black body/spirit to endure the most trying of times in an ongoing struggle for freedom and equality. While some attention has been given to various genre manifestations of Soul-as in Soul music and food-no book has yet fully explored the discursive terrain signified by the term. In this broad-ranging, free-spirited book, a diverse group of writers, artists, and scholars reflect on the ubiquitous but elusive concept of Soul. Topics include: politics and fashion, Blaxploitation films, language, literature, dance, James Brown, and Schoolhouse Rock. Among the contributors are Angela Davis, Manning Marable, Paul Gilroy, Lyle Ashton Harris, Michelle Wallace, Ishmael Reed, Greg Tate, Manthia Diawara, and dream hampton.

This pioneering book explores the meaning of the term "Black social economy," a self-help sector that remains autonomous from the state and business sectors. With the Western Hemisphere's ignoble history of enslavement and violence towards African peoples, and the strong anti-black racism that still pervades society, the African diaspora in the Americas has turned to alternative practices of socio-economic organization. Conscientious and collective organizing is thus a means of creating meaningful livelihoods. In this volume, fourteen scholars explore the concept of the "Black social economy," bringing together innovative research on the lived experience of Afro-descendants in business and society in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, and the United States. The case studies in this book feature horrific legacies of enslavement, colonization, and racism, and they recount the myriad ways that persons of African heritage have built humane alternatives to the dominant market economy that excludes them. Together, they shed necessary light on the ways in which the Black race has been overlooked in the social economy literature.

In this co-edited volume, Gladys L. Mitchell-Walthour and Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman have invited contributors of African descent from the United States and Brazil to reflect on their multidimensional experiences in the field as researchers, collaborators, and allies to communities of color. Contributors promote an interdisciplinary perspective, as they represent the fields of sociology, political science, anthropology, and the humanities. They engage W.E.B. Du Bois' notion of 'second-sight,' which suggests that the unique positionality of Black researchers might provide them with advantages in their empirical observations and knowledge production. They expose the complex and contradictory efforts, discourses, and performances that Black researchers must use to implement and develop their community-centered research agenda. They illustrate that 'second-sight' is not inevitable but must be worked at and is sometimes not achieved in certain research and cultural contexts.

Africana Islamic Studies highlights the diverse contributions that African Americans have made to the formation of Islam in the United States. It specifically focuses on the Nation of Islam and its patriarch Elijah Muhammad with regards to the African American Islamic experience. Contributors explore topics such as gender, education, politics, and sociology from the African American perspective on Islam. This volume offers a unique view of the longstanding Islamic discourse in the United States and its impact on the American cultural landscape.

Interweaving American history, dramatic family chronicle and searing episodes of memoir, On Juneteenth recounts the origins of the holiday that celebrates the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States. A descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas in the 1850s, Annette Gordon-Reed, explores the legacies of the holiday. From the earliest presence of black people in Texas-in the 1500s, well before enslaved Africans arrived in Jamestown-to the day in Galveston on 19 June 1865, when General Gordon Granger announced the end of slavery, Gordon-Reed's insightful and inspiring essays present the saga of a "frontier" peopled by Native Americans, Anglos, Tejanos and Blacks that became a slaveholder's republic. Reworking the "Alamo" framework, Gordon-Reed shows that the slave-and race-based economy not only defined this fractious era of Texas independence, but precipitated the Mexican-American War and the resulting Civil War. A commemoration of Juneteenth and the fraught legacies of slavery that still persist, On Juneteenth is a stark reminder that the fight for equality is on-going.

Ever since Bessie Smith's powerful voice conspired with the ""race records" industry to make her a star in the 1920s, African American writers have memorialized the sounds and theorized the politics of black women's singing. In Black Resonance, Emily J. Lordi analyzes writings by Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Gayl Jones, and Nikki Giovanni that engage such iconic singers as Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson, and Aretha Franklin. Focusing on two generations of artists from the 1920s to the 1970s, Black Resonance reveals a musical-literary tradition in which singers and writers, faced with similar challenges and harboring similar aims, developed comparable expressive techniques. Drawing together such seemingly disparate works as Bessie Smith's blues and Richard Wright's neglected film of Native Son, Mahalia Jackson's gospel music and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, each chapter pairs one writer with one singer to crystallize the artistic practice they share: lyricism, sincerity, understatement, haunting, and the creation of a signature voice. In the process, Lordi demonstrates that popular female singers are not passive muses with raw, natural, or ineffable talent. Rather, they are experimental artists who innovate black expressive possibilities right alongside their literary peers. The first study of black music and literature to centralize the music of black women, Black Resonance offers new ways of reading and hearing some of the twentieth century's most beloved and challenging voices.

MY KOREAN IDENTITY AND QUEST FOR UNDERSTANDING (Korean Youth Studies, 1), edited by Sora Yang of Sydney, Australia, is a very important book in the area of Korean studies. This ground-breaking book contains 13 articles by Korean youth from around the world, in India, Africa, Australia, and the USA. The winner of the 2008 Global Rev. Ham Suk-Hyun Essay Contest, on the topic of "My Korean Identity," Sora Yang has contributed important articles on Australian Korean community, which is a growing Korean community around the world. Sora Yang also explores her own identity as a Korean and an Australian. Jung-Im Jeong, a Student Council secretary at Canadian International School in India and the president of Bangalore Korean Presbyterian Church Youth Group in India, who is one of the early Korean settlers in Bangalore, India, due to her father's executive responsibilities in the IT sector, writes about the situation in India in terms of culture, economics, and society. Jung-Im Jeong focuses on how she developed into a leader desiring to help the people of India and also other people in need around the world. Haebin Yoon writes from Senegal, Africa, regarding her "immigration" to Africa with her missionary father, who was sent by the Korean Presbyterian Church (Ko-Shin) in Korea. She desires to follow in her father's footsteps as a missionary to Africa. Paul Sungbae Park, who has received much acclaim as an emerging young historian in his own right, has written an article exploring the experience of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. In the manner of vicarious participation, so emphasized by Professor Robert N. Bellah of University of California at Berkeley, Paul Sungbae Park has placed himself ina vicarious position of a member of the corps of discovery of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Furthermore, Paul Sungbae Park examines similarities between the Korean Joong-Mae System and the Shakespearean arranged marriage system as found in ROMEO AND JULIET. Michael Chon, the first-born son of a cutting-edge telecommunications company founder in New Jersey, desires to expand his dad's company into a multi-billion-dollar empire. He relates his prowess as a star soccer player to his competitive spirit. As the president of his whole school, Michael Chon explores his own competitive spirit as both inherited and acquired. Joon Park, who is highly ranked in his elite magnate school in New Jersey, recounts his summer trip to South Korea and reminisces about his grandmother who wants him to grow using Korean herbal medicine. Joon Park writes with humor and figurative language that is rarely found in such a young person. Timothy Chon, Andy Jung, and Jake Byun write autobiographically about their experiences in Korea. Their testimonies serve as first-hand primary source accounts not only of the description of youth life in South Korea, but also of primary document preserving Korean youth perspectives on events and issues. Gloria Bae, a star student in her honors class, describes the bond that exists between a Korean mother and a Korean daughter, focuses on Korean food creation. The touching story will not only warm your heart, but it will also give you an insight into Korean cuisine and the Korean family.

Research continues to uncover early childhood as a crucial time when we set the stage for who we will become. In the last decade, we have also seen a sudden massive shift in America's racial makeup with the majority of the current under-5 age population being children of color. Asian and multiracial are the fastest growing self-identified groups in the United States. More than 2 million people indicated being mixed race Asian on the 2010 Census. Yet, young multiracial Asian children are vastly underrepresented in the literature on racial identity. Why? And what are these children learning about themselves in an era that tries to be ahistorical, believes the race problem has been "solved," and that mixed race people are proof of it? This book is drawn from extensive research and interviews with sixty-eight parents of multiracial children. It is the first to examine the complex task of supporting our youngest around being "two or more races" and Asian while living amongst "post-racial" ideologies.

The Little Rock Crisis frames the story of the Little Rock 1957 desegregation crisis through the lens of memory. Over time, those memories - individual and collective - have motivated Little Rockians for social and political action and engagement.

View the Table of Contents.
Read the Introduction.

""Red Seas" is biographical history at its best. It provides a glimpse into the life of one of the most powerful Black labor leaders in U.S. history, describes the trials and tribulations, the successes and failures, of building an independent, Communist-led union, and gives the reader a general feeling for the times. Horne has done all trade-unionist and working-class people a service with "Red Seas," It is highly recommended."
--"Political Affairs"

"The political connections of Harlem and the British West Indies have been crucial for at least a century, but until recent times almost invisible except to those intimately involveda]. We are now, at long last, beginning to get a better grasp, and Gerald Horneas "Red Seas" is a huge contribution to our understanding."
--Paul Buhle, "Monthly Review"

"Horne's latest work is a forceful tract that all scholars writing about radical maritime politics, unionism, and race must take into account. Horne thus sets the standard for future scholars in this area."
--"Working USA"

"In our own age of global commerce and U.S. hyperpower, what could be more instructive than the story of Ferdinand Smith, the Caribbean Communist who led a genuinely international, multicultural union in the years that birthed the American century? Gerald Horne's remarkable biography should be required reading for those who want to glimpse the potential power of that seafaring proletariat, in the last century as well as ours."
--Nelson Lichtenstein, author of "State of the Union: A Century of American Labor"

aA major achievement. It not only illuminates the maritime sources of 20th centuryworking class black radicalism, but reveals its ongoing and complicated interplay with racism and class struggle on a global scale.a
--Joe W. Trotter, Jr., Carnegie Mellon University

"A brilliant political biography--we are in Gerald Horne's debt for bringing to life a towering figure of the 20th century. A radical labor leader in the US and Jamaica who felt the sting of anticommunism on both shores, Ferdinand Smith also laid the groundwork for the modern civil rights movement."
--Martha Biondi, author of "To Stand and Fight: the Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City"

"Exhaustively researched, this is a pioneering, insightful, sympathetic, and brilliant portrait of the life of Ferdinand Smith. A wonderful book."
--Colin Palmer, Dodge Professor of History, Princeton University

aRed Seas offers a rich account of the Communist Partyas centrality in twentieth- century anti-racist struggles, the critical role workers of colour and anti-racism played in the rise and decline of organized labor, and the tragedy of paths not taken, particularly toward the international labour alliances and organizing that might have forestalled the current international arace to the bottom.a
--"International Journal of Maritime History"

During the heyday of the U.S. and international labor movements in the 1930s and 1940s, Ferdinand Smith, the Jamaican-born co-founder and second-in-command of the National Maritime Union (NMU), stands out as one of the most--if not the most--powerful black labor leaders in the United States. Smithas active membership in the Communist Party, however, coupled with his bold labor radicalism and shaky immigration status, brought him undercontinual surveillance by U.S. authorities, especially during the Red Scare in the 1950s. Smith was eventually deported to his homeland of Jamaica, where he continued his radical labor and political organizing until his death in 1961.

Gerald Horne draws on Smithas life to make insightful connections between labor radicalism and the Civil Rights Movement--demonstrating that the gains of the latter were propelled by the former and undermined by anticommunism. Moreover, Red Seas uncovers the little-known experiences of black sailors and their contribution to the struggle for labor and civil rights, the history of the Communist Party and its black members, and the significant dimensions of Jamaican labor and political radicalism.

This edited collection explores how First Lady Michelle Obama gradually expanded and broadened her role by engaging in social, political and economic activities which directly and indirectly impacted the lives of the American people, especially young women and girls. The volume responds to the various representations of Michelle Obama and how the language and images used to depict her either affirmed, offended, represented or misrepresented her and its authors. It is an interdisciplinary evaluation by African American women and girls of the First Lady's overall impact through several media, including original artwork and poetry. It also examines her political activities during and post-election 2016.

A Will to Choose traces the history of African-American Methodism beginning with their emergence in the fledgling American Methodist movement in the 1760s. Responding to Methodism's anti-slavery stance, African-Americans joined the new movement in large numbers and by the end of the eighteenth century, had made up the largest minority in the Methodist church, filling positions of authority as class leaders, exhorters, and preachers. Through the first half of the nineteenth century, African Americans used the resources of the church in their struggle for liberation from slavery and racism in the secular culture.