This full-length biography explores the multifaceted-and altogether fascinating-life, opinions, and accomplishments of African American scholar and writer Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: A Biography is the first comprehensive volume about a man hailed as one of America's most influential scholars. Tracing Gates's life from his West Virginia birth, the book follows him through his undergraduate education at Yale and then to Cambridge, where he became the first African American to receive a doctorate. His current activities as a Harvard University professor, director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, and editor-in-chief of TheRoot.com, a daily, online magazine focusing on issues of interest to the African American community, are explored as well. The biography also provides insights into Gates's groundbreaking work as a critic, scholar, and author, probing his wide-ranging interests, his many accomplishments, and his invaluable revelations about the contributions of African Americans to the nation's literature and history. Most important, the book provides readers with a fuller understanding of African American history and literature-and of the nature of today's racial politics. A chronology of Henry Louis Gates's life Photographs of Gates and others who have played a role in his biography A bibliography of resources

The African American heritage is interwoven throughout the history of the United States, but few educators are prepared to teach children about the events that shaped the African American experience. Most of the stories about slavery, the days when it was illegal to teach black children to read, and when blacks were not allowed to vote or own land, are part of the remembered oral history of black families. Morgan retells American history from the point of view of the events that effected blacks--the Great Depression, the WPA, and the federal policies that led to current Head Start programs, school integration in the 1950s and the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, the War on Poverty, and the IQ controversy. He shows how Aesop and the teachings of Socrates and Aristotle established the philosophical traditions perpetuated by the great black educators, W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington, with the purpose of providing black children with a better understanding of their heritage, their importance in American history, and their place in the world.

Afro-Cuban religiosity is likely to bring to mind beliefs and practices with a visibly 'African' flavour - music, dance, spirit possession, sacrifices and ritual language that have undergone a transformation, on Cuban soil, under a strong Spanish and Catholic influence. Much anthropological work has analysed Afro-Cuban religion's 'syncretic' character in the light of these European influences, taking as a given that each tradition is relatively independent, and focusing on well-documented origins in specific socio-historical environments. In this context, understandings of religious innovation based on charismatic leaders have resulted in a top down approach. However, this volume argues that there are alternatives to cult-centred accounts, by looking at the relationships between Afro-Cuban traditions, and indeed going beyond 'traditions' to place the focus on creativity as an embedded logic in everyday religious practice. From this forward-looking perspective, ritual engagement is no longer a means of recreating pre-existing universes but rather of generating, as well as participating in, an ever-emerging cosmos. Traditions are not perceived as given doctrines or mental constructs but as perceptual habits and potencies beyond questions of spirit or matter, mind or body. Offering a fresh, improvisatory ethnographic vision, this book recasts the Afro-Cuban religious complex in the terms of the experts and adepts who creatively sustain it and responds to the significant fact, often overlooked or ignored, that many Cubans engage with more than one tradition without any sense of conflict. Amidst the cacophony of calls to 'creativity' and 'innovation' as cultural commodities, here's a remarkable collection about the power of creation as a condition of human existence, rather than just its outcome. If you want to see what the world might be like without the very distinction between creator and creation - or, for that matter, between human beings and the worlds they inhabit - then look at Afro-Cuban religious traditions, the editors tell us. The sheer vivacity of the material is astounding, and suggests altogether new ways to think about not just the classic concerns of Caribbean anthropology with syncretism and cultural borrowings, but also basic categories of anthropological thinking such as ritual, technology, myth and cosmology. Martin Holbraad, Professor of Social Anthropology, University College London Beyond Tradition, Beyond Invention shows how far scholarship has transcended the verificationist searches for origins, reification of traditions as bounded entities, and sterile quests for typological coherence that, for too long, dominated the anthropology of Afro-Caribbean ritual praxis. The contributions not only vividly exemplify how mechanistic conceptions of tradition and cultural change, or pseudo-problems such as syncretism, can be overcome by ethnographic means. They also point towards novel theories of the ever emergent, hence thoroughly historical, nature of worlds shared by humans, deities, and spirits. This book ought to inspire all anthropologists working on complex and 'inventive' ritual traditions. Stephan Palmie, Professor of Anthropology, The University of Chicago"

'The New Black History' anthology presents cutting-edge scholarship on key issues that define African American politics, life, and culture, especially during the civil rights and black power eras. The volume includes articles by both established scholars and a rising generation of young scholars.

Overwhelmingly, Black teenage girls are negatively represented in national and global popular discourses, either as being "at risk" for teenage pregnancy, obesity, or sexually transmitted diseases, or as helpless victims of inner city poverty and violence. Such popular representations are pervasive and often portray Black adolescents' consumer and leisure culture as corruptive, uncivilized, and pathological.

In "She's Mad Real," Oneka LaBennett draws on over a decade of researching teenage West Indian girls in the Flatbush and Crown Heights sections of Brooklyn to argue that Black youth are in fact strategic consumers of popular culture and through this consumption they assert far more agency in defining race, ethnicity, and gender than academic and popular discourses tend to acknowledge. Importantly, LaBennett also studies West Indian girls' consumer and leisure culture within public spaces in order to analyze how teens like China are marginalized and policed as they attempt to carve out places for themselves within New York's contested terrains.

ulian Steward Award 2006 Runner-Up In this highly readable account . . . Checker has written a fine book. Assigned to students interested in urbanism, science and technology studies, race relations in the United States, environment, or social movements, the book is sure to spark thoughtful conversation. -American Anthropologist Melissa Checker's absorbing story is a portrait of America. Polluted Promises showcases the complex links between toxic waste and race, and the hope-filled journeys of environmental activists who are wise, strong, and spiritual in their fight against toxic waste--and for their lives. Checker is doing public anthropology for social justice. -Carol Stack, author of All Our Kin I hope that (this book) doesn't get pidgeonholed as a dry, academic treatise, because it is anything but that. It is a wonderfully written account of the struggles by the residents of Hyde Park, a neighborhood in Augusta, Georgia, to undo decades of...environmental racism. -In Brief A very rich, organized, and theoretically interesting ethnographic case study of environmental activism. Checker beautifully recounts how the issues of race emerged and were manipulated in social organizing against environmental poisoning. -George E. Marcus, author of Ethnography through Thick and Thin Polluted Promises is a substantial accomplishment. It grounds the notion of environmental justice wonderfully in practical terms, in the theoretically sophisticated and empathetic examination of Hyde Park. -Adolph Reed, Jr., author of Class Notes: Posing As Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene A sweeping and brilliant account of a struggle for environmental justice. With clarity and honesty, Checker adroitly exploits the interconnection of race, environment, and civil rights. This is an authoritative and courageous book that should be essential reading for everyone interested in environmental justice. -Bunyan Bryant, editor of Environmental Justice: Issues, Policies, and Solutions Over the past two decades, environmental racism has become the rallying cry for many communities as they discover the contaminations of toxic chemicals and industrial waste in their own backyards. Living next door to factories and industrial sites for years, the people in these communities often have record health problems and debilitating medical conditions. Melissa Checker tells the story of one such neighborhood, Hyde Park, in Augusta, Georgia, and the tenacious activism of its two hundred African American families. This community, at one time surrounded by nine polluting industries, is struggling to make their voices heard and their community safe again. Polluted Promises shows that even in the post-civil rights era, race and class are still key factors in determining the politics of pollution. Melissa Checker teaches in the Department of Urban Studies, Queens College/CUNY. She is co-editor of Local Actions: Cultural Activism, Power, and Public Life. She is donating all of her proceeds from this book to the Hyde and Aragon Park Improvement Committee.

A Black man's struggle through the military in America. The author kept a journal of activities throuhout his life. After being asked numerous time to put into words those achievements to inspire readers to look into the life of a child who heard over time "most likely not to succeed"and rose above those negative comments. The author shares his early years, college, military career and assignments, private industry, his minstry as a Pernament Deacon, and founder of a Safety and Environmental Engineering and Construction company.

African American writers have created a rich literature that reflects their experiences and achievements. In many instances, whites figure prominently in these works, frequently portrayed as oppressors. Through a careful examination of works by black writers, Davis constructs a typology of white images in the African American imagination. The book argues that these images repeatedly occur in works by black writers. Some of these stereotypes include the overt bigot, the hypocrite, the liberal, and the good-hearted weakling.

While black writers are often explicit in representing the racism of the overt bigot, Davis notes that African American literary works are much more complex in their exposition of the hidden forms of bigotry manifested by covert white racists. The volume suggests that black authors believe that racism is not merely a form of thought or behavior, but a manifestation of identity. While Davis gives detailed attention to the works of Charles Chesnutt, James Baldwin, and Richard Wright, she also looks at several other black writers and examines discussions of whites in contemporary critiques of race by such authors as Derrick Bell and Ellis Cose.

This title uses oral history methodology to record stories of people who experienced the brunt of racist forced removals in the city of Cape Town, South Africa. Through life stories and community case studies, it traces the human impact of this disruptive, often violent feature of apartheid's social engineering.

Former slaves, with no prior experience in electoral politics and with few economic resources or little significant social standing, created a sweeping political movement that transformed the South after the Civil War. Within a few short years after emancipation, not only were black men voting but they had elected thousands of ex-slaves to political offices. Historians have long noted the role of African American slaves in the fight for their emancipation and their many efforts to secure their freedom and citizenship, yet they have given surprisingly little attention to the system of governance that freedpeople helped to fashion. Justin Behrend argues that freed-people created a new democracy in the Reconstruction era, replacing the oligarchic rule of slaveholders and Confederates with a grassroots democracy.
"Reconstructing Democracy" tells this story through the experiences of ordinary people who lived in the Natchez District, a region of the Deep South where black political mobilization was very successful. Behrend shows how freedpeople set up a political system rooted in egalitarian values wherein local communities rather than powerful individuals held power and ordinary people exercised unprecedented influence in governance. In so doing, he invites us to reconsider not only our understanding of Reconstruction but also the nature and origins of democracy more broadly.

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.

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Christopher Freeburg's Black Aesthetics and the Interior Life offers a crucial new reading of a neglected aspect of African American literature and art across the long twentieth century. Rejecting the idea that the most dehumanizing of black experiences, such as lynching or other racial violence, have completely robbed victims of their personhood, Freeburg rethinks what it means to be a person in the works of black artists. This book advances the idea that individual persons always retain the ability to withhold, express, or change their ideas, and this concept has profound implications for long-held assumptions about the relationship between black interior life and black collective political interests. Examining an array of seminal black texts-from Ida B. Wells's antilynching pamphlets to works by Richard Wright, Nina Simone, and Toni Morrison-Freeburg demonstrates that the personhood represented by these writers unsettles rather than automatically strengthens black subjects' relationships to political movements such as racial uplift, civil rights, and black nationalism. He shows how black artists illuminate the challenges of racial collectivity while stressing the vital stakes of individual personhood. In his challenge to current African Americanist criticism, Freeburg makes a striking contribution to our understanding of African American literature and culture.

Join Alphonso Brown, owner and operator of Gullah Tours, Inc., on three accessible walking tours and a bonus driving tour through the places, history and lore relevant to the rich and varied contributions of black Charlestonians.

Visit Denmark Vesey's home, Catfish Row, the Old Slave Mart and the Market; learn about the sweetgrass basket makers, the Aiken-Rhett House slave quarters, black slave owners and blacksmith Philip Simmons. Brown's distinctive narration, combined with detailed maps and vibrant descriptions in native Gullah, make this a unique and enjoyable way to experience the Holy City.

The Martiniquean-born, French-educated, Algerian revolutionary Frantz Fanon has influenced generations of activists and scholars. Nearly fifty years after his untimely death (in 1961), Fanon's life's work continues to be debated and discussed around the world. Over the past five years, for example, new translations and editions of his writings have appeared in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. This book is an event: an international, interdisciplinary collection of debates and interventions by leading scholars and intellectuals from Africa, Europe, and the United States. The perspectives are theoretical and practical, philosophical and historical, engaging psychoanalytic theories and practices, issues of identity and sexuality to contemporary postcolonial politics and from cultural criticism to urban planning and conceptions of space.

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"This collection of essays could not be timelier...scholars pondering the implications of recent immigration for ethnic and racial politics would do well to look at this collection of essays."--"American Political Science Review"

America is currently in the midst of a major racial and ethnic demographic shift. By the twenty-first century, the population of Hispanics and Asians will increase significantly, while the black population is expected to remain relatively stable. Non-Hispanic Whites will decrease to just over half of the nation's population. How will the changing ethnic and racial composition of American society affect the long struggle for black political power and inclusion? To what extent will these racial and ethnic shifts affect the already tenuous nature of racial politics in American society?

Using the literature on black politics as an analytical springboard, Black and Multiracial Politics in America brings together a broad demography of scholars from various racial and ethnic groups to assess how urban political institutions, political coalitions, group identity, media portrayal of minorities, racial consciousness, support for affirmative action policy, political behavior, partisanship, and other crucial issues are impacted by America's multiracial landscape.

Contributors include Dianne Pinderhughes, M. Margaret Conway, Pei-te Lein, Susan Howell, Mack Jones, Brigitte L. Nacos, Natasha Hritzuk, Marion Orr, Michael Jones-Correa, A.B. Assensoh, Joseph McCormick, Sekou Franklin, Jose Cruz, Erroll Henderson, Mamie Locke, Reuel Rogers, James Endersby, Charles Menifield and Lawrence J. Hanks.

In 1964, sociologist William McCord, long interested in movements for social change in the United States, began a study of Mississippi's Freedom Summer. Stanford University, where McCord taught, had been the site of recruiting efforts for student volunteers for the Freedom Summer project by such activists as Robert Moses and Allard Lowenstein. Described by his wife as ""an old-fashioned liberal,"" McCord believed that he should both examine and participate in events in Mississippi. He accompanied student workers and black Mississippians to courthouses and Freedom Houses, and he attracted police attention as he studied the mechanisms of white supremacy and the black nonviolent campaign against racial segregation. Published in 1965 by W. W. Norton, his book, Mississippi: The Long, Hot Summer, is one of the first examinations of the events of 1964 by a scholar. It provides a compelling, detailed account of Mississippi people and places, including the thousands of student workers who found in the state both opportunities and severe challenges. McCord's work sought to communicate to a broad audience the depth of repression in Mississippi. Here was evidence of the need for federal action to address what he recognized as both national and southern failures to secure civil rights for black Americans. His field work and activism in Mississippi offered a perspective that few other academics or other white Americans had shared. Historian Francoise N. Hamlin provides a substantial introduction that sets McCord's work within the context of other narratives of Freedom Summer and explores McCord's broader career that combined distinguished scholarship with social activism.

This work lucidates bell hooks' social and educational theory, with emphasis on her 1994 book, "Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom." Florence deals with the issues of marginality and cultural alienation that are so prevalent among certain groups within the American society and presents strategies to help develop critical consciousness and affirmation of formerly subordinated cultural traits and characteristics. Her study resonates with current themes raised by critical, feminist and multicultural scholars showing how marginalized groups may be guilty of reinforcing their own status through complicity with the dominant culture's world view, and how education can empower them to demand a more egalitarian society and one that recognizes cultural plurality.

The growing number of elder men providing hands-on care to loved ones, particularly spouses, undeniably represents a hidden segment of the home care population. With that in consideration, caregiving in communities of color, in particular, is increasing while numbers of informal (unpaid) caregivers are projected to triple by 2030. Despite statistics, studies on African-American men who care for other elders (such as spouses and parents) - indeed, "the hidden among the hidden" - are negligible. This text follows a study conducted by Helen Black, a research scientist focusing on aging, alongside John Groce and Charles Harmon, founders of Mature Africans Learning from Each Other (M.A.L.E.), in which they interviewed elderly African-American men in caregiver roles. As a whole, The Hidden Among the Hidden is unique in its study of caregiving in the areas of subject matter, methodology, and presentation of findings. The men whose attitudes and behaviors toward caregiving are recorded in this book share a wealth of knowledge for other caregivers, gerontologists, healthcare professionals, students, and the community in general.

"Toni Morrison's Beloved as African-American Scripture & Other Articles on History and Canon" is a very important academic book exploring the question of historicity and canonicity -- the relationship (in causality and relational terms) between the experience of human community and the creation (or the interpretation) of a religious text (and the canonization of a religious "text"). This book contains a collection of academic articles ranging from African-American history, Jewish history, early Christian history, the New Testament, Patristic history, medieval history, and the history of the Reformation. This academic work is a bold quest to capture the essence of history and canon as phenomenalized in the human experience. Scholars and students of history, religion, literary criticism, sociology, anthropology, humanities, and theology will surely benefit from reading this book. Although this book is highly academic, it is written in a very readable style so that educated individuals who may not be specialists will benefit from the articles in the book.