"Cutting-edge...I highly recommend the book."
"-- De Witt S. Dykes, Jr., Oakland University"

From the introduction:
This book was put together to reclaim, and to create heightened awareness about, individuals, contributions, and struggles that have made African-American survival and progress possible. We cannot accurately comprehend either our hidden potential or the full range of problems that besiege us until we know about the successful struggles that generations of foremothers waged against virtually insurmountable obstacles. We can, and will, chart a coherent future and win essential opportunities with a clear understanding of the past in all its pain and glory.

Here, in a single volume, is a sweeping panorama of black women's experience throughout history and across classes and continents. Containing over 30 crucial essays by the most influential and prominent scholars in the field, including Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Linda Gordon, and Nell Irvin Painter, We Specialize in the Wholly Impossible is a comprehensive assessment of black women's lives.

The book is divided into six sections: theory; Africa; the Caribbean and Canada; 18th-century United States; 19th-century United States; and 20th-century United States. A remarkably diverse range of topics are covered, with chapters on such subjects as working-class consciousness among Afro-American women; the impact of slavery on family structure; black women missionaries in South Africa; slavery, sharecropping, and sexual inequality; black women during the American Revolution; imprisoned black women in the American West; women's welfare activism; SNCC and black women's activism; and property-owning freeAfrican-American women in the 19th-century South.

"An important volume for students and professionals who wish to grasp the basic nature of the Civil Rights Movement and how it changed America in fundamental ways."—Aldon Morris, Northwestern Univ. The Eyes on the Prize Reader brings together the most comprehensive anthology of primary sources available, spanning the entire history of the Civil Rights Movement. "A remarkable collection...Indispensable."—William H. Harris, Texas Southern Univ.

This groundbreaking collection addresses both new and familiar topics with fresh perspectives to produce original and thought-provoking scholarship on the diasporic histories of black peoples. Through a variety of methodologies and theoretical constructs, the contributors plumb a wide range of localities to engage many important subjects, including slavery and emancipation, transnational and diasporic experiences, social and political activism, and political and cultural identity. In doing so, they offer insightful and thought provoking studies, highlight new areas of inquiry in the African diaspora, and in many cases transcend geographical and national boundaries. The probing and meticulously woven narratives of this collection combine to show the vibrant histories of peoples of African descent.

Emancipation, manumission, and complex legalities surrounding slavery led to a number of women of color achieving a measure of freedom and prosperity from the 1600s through the 1800s. These black women held property in places like Suriname and New Orleans, headed households in Brazil, enjoyed religious freedom in Peru, and created new selves and new lives across the Caribbean. Beyond Bondage outlines the restricted spheres within which free women of color, by virtue of gender and racial restrictions, carved out many kinds of existences. Although their freedom--represented by respectability, opportunity, and the acquisition of property--always remained precarious, the essayists support the surprising conclusion that women of color often sought and obtained these advantages more successfully than their male counterparts.

The presence of Blacks in a number of European societies has drawn increasing interest from scholars, policymakers, and the general public. This interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary collection penetrates the multifaceted Black presence in Europe, and, in so doing, complicates the notions of race, belonging, desire, and identities assumed and presumed in revealing portraits of Black experiences in a European context. In focusing on contemporary intellectual currents and themes, the contributors theorize and re-imagine a range of historical and contemporary issues related to the broader questions of blackness, diaspora, hegemony, transnationalism, and "Black Europe" itself as lived and perceived realities.

Contributors are Allison Blakely, Jacqueline Nassy Brown, Tina Campt, Fred Constant, Alessandra Di Maio, Philomena Essed, Terri Francis, Barnor Hesse, Darlene Clark Hine, Dienke Hondius, Eileen Julien, Trica Danielle Keaton, Kwame Nimako, Tiffany Ruby Patterson, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Stephen Small, Tyler Stovall, Alexander G. Weheliye, Gloria Wekker, and Michelle M. Wright.

This volume gathers personal recollections by fifteen eminent historians of the American South. Coming from distinctive backgrounds, traveling diverse career paths, and practicing different kinds of history, the contributors exemplify the field's richness on many levels. As they reflect on why they joined the profession and chose their particular research specialties, these historians write eloquently of family and upbringing, teachers and mentors, defining events and serendipitous opportunities. The struggle for civil rights was the defining experience for several contributors. Peter H. Wood remembers how black fans of the St. Louis Cardinals erupted in applause for the Dodgers' Jackie Robinson. ""I realized for the first time,"" writes Wood, ""that there must be something even bigger than hometown loyalties dividing Americans."" Gender equality is another frequent concern in the essays. Anne Firor Scott tells of her advisor's ridicule when childbirth twice delayed Scott's dissertation: ""With great effort I managed to write two chapters, but Professor Handlin was moved to inquire whether I planned to have a baby every chapter."" Yet another prominent theme is the reconciliation of the professional and the personal, as when Bill C. Malone traces his scholarly interests back to ""the memories of growing up poor on an East Texas cotton farm and finding escape and diversion in the sounds of hillbilly music."" Always candid and often witty, each essay is a road map through the intellectual terrain of southern history as practiced during the last half of the twentieth century.

Inspired by the searing story of Margaret Garner, the escaped slave who in 1856 slit her daughter's throat rather than have her forced back into slavery, the essays in this collection focus on historical and contemporary examples of slavery and women's resistance to oppression from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first. Each chapter uses Garner's example--the real-life narrative behind Toni Morrison's Beloved andthe opera Margaret Garner--as a thematic foundation for an interdisciplinary conversation about gendered resistance in locations including Brazil, Yemen, India, and the United States. Contributors are Nailah Randall Bellinger, Olivia Cousins, Mary E. Frederickson, Cheryl Janifer LaRoche, Carolyn Mazloomi, Cathy McDaniels-Wilson, Catherine Roma, Huda Seif, S. Pearl Sharp, Raquel Luciana de Souza, Jolene Smith, Veta Tucker, Delores M. Walters, Diana Williams, and Kristine Yohe.

"A remarkable, poignant collection." Choice

"This oral history of black Madison is an invaluable primary document for students, general readers, and scholars. Interestingly it illuminates the white side of Madison as much as it reveals about what transpired in the black community." Darlene Clark Hine, from the Foreword

Twenty Black residents of a small Ohio River town here tell the stories of their lives. Madison, though in the North, had its cultural roots in the south, and for most of the twentieth century the town was strictly segregated. In their own words, Black men and women of Madison describe the deprivations of discrimination in their hometown: what it meant, personally and culturally, to be denied opportunities for participation in the educational, economic, political, and social life of the white community. And they describe how they created a community of their own, strong and viable, self-sustaining and mutually supportive of its members."

"The history of African American women has become an important topic in the intellectual life of this country in the last fifteen years; and Darlene Clark Hine has been one of those most responsible for bringing the subject to its current level of importance." from the Foreword by John Hope Franklin

"In this absolutely needed collection of essays by one of the leading American historians of our generation, the richly intertwined community-making and self-making that shaped the historical experience of African American women shines out like a beacon." Susan M. Reverby, Luella LaMer Associate Professor for Women s Studies, Wellesley College"

In the fall of 1983 a group of scholars met at Purdue University for the American Historical Association Conference on the Study and Teaching of Afro-American history. This group included some of the most prominent historians and educators in their professions, and at this landmark meeting they assessed and evaluated the entire field of Afro-American history, its past, present, and future. The sponsorship of the American Historical Association officially acknowledged the coming of age of black history as a vital and respected part of American history. The contributions of many outstanding scholars and educators make The State of Afro-American History, the proceedings of that conference, an authoritative and provocative examination of the Afro-American experience during slavery and since emancipation. Individual essays cover the ways in which black slaves shaped their environment, the forces that influenced the black urban experience in the United States, the evolution of scholarship in Afro-American history, and the merger of American and Afro-American histories. The need for movement beyond the mere integration of blacks into existing textbooks and courses and the responsibility of the Afro-American scholar to the community are treated at length, as are media representation of black history and black women's history. The scholars are concerned with both the creation of histories and their dissemination through classrooms, texts, museums, and the popular media. Afro-American history is a relatively recent field of study, and the scholars represented in this book are only the fourth generation to pursue it. Earlier scholars have just recently gained wide recognition for their efforts. The contributors to this volume are very aware that they are living, reacting to, and shaping a history, as well as studying and teaching it. The effect of this dynamic on The State of Afro-American History is furthered by the essays' interactive structure: various pieces build on and critique other essays. This unique and remarkable volume will interest not only professional historians but students and secondary school teachers, school administrators, and librarians. It offers comprehensive and concise evaluations of where Afro-American history has been and is now, and suggestions for where it can go in the future.

A Question of Manhood: A Reader in Black Men's History and Masculinity, is the first anthology of historical studies focused on themes and issues central to the construction of Black masculinities. The editors identified these essays from among several hundred articles published in recent years in leading American history journals and academic periodicals. Volume II picks up where volume I left off, continuing to focus on gender by examining the lives of African American men in the tumultuous period following the Civil War through the end of the nineteenth century. The writings included in volume two cover themes in the lives of black men that touch on leadership, work and the professions, family and community, sports and the military, and the image of black men in the larger society.

Now in paperback

Crossing Boundaries
Comparative History of Black People in Diaspora

Edited by Darlene Clark Hine and Jacqueline McLeod

Suggests new paradigms for the study of Blacks in diaspora.

"The 18 papers in this volume are original, clearly written, and of consistently high quality. Organized in four parts Comparative Diaspora Historiography, Identity and Culture, Domination and Resistance, and Geo-Social History and the Atlantic World these essays complement each other in a way that makes the whole even more valuable than the sum of the parts."
Choice

The essays assembled in Crossing Boundaries reflect the international dimensions, commonalities, and discontinuities in the histories of diasporan communities of color. People of African descent in the New World (the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean) share a common set of experiences: domination and resistance, slavery and emancipation, the pursuit of freedom, and struggle against racism. No single explanation can capture the varied experiences of Black people in diaspora.

Crossing Boundaries probes differences embedded in Black ethnicities and helps to discover and to weave into a new understanding the threads of experience, culture, and identity across diasporas. Contributors include Allison Blakely, Kim Butler, Frederick Cooper, George Fredrickson, David Barry Gaspar, Jack P. Green, Thomas Holt, Earl Lewis, Elliott Skinner, and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn.

Darlene Clark Hine, John A. Hannah Professor of History at Michigan State University, is author of Hine Sight: Black Women and the Re-Construction of American History (Indiana University Press); co-author of A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America and The African American Odyssey; and co-editor of More Than Chattel: Black Women and Slavery in the Americas and A Question of Manhood: A Reader in Black Men s History and Masculinity (both Indiana University Press).

Jacqueline McLeod is Assistant Professor of History at Western Illinois University. She holds a J.D. degree from the University of Toledo College of Law.

Blacks in the Diaspora Darlene Clark Hine, John McCluskey, Jr.,
David Barry Gaspar, general editors

March 2001 (cloth 1999)
520 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, 1 fig., notes, index
cloth 0-253-33542-6 $29.95 L / 22.95
paper 0-253-21450-5 $17.95 s / 13.95 "

..". a much-needed volume on a neglected topic that is of great interest to scholars of women, slavery, and African American history." Drew Faust

Gender was a decisive force in shaping slave society. Slave men s experiences differed from those of slave women, who were exploited both in reproductive as well as productive capacities. The women did not figure prominently in revolts, because they engaged in less confrontational resistance, emphasizing creative struggle to survive dehumanization and abuse.

The contributors are Hilary Beckles, Barbara Bush, Cheryl Ann Cody, David Barry Gaspar, David P. Geggus, Virginia Meacham Gould, Mary Karasch, Wilma King, Bernard Moitt, Celia E. Naylor-Ojurongbe, Robert A. Olwell, Claire Robertson, Robert W. Slenes, Susan M. Socolow, Richard H. Steckel, and Brenda E. Stevenson."

The Black Chicago Renaissance emerged from a foundational stage that stretched from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition to the start of the Great Depression. During this time, African American innovators working across the landscape of the arts set the stage for an intellectual flowering that redefined black cultural life.Richard A. Courage and Christopher Robert Reed have brought together essays that explore the intersections in the backgrounds, education, professional affiliations, and public lives and achievements of black writers, journalists, visual artists, dance instructors, and other creators working in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Organized chronologically, the chapters unearth transformative forces that supported the emergence of individuals and social networks dedicated to work in arts and letters. The result is an illuminating scholarly collaboration that remaps African American intellectual and cultural geography and reframes the concept of urban black renaissance. Contributors: Richard A. Courage, Mary Jo Deegan, Brenda Ellis Fredericks, James C. Hall, Bonnie Claudia Harrison, Darlene Clark Hine, John McCluskey Jr., Amy M. Mooney, Christopher Robert Reed, Clovis E. Semmes, Margaret Rose Vendryes, and Richard Yarborough

Each of these essays illuminates an important dimension of the complex array of Black male experiences as workers, artists, warriors, and leaders. The essays describe the expectations and demands to struggle, to resist, and facilitate the survival of African American culture and community. Black manhood was shaped not only in relation to Black womanhood, but was variously nurtured and challenged, honed and transformed against a backdrop of white male power and domination, and the relentless expectations and demands on them to struggle, resist, and to facilitate the survival of African-American culture and community.