Sometimes the things you own become a part of you, and that's how Scruffy feels about his blanket. So when it goes missing, this loveable little dog sets out on a very smelly journey to sniff it out.

African Americans who moved to California in hopes of finding freedom and full citizenship instead faced all-too-familiar racial segregation. As one transplant put it, "The only difference between Pasadena and Mississippi is the way they are spelled." From the beaches to streetcars to schools, the Golden State-in contrast to its reputation for tolerance-perfected many methods of controlling people of color.Lynn M. Hudson deepens our understanding of the practices that African Americans in the West deployed to dismantle Jim Crow in the quest for civil rights prior to the 1960s. Faced with institutionalized racism, black Californians used both established and improvised tactics to resist and survive the state's color line. Hudson rediscovers forgotten stories like the experimental all-black community of Allensworth, the California Ku Klux Klan's campaign of terror against African Americans, the bitter struggle to integrate public swimming pools in Pasadena and elsewhere, and segregationists' preoccupation with gender and sexuality.

In "The Making of "Mammy Pleasant,"" Lynn M. Hudson examines the folklore of Mary Ellen Pleasant's real and imagined powers. Addressing the lack of a historical record of black women's lives, Hudson argues that the silences and mysteries of Pleasant's past, whether never recorded or intentionally omitted, reveal as much about her life as what has been documented. "The Making of "Mammy Pleasant"" integrates fact and speculation culled from periodicals, court cases, diaries, letters, Pleasant's interviews with the San Francisco press, and various biographical and fictional accounts. Through Pleasant's remarkable life, Hudson also interrogates the constructions of race, gender, and sexuality during the formative years of California's economy and challenges popular mythology about the liberatory sexual culture of the American West.

African Americans who moved to California in hopes of finding freedom and full citizenship instead faced all-too-familiar racial segregation. As one transplant put it, "The only difference between Pasadena and Mississippi is the way they are spelled." From the beaches to streetcars to schools, the Golden State-in contrast to its reputation for tolerance-perfected many methods of controlling people of color.Lynn M. Hudson deepens our understanding of the practices that African Americans in the West deployed to dismantle Jim Crow in the quest for civil rights prior to the 1960s. Faced with institutionalized racism, black Californians used both established and improvised tactics to resist and survive the state's color line. Hudson rediscovers forgotten stories like the experimental all-black community of Allensworth, the California Ku Klux Klan's campaign of terror against African Americans, the bitter struggle to integrate public swimming pools in Pasadena and elsewhere, and segregationists' preoccupation with gender and sexuality.

Nantucket's People of Color is a fascinating study of Nantucket's African population from historical, cultural, and racial perspectives. While most other Africans were sold into slavery and bondage, the African-Americans and Cape Verdeans on Nantucket worked as free people and established communities and institutions such as schools and churches. This anthology examines the relationships that developed between Africans, Quakers, others of European descent, and Cape Verdeans on Nantucket and the events and controversies that both united and divided the larger community along 'racial' lines. This anthology is the culmination of more than ten years of scholarly research on the culture and history of Nantucket Island by James Bradford Ames Scholars. The James Bradford Ames Fellowship Program was established at the University of Massachusetts Boston to foster research into the history and culture of African-Americans and Cape Verdeans on Nantucket.