A discussion of the contributions made by African Americans to public and private black schools in the USA in the 19th and 20th centuries. It suggests that cultural capital from African American communities may be important for closing the gap in the funding of black schools in the 21st century.

Read the Introduction.

"Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2002"

aThe quality of each individual essay makes" Sisters in the Struggle" stand out as an unusual anthology, one whose total sum is actually more than its partsa
--Journal of American History

"Sisters in the Struggle is a powerful, inspirational and insightful book that takes the reader on a journey into the lives of some of the nation's most gifted and courageous African American women leaders, feminist organizers, and Black Power advocates. It was through the dint of their efforts that they helped shape and define what American society should become. These "sheroes" remind us that the prices they paid for freedom bequeathed a legacy of human dignity and opportunity that must be sustained by generations to follow."
--Joyce A. Ladner, author of "Tomorrow's Tomorrow: The Black Woman"

If Bettye Collier-Thomas and V.P. Franklin had only gathered together a distinguished group of scholars to document the role woman played in the black freedom movement, their contribution would be immense. But Sisters in the Struggle is more than an acknowledgment and celebration of black woman's activism. It is a major revision of history, revealing that black women were the critical thinkers, strategists, fighters, and dreamers of the movement. Black feminists developed a social vision expansive enough to emancipate us all."
--Robin D.G. Kelley, author of "Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class"

Women were at the forefront of the civil rights struggle, but their indvidiual stories were rarely heard. Only recently have historians begun to recognize the central role women played in the battle forracial equality.

In Sisters in the Struggle, we hear about the unsung heroes of the civil rights movements such as Ella Baker, who helped found the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper who took on segregation in the Democratic party (and won), and Septima Clark, who created a network of "Citizenship Schools" to teach poor Black men and women to read and write and help them to register to vote. We learn of Black women's activism in the Black Panther Party where they fought the police, as well as the entrenched male leadership, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, where the behind-the-scenes work of women kept the organization afloat when it was under siege. It also includes first-person testimonials from the women who made headlines with their courageous resistance to segregation--Rosa Parks, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, and Dorothy Height.

This collection represents the coming of age of African-American women's history and presents new stories that point the way to future study.

Contributors: Bettye Collier-Thomas, Vicki Crawford, Cynthia Griggs Fleming, V. P. Franklin, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Duchess Harris, Sharon Harley, Dorothy I. Height, Chana Kai Lee, Tracye Matthews, Genna Rae McNeil, Rosa Parks, Barbara Ransby, Jacqueline A. Rouse, Elaine Moore Smith, and Linda Faye Williams.

Changes at the global, federal, state, and municipal level are pushing forward the reparations movement for people of African descent. The distinguished editors of this volume have gathered works that chronicle the historical movement for reparations both in the United States and around the world. Sharing a focus on reparations as an issue of justice, the contributors provide a historical primer of the movement; introduce the philosophical, political, economic, legal and ethical issues surrounding reparations; explain why government, corporations, universities, and other institutions must take steps to rehabilitate, compensate, and commemorate African Americans; call for the restoration of Black people’s human and civil rights and material and psychological well-being; lay out specific ideas about how reparations can and should be paid; and advance cutting-edge interpretations of the complex long-lasting effects that enslavement, police and vigilante actions, economic discrimination, and other behaviors have had on people of African descent. Groundbreaking and innovative, Reparations and Reparatory Justice offers a multifaceted resource to anyone wishing to explore a defining moral issue of our time. Contributors: Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, Hilary McDonald Beckles, Mary Frances Berry, Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, Chuck Collins, Ron Daniels, V. P. Franklin, Danny Glover, Adom Gretachew, Charles Henry, Kamm Howard, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Jesse Jackson, Sr., Brian Jones, Sheila Jackson Lee, James B. Stewart, the Movement 4 Black Lives, the National African American Reparations Commission, the National Coalition Black Reparations of Blacks for Reparations in America, the New Afrikan Peoples Organization/Malcolm X Grassroots Movement

Read the Introduction.

"Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2002"

aThe quality of each individual essay makes" Sisters in the Struggle" stand out as an unusual anthology, one whose total sum is actually more than its partsa
--Journal of American History

"Sisters in the Struggle is a powerful, inspirational and insightful book that takes the reader on a journey into the lives of some of the nation's most gifted and courageous African American women leaders, feminist organizers, and Black Power advocates. It was through the dint of their efforts that they helped shape and define what American society should become. These "sheroes" remind us that the prices they paid for freedom bequeathed a legacy of human dignity and opportunity that must be sustained by generations to follow."
--Joyce A. Ladner, author of "Tomorrow's Tomorrow: The Black Woman"

If Bettye Collier-Thomas and V.P. Franklin had only gathered together a distinguished group of scholars to document the role woman played in the black freedom movement, their contribution would be immense. But Sisters in the Struggle is more than an acknowledgment and celebration of black woman's activism. It is a major revision of history, revealing that black women were the critical thinkers, strategists, fighters, and dreamers of the movement. Black feminists developed a social vision expansive enough to emancipate us all."
--Robin D.G. Kelley, author of "Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class"

Women were at the forefront of the civil rights struggle, but their indvidiual stories were rarely heard. Only recently have historians begun to recognize the central role women played in the battle forracial equality.

In Sisters in the Struggle, we hear about the unsung heroes of the civil rights movements such as Ella Baker, who helped found the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper who took on segregation in the Democratic party (and won), and Septima Clark, who created a network of "Citizenship Schools" to teach poor Black men and women to read and write and help them to register to vote. We learn of Black women's activism in the Black Panther Party where they fought the police, as well as the entrenched male leadership, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, where the behind-the-scenes work of women kept the organization afloat when it was under siege. It also includes first-person testimonials from the women who made headlines with their courageous resistance to segregation--Rosa Parks, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, and Dorothy Height.

This collection represents the coming of age of African-American women's history and presents new stories that point the way to future study.

Contributors: Bettye Collier-Thomas, Vicki Crawford, Cynthia Griggs Fleming, V. P. Franklin, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Duchess Harris, Sharon Harley, Dorothy I. Height, Chana Kai Lee, Tracye Matthews, Genna Rae McNeil, Rosa Parks, Barbara Ransby, Jacqueline A. Rouse, Elaine Moore Smith, and Linda Faye Williams.

Message in the Music brings together wide-ranging, critical, and detailed essays that examine Hip Hop as one of the most influential cultural phenomena of the past half-century. Written by historians, social scientists, literary critics, and educators, the essays examine the current state of Hip Hop, investigate its historical and philosophical linkages to previous African American social and cultural movements, and explore the ways it may be employed as an emancipatory pedagogy for youth in the United States and around the world. By re-engaging ongoing debates in Hip Hop while offering fresh insights from young scholars across a variety of disciplines and perspectives, this collection has much to offer academics, students, teachers, and parents.

A discussion of the contributions made by African Americans to public and private black schools in the USA in the 19th and 20th centuries. It suggests that cultural capital from African American communities may be important for closing the gap in the funding of black schools in the 21st century.

The bestselling, definitive study of African Americans throughout American history, now with a new introduction by noted scholar V. P. Franklin

In The Negro in the Making of America, eminent historian Benjamin Quarles provides one of the most comprehensive and readable accounts ever gathered in one volume of the role that African Americans have played in shaping the destiny of America. Starting with the arrival of the slave ships in the early 1600s and moving through the Colonial period, the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and into the last half of the twentieth century, Quarles chronicles the sweep of events that have brought blacks and their struggle for social and economic equality to the forefront of American life. Through compelling portraits of central political, historical, and artistic figures such as Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass, Duke Ellington, Malcolm X, and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Quarles illuminates the African American contributions that have enriched the cultural heritage of America. This classic history also covers black participation in politics, the rise of a black business class, and the forms of discrimination experienced by blacks in housing, employment, and the media.

Quarles's groundbreaking work not only surveys the role of black Americans as they engaged in the dual, simultaneous processes of assimilating into and transforming the culture of their country, but also, in a portrait of the white response to blacks, holds a mirror up to the deeper moral complexion of our nation's history. The restoration of this history holds a redemptive quality -- one that can be used, in the author's words, as a "vehicle for present enlightenment, guidance, and enrichment."