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In Between Slavery and Freedom, Julie Winch explores the complex world of those people of African birth or descent who occupied the "borderlands" between slavery and freedom in the 350 years from the founding of the first European colonies in what is today the United States to the start of the Civil War. However they had navigated their way out of bondage - through flight, through military service, through self-purchase, through the working of the law in different times and in different places,...

}From its founding in 1966 to contemporary attempts to censure its history and revise its significance, the Black Panther party has aroused fear, hope, pride, vilification, and government-sponsored oppression. The trials of Huey Newton, the Chicago Eight, and the Panther 21 made it enormously difficult for many Americans to distinguish the propaganda from the philosophy; the media's indifference to the Panthers' free breakfast programs, neighborhood clinics, and liberation schools only complica...

The movement to add a multiracial category to the 2000 U.S. Census provoked unprecedented debates about race. The effort made for strange bedfellows. Republicans like House Speaker Newt Gingrich and affirmative action opponent Ward Connerly took up the multiracial cause. Civil rights leaders opposed them, warning that the movement could dilute the census count of traditional minority groups. The activists themselves - a loose confederation of organizations, many led by the white mothers of inter...

In this book, relationship expert Dr Elmore sheds light on the hidden emotional psychological recesses of the black man's inner world. In firm and engaging language, he provides advice and real-life anecdotes from his seminars and radio talk shows.

In A Treasury of Afro-American Folklore, editor Harold Courlander brings together an extensive and unique collection of tales, recollections, epics, traditions, beliefs, myths, historical chronicles, and songs from the numerous Negro cultures of the New World. Courlander explores the unwritten traditions and literature of the Spanish, French, and English-speaking islands of the Caribbean, the areas of Central and South America inhabited by people of African descent, the black communities of the...

As early as 1900, when moving-picture and recording technologies began to bolster entertainment-based leisure markets, journalists catapulted entertainers to godlike status, heralding their achievements as paragons of American self-determination. Not surprisingly, mainstream newspapers failed to cover black entertainers, whose "inherent inferiority" precluded them from achieving such high cultural status. Yet those same celebrities came alive in the pages of black press publications written by a...

The 1921 Tulsa Race Riot was the country's bloodiest civil disturbance of the century. Thirty city blocks were burned to the ground, perhaps 150 died, and the prosperous black community of Greenwood, Oklahoma, was turned to rubble. Brophy draws on his own extensive research into contemporary accounts and court documents to chronicle this devastating riot, showing how and why the rule of law quickly eroded. Brophy shines his lights on mob violence and racism run amok, both on the night of the ri...

To this day, churchgoing Mormons report that they hear from their fellow congregants in Sunday meetings that African-Americans are the accursed descendants of Cain whose spirits—due to their lack of spiritual mettle in a premortal existence—were destined to come to earth with a "curse" of black skin. This claim can be made in many Mormon Sunday Schools without fear of contradiction. You are more likely to encounter opposition if you argue that the ban on the ordination of Black Mormons was a pro...

A story of freedom and flourishing in a community of former slavesIn 1849, the Reverend William King and fifteen of his former slaves founded the Canadian settlement of Buxton on a 9,000-acre block of land in Ontario set aside for sale to blacks. Although initially opposed by some neighboring whites, their town grew steadily in population and stature with the backing of the Presbyterian Church of Canada and various philanthropics. A developed agricultural community that supported three schools,...

In Waking from the Dream David L. Chappell-whose book A Stone of Hope the Atlantic Monthly called "one of the three or four most important books on the civil rights movement"- provides a sweeping history of the fight to keep the civil rights movement alive following Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. Chappell reveals that, far from coming to an abrupt end with King's death, the civil rights movement continued to work to realize King's vision of an equal society. Entering a new phase where...

The daughters of a wealthy and respected Charlestown judge, Sarah and Angelina Grimke grew up with a life of ease, facilitated by the convenience of slavery. Yet their close proximity to inhumane cruelty bred their revulsion towards the practice of slavery, and both sisters rejected their upbringing, moved to Philadelphia and embraced Quakerism. Led by Angelina's gifted oration, they toured the country as the American Anti-Slavery Society's first female agents. They passionately demonstrated the...

The rise of black radicalism in the 1960s was a result of both the successes and the failures of the civil rights movement. The movement's victories were inspirational, but its failures to bring about structural political and economic change pushed many to look elsewhere for new strategies. During this era of intellectual ferment, the writers, editors, and activists behind the monthly magazine Liberator (1960-71) were essential contributors to the debate. In the first full-length history of the...

In this important new book, Bart Landry contributes significantly to the study of black American life and its social stratification and to the study of American middle class life in general.

In an age where racial and ethnic identity intersect, intertwine, and interact in increasingly complex ways, Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream offers a superb and rigorous analysis of black politics and coalitions in the post-Civil Rights era. Using an original survey of a New York City labor population and multiple national data sources, author Christina M. Greer explores the political significance of ethnicity for new immigrant and native-born blacks. Blac...