Best of
Race

2001

The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921


Tim Madigan - 2001
    34 square blocks of Tulsa's Greenwood community, known then as the Negro Wall Street of America, were reduced to smoldering rubble.And now, 80 years later, the death toll of what is known as the Tulsa Race Riot is more difficult to pinpoint. Conservative estimates put the number of dead at about 100 (75% of the victims are believed to have been black), but the actual number of casualties could be triple that. The Tulsa Race Riot Commission, formed two years ago to determine exactly what happened, has recommended that restitution to the historic Greenwood Community would be good public policy and do much to repair the emotional as well as physical scars of this most terrible incident in our shared past. With chilling details, humanity, and the narrative thrust of compelling fiction, The Burning will recreate the town of Greenwood at the height of its prosperity, explore the currents of hatred, racism, and mistrust between its black residents and neighboring Tulsa's white population, narrate events leading up to and including Greenwood's annihilation, and document the subsequent silence that surrounded the tragedy.

PowerNomics : The National Plan to Empower Black America


Claud Anderson - 2001
    In this book, Dr. Anderson obliterates the myths and illusions of black progress and brings together data and information from many different sources to construct a framework for solutions to the dilemma of Black America. In PowerNomics: The National Plan, Dr. Anderson proposes new principles, strategies and concepts that show blacks a new way to see, think, and behave in race matters. The new mind set prepares blacks to take strategic steps to create a new reality for their race. It offers guidance to others who support blacks self-sufficiency. In this book, Dr. Anderson offers insightful analysis and action steps blacks can take to redesign core areas of life - Education, Economics, Politics and Religion - to better benefit their race. The action steps in each area require new empowerment tools that Dr. Anderson presents - a new group vision and a new culture of empowerment - tools designed to counter, if not break many of the racial monopolies in society. Vertical integration and Industrializing black communities are other major concepts and strategies that he presents in the book. He places a great deal of importance on building industries in black communities that are constructed upon group competitive advantages. A the same time he announced the release of PowerNomics: The National Plan, he also announced that he has established several models of the strategies he proposes in the book. PowerNomics: The Plan, is infused with Dr. Anderson's trademark creative thinking and answers questions such as: - Why are blacks the only group that equates success with working in a White corporation, government or the entertainment industry? - How did power and wealth - businesses, resources, privileges, income and control of all levels of government get so disproportionately distributed into the hands of White society?

Erasure


Percival Everett - 2001
    But as both a writer and an African American, he is offended and angered by the success of We's Lives in Da Ghetto, the exploitative debut novel of a young, middle-class black woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days." Hailed as an authentic representation of the African American experience, the book is a national bestseller and its author feted on the Kenya Dunston television show. The book's success rankles all the more as Monk's own most recent novel has just notched its seventh rejection." "Even as his career as a writer appears to have stalled, Monk finds himself coping with changes in his personal life. In need of distraction from old memories, new responsibilities, and his professional stagnation, Monk composes, in a heat of inspiration and energy, a fierce parody of the sort of exploitative, ghetto wanna-be lit represented by We's Lives in Da Ghetto." But when his agent sends this literary indictment (included here in its entirety) out to publishers, it is greeted as an authentic new voice of black America. Monk - or his pseudonymous alter ego, Stagg R. Leigh - is offered money, fame, success beyond anything he has known. And as demand begins to build for meetings with and appearances by Leigh, Monk is faced with a whole new set of problems.

Salvation: Black People and Love


bell hooks - 2001
    Whether talking about the legacy of slavery, relationships and marriage in Black life, the prose and poetry of Martin Luther King, Jr., James Baldwin, and Maya Angelou, the liberation movements of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, or hip hop and gangsta rap culture, hooks lets us know what love’s got to do with it.Combining the passionate politics of W.E.B. DuBois with fresh, contemporary insights, hooks brilliantly offers new visions that will heal our nation’s wounds from a culture of lovelessness. Her writings on love and its impact on race, class, family, history, and popular culture raise all the relevant issues. This is work that helps us heal. Salvation shows us how to create beloved American communities.

In the City of Shy Hunters


Tom Spanbauer - 2001
    Shy, afflicted with a stutter, and struggling with his sexuality, Will Parker comes to New York to escape the provincial western towns where he grew up. In New York, he finds himself surrounded for the first time by people who understand and celebrate his quirks and flaws. He also begins an unforgettable love affair with a volatile, six-foot-five African-American drag queen and performance artist named Rose. But even as he is falling in love with Rose and growing into himself, Will must watch as AIDS escalates from a rumor into a devastating tragedy. When a vicious riot erupts in a local park, Will seizes the chance to repay the city for all it has taught him, in a climax that will leave readers shaken, fulfilled, and changed. "In the City of Shy Hunters is so finely crafted ... you'll think you've been reading a modernist classic." -- Peter Kurth, Salon.com "Spanbauer's genius resides even in the asides ... teas[ing] out the genuine complexity of human love." -- Thomas McGonigle, The Washington Post Book World "Ambitious and compelling ... a mixture of the ghastly, the hilarious, and the curiously touching." -- John Hartl, The Seattle Times "In the City of Shy Hunters has the earmarks of a literary landmark ... Its importance and originality are unmistakable." -- Laura Demanski, The Baltimore Sun

The Skin That We Speak


Lisa D. Delpit - 2001
    The Skin That We Speak takes the discussion of language in the classroom beyond the highly charged war of idioms and presents today's teachers with a thoughtful exploration of the varieties of English that we speak, in what Black Issues Book Review calls "an essential text." Edited by bestselling author Lisa Delpit and education professor Joanne Kilgour Dowdy, the book includes an extended new piece by Delpit herself, as well as groundbreaking work by Herbert Kohl, Gloria Ladson-Billings, and Victoria Purcell-Gates, as well as classic texts by Geneva Smitherman and Asa Hilliard. At a time when children are written off in our schools because they do not speak formal English, and when the class- and race-biased language used to describe those children determines their fate, The Skin That We Speak offers a cutting-edge look at crucial educational issues.

Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America


Ayana Byrd - 2001
    From the antebellum practice of shaving the head in an attempt to pass as a "free" person to the 1998 uproar over a White third-grade teacher's reading of the book Nappy Hair, the issues surrounding Black hair linger as we enter the twenty-first century.Tying the personal to the political and the popular, Hair Story takes a chronological look at the culture behind the ever-changing state of Black hair-from fifteenth century Africa to the present-day United States. Hair Story is the book that Black Americans can use as a benchmark for tracing a unique aspect of their history and that people of all races will celebrate as the reference guide for understanding Black hair.

Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970


Lynne Olson - 2001
    From the Montgomery bus boycott to the lunch counter sit-ins to the Freedom Rides, Lynne Olson skillfully tells the long-overlooked story of the extraordinary women who were among the most fearless, resourceful, and tenacious leaders of the civil rights movement. Freedom's Daughters includes portraits of more than sixty women—many until now forgotten and some never before written about—from key figures like Ida B. Wells, Eleanor Roosevelt, Ella Baker, and Septima Clark to some of the smaller players who represent the hundreds of women who each came forth to do her own small part and who together ultimately formed the mass movements that made the difference. Freedom's Daughters puts a human face on the civil rights struggle—and shows that that face was often female.

Brutal Imagination


Cornelius Eady - 2001
    These two main themes showcase Cornelius Eady's range: his deft wit, inventiveness, and skillfully targeted anger, and the way in which he combines the subtle with the charged, street idiom with elegant inversions, harsh images with the sweetly ordinary. Includes poems that inspired the libretto for Eady's music-drama Running Man, a 1999 Pulitzer Prize finalist.

Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America


Juan González - 2001
    Spanning 500 years of Hispanic history, from the first New World colonies to the 19th century westward expansion in America, this narrative features family portraits of real-life immigrants along with sketches of the political events and social conditions that compelled them to leave their homeland.

Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution


Diane McWhorter - 2001
    That spring, child demonstrators faced down police dogs and fire hoses in huge nonviolent marches for desegregation. A few months later, Ku Klux Klansmen retaliated by bombing the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and killing four young black girls. Diane McWhorter, journalist and daughter of a prominent Birmingham family, weaves together police and FBI documents, interviews with black activists and former Klansmen, and personal memories into an extraordinary narrative of the city, the personalities, and the events that brought about America's second emancipation.

Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory


David W. Blight - 2001
    In the war's aftermath, Americans had to embrace and cast off a traumatic past. David Blight explores the perilous path of remembering and forgetting, and reveals its tragic costs to race relations and America's national reunion. In 1865, confronted with a ravaged landscape and a torn America, the North and South began a slow and painful process of reconciliation. The ensuing decades witnessed the triumph of a culture of reunion, which downplayed sectional division and emphasized the heroics of a battle between noble men of the Blue and the Gray. Nearly lost in national culture were the moral crusades over slavery that ignited the war, the presence and participation of African Americans throughout the war, and the promise of emancipation that emerged from the war. Race and Reunion is a history of how the unity of white America was purchased through the increasing segregation of black and white memory of the Civil War. Blight delves deeply into the shifting meanings of death and sacrifice, Reconstruction, the romanticized South of literature, soldiers' reminiscences of battle, the idea of the Lost Cause, and the ritual of Memorial Day. He resurrects the variety of African-American voices and memories of the war and the efforts to preserve the emancipationist legacy in the midst of a culture built on its denial. Blight's sweeping narrative of triumph and tragedy, romance and realism, is a compelling tale of the politics of memory, of how a nation healed from civil war without justice. By the early twentieth century, the problems of race and reunion were locked in mutual dependence, a painful legacy that continues to haunt us today.

Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement


Bettye Collier-Thomas - 2001
    Only recently have historians begun to recognize the central role women played in the battle for racial 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.

Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology, and the Battle for Native American Identity


David Hurst Thomas - 2001
    The explosive controversy and resulting lawsuit also raised a far more fundamental question: Who owns history? Many Indians see archeologists as desecrators of tribal rites and traditions; archeologists see their livelihoods and science threatened by the 1990 Federal reparation law, which gives tribes control over remains in their traditional territories.In this new work, Thomas charts the riveting story of this lawsuit, the archeologists' deteriorating relations with American Indians, and the rise of scientific archeology. His telling of the tale gains extra credence from his own reputation as a leader in building cooperation between the two sides.

Outlaw: The Collected Works of Miguel Pinero


Miguel Piñero - 2001
     Portrayed by actor Benjamin Bratt in the 2001 feature film Pinero, the poet's works are as rough and gritty as the New York City underworld he wrote about and loved. "So here I am, look at me / I stand proud as you can see / pleased to be from the Lower East / a street fighting man / a problem of this land / I am the Philosopher of the Criminal Mind / a dweller of prison time / a cancer of Rockefeller's ghettocide / this concrete tomb is my home." His depictions of pimp bars, drug addiction, petty crime, prison culture and outlaw life all drawn from first-hand experience astound the faint-hearted, as Pinero poetizes an outlaw vernacular meant to shock proper, bourgeois culture. This long-awaited collection includes previously published and never-before-published poems; ten plays, including Short Eyes, which was later made into a film and won the 1973-1974 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best American Play, The Sun Always Shines for the Cool, and Eulogy for a Small Time Thief. A co-founder of the Nuyorican Poet's Cafe, Pinero died at the age of 41, leaving behind a compelling legacy of poetry and plays that reveal the harsh, impoverished lives of his urban Puerto Rican community.

Where Do We Go From Here?: An Unabridged Selection from A Call to Conscience - The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.


Ted Kennedy - 2001
    King"s most influential and best-known speeches. Compiled by Stanford historian Dr. Clayborne Carson, director of the King Papers Project, and by contributing editor Kris Shepard, this volume takes you behind the scenes on an astonishing historical journey-from the small, crowded church in Montgomery, Alabama, where The Birth of a New Nation ignited the modern civil rights movement; to the center of the nation"s capital, where I Have a Dream echoed through a nation"s conscience; to the Mason Temple in Memphis, where over ten thousand people heard Dr. King give his last, transcendent speech, I"ve Been to the Mountaintop, the night before his assassination. In twelve important introductions, some of the world"s most renowned leaders and theologians - Andrew Young, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and Mrs. Rosa Parks...

Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten


Emily Bernard - 2001
    What's less well known about Hughes is that for much of his life he maintained a friendship with Carl Van Vechten, a flamboyant white critic, writer, and photographer whose ardent support of black artists was peerless.Despite their differences — Van Vechten was forty-four to Hughes twenty-two when they met–Hughes’ and Van Vechten’s shared interest in black culture lead to a deeply-felt, if unconventional friendship that would span some forty years. Between them they knew everyone — from Zora Neale Hurston to Richard Wright, and their letters, lovingly and expertly collected here for the first time, are filled with gossip about the antics of the great and the forgotten, as well as with talk that ranged from race relations to blues lyrics to the nightspots of Harlem, which they both loved to prowl. It’s a correspondence that, as Emily Bernard notes in her introduction, provides “an unusual record of entertainment, politics, and culture as seen through the eyes of two fascinating and irreverent men.

Black Gay Man: Essays


Robert F. Reid-Pharr - 2001
    Both a celebration of black gay male identity as well as a powerful critique of the structures that allow for the production of that identity, Black Gay Man introduces the eloquent new voice of Robert Reid-Pharr in cultural criticism.At once erudite and readable, the range of topics and positions taken up in Black Gay Man reflect the complexity of American life itself. Treating subjects as diverse as the Million Man March, interracial sex, anti-Semitism, turn of the century American intellectualism as well as literary and cultural figures ranging from Essex Hemphill and Audre Lorde to W.E.B. DuBois, Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin, Black Gay Man is a bold and nuanced attempt to question prevailing ideas about community, desire, politics and culture. Moving beyond critique, Reid-Pharr also pronounces upon the promises of a new America. With the publication of Black Gay Man, Robert Reid-Pharr is sure to take his place as one of this country's most exciting and challenging left intellectuals.

I've Been to the Mountaintop: An Unabridged selection from A Call to Conscience - The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.


Martin Luther King Jr. - 2001
    King's most influential and best-known speeches. Compiled by Stanford historian Dr. Clayborne Carson, director of the King Papers Project, and by contributing editor Kris Shepard, this volume takes you behind the scenes on an astonishing historical journey--from the small, crowded church in Montgomery, Alabama, where The Birth of a New Nation ignited the modern civil rights movement; to the center of the nation's capital, where I Have a Dream echoed through a nation's conscience; to the Mason Temple in Memphis, where over ten thousand people heard Dr. King give his last, transcendent speech, I've Been to the Mountaintop, the night before his assassination. In twelve important introductions, some of the world's most renowned leaders and theologians - Andrew Young, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and Mrs. Rosa Parks...

Tenderheaded: A Comb-Bending Collection of Hair Stories


Juliette Harris - 2001
    Now, in this evocative and fascinating collection of essays, poems, excerpts, and more, Tenderheaded speaks to the personal, political, and cultural meaning of Black hair. From A’​Leila Perry Bundles, the great-granddaughter of hair care pioneer Madam C.J. Walker celebrating her ancestor’s legacy, to an art historian exploring the moving ways in which Black hair has been used to express Yoruba spirituality, to renowned activist Angela Davis questioning how her message of revolution got reduced to a hairstyle, Tenderheaded is as rich and diverse as the children of the African diaspora. With works from authors including Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, bell hooks, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and more, this “remarkable array of writings and images” (Publishers Weekly) will stay with you long after you turn the final page.

The Conspiracy to Destroy Black Women


Michael Porter - 2001
    This book presents a fresh perspective on the many facets of sexism experienced by African American women, addressing such issues as wage disparity, spousal abuse, and the rising rate of AIDS among black women. It also examines the roots of sexism among African American males, including the effect of gangster rap music on perceptions of black women, and offers strategies for change.

Fire in Beulah


Rilla Askew - 2001
    Their juxtaposing stories—and those of others close to them—unfold against a volatile backdrop of oil-boom opulence, fear, hatred, lynchings that climax in the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, when whites burned the city's properous black community. Askew's award-winning first novel, The Mercy Seat, was praised for its astute diepiction of family bonds and the beauty of American landscape. Now she explores the American race story with the same perception.

Man, God, and Civilization


John G. Jackson - 2001
    Drawing from sources of ancient, classic, and contemporary literature, the author shows how European culture was derived from the older civilizations of Africa and Asia.

The Fame of a Dead Man's Deeds: An Up-Close Portrait of White Nationalist William Pierce


Robert S. Griffin - 2001
    Griffin is about the life and ideas of the most influential and intriguing figure on the extreme right in America. William Pierce is best known as the author of the infamous underground novel, The Turner Diaries, which has sold over three hundred thousand copies and very likely inspired the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. An Anti-Defamation League report calls the organization Pierce heads, the National Alliance, the most dangerous hate group in America. Robert Griffin lived for a month on Pierce's heavily guarded property in rural West Virginia and came to know Pierce and those around him. Griffin conducted twenty hours of audio-taped interviews with Pierce, which he draws upon extensively in The Fame of a Dead Man's Deeds. The book recounts Pierce's personal story from childhood on, identifies the books and people and situations that have influenced him, spells out his perspective on the issues of our time, and describes his day-to-day routine. The title of the book is drawn from an old Norse poem which, in ways that become clear as the book progresses, captures the meaning Pierce ascribes to his own life. Pierce is put in a larger frame by accounts of the lives and ideas of other individuals on the far right, most of them unfamiliar to the general public, and references to related published materials, many of which are not readily available in this country. Readers of this book will come away with a clear understanding of white nationalism--another label, white racialism--and its critique of American life. General readers will find The Fame of a Dead Man's Deeds engaging and accessible, and even the most discerning readers will find this book timely, important, informative, and thought-provoking.

A Soldier's Story: Writings by a Revolutionary New Afrikan Anarchist


Kuwasi Balagoon - 2001
    Subsequently a member of the Black Liberation Army, he escaped prison twice prior to being arrested following a failed Brink's expropriation in 1981. He died in prison of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1986. Clocking in at 120 pages, this is the most extensive collection of his writings ever published. Includes essays by David Gilbert, Sundiata Acoli, Meg Starr and J Sakai.

Message to Aztlan: Selected Writing


Rodolpho Gonzales - 2001
    Eight pages of photographs accompany the text.

Beggars and Choosers


Rickie Solinger - 2001
    But after Roe v. Wade, their determination to develop a respectable, nonconfrontational movement encouraged many of them to use the word choice--an easier concept for people weary of various rights movements. At first the distinction in language didn't seem to make much difference-the law seemed to guarantee both. But in the years since, the change has become enormously important.In Beggars and Choosers, Solinger shows how historical distinctions between women of color and white women, between poor and middle-class women, were used in new ways during the era of "choice." Politicians and policy makers began to exclude certain women from the class of "deserving mothers" by using the language of choice to create new public policies concerning everything from Medicaid funding for abortions to family tax credits, infertility treatments, international adoption, teen pregnancy, and welfare. Solinger argues that the class-and-race-inflected guarantee of "choice" is a shaky foundation on which to build our notions of reproductive freedom. Her impassioned argument is for reproductive rights as human rights--as a basis for full citizenship status for women.

Harlem Renaissance


Nathan Irvin Huggins - 2001
    Now this classic history is being reissued, with a new foreword byacclaimed biographer Arnold Rampersad.As Rampersad notes, Harlem Renaissance remains an indispensable guide to the facts and features, the puzzles and mysteries, of one of the most provocative episodes in African-American and American history. Indeed, Huggins offers a brilliant account of the creative explosion in Harlem during thesepivotal years. Blending the fields of history, literature, music, psychology, and folklore, he illuminates the thought and writing of such key figures as Alain Locke, James Weldon Johnson, and W.E.B. DuBois and provides sharp-eyed analyses of the poetry of Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, and LangstonHughes. But the main objective for Huggins, throughout the book, is always to achieve a better understanding of America as a whole. As Huggins himself noted, he didn't want Harlem in the 1920s to be the focus of the book so much as a lens through which readers might see how this one moment in timesheds light on the American character and culture, not just in Harlem but across the nation. He strives throughout to link the work of poets and novelists not only to artists working in other genres and media but also to economic, historical, and cultural forces in the culture at large.This superb reissue of Harlem Renaissance brings to a new generation of readers one of the great works in African-American history and indeed a landmark work in the field of American Studies.

The Syringa Tree: The Play


Pamela Gien - 2001
    Book annotation not available for this title.

Voices in Our Blood: America's Best on the Civil Rights Movement


Jon Meacham - 2001
    It showcases what forty of the nation's best writers — including Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Alice Walker, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, and Richard Wright — had to say about the central domestic drama of the American Century.Editor Jon Meacham has chosen pieces by journalists, novelists, historians, and artists, bringing together a wide range of black and white perspectives and experiences. The result is an unprecedented and powerful portrait of the movement's spirit and struggle, told through voices that resonate with passion and strength.Maya Angelou takes us on a poignant journey back to her childhood in the Arkansas of the 1930s. On the front page of The New York Times, James Reston marks the movement's apex as he describes what it was like to watch Martin Luther King, Jr., deliver his heralded "I Have a Dream" speech in real time. Alice Walker takes up the movement's progress a decade later in her article "Choosing to Stay at Home: Ten Years After the March on Washington." And John Lewis chronicles the unimaginable courage of the ordinary African Americans who challenged the prevailing order, paid for it in blood and tears, and justly triumphed.Voices in Our Blood is a compelling look at the movement as it actually happened, from the days leading up to World War II to the anxieties and ambiguities of this new century. The story of race in America is a never-ending one, and Voices in Our Blood tells us how we got this far—and how far we still have to go to reach the Promised Land.From the Hardcover edition.

White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era


Eduardo Bonilla-Silva - 2001
    Assessing the major perspectives that social analysts have relied on to explain race and racial relations, Bonilla-Silva labels the post-civil rights ideology as color-blind racism: a system of social arrangements that maintain white privilege at all levels. His analysis of racial politics in the United States makes a compelling argument for a new civil rights movement rooted in the race-class needs of minority masses, multiracial in character - and focused on attaining substantive rather than formal equality.

Soul Talk: The New Spirituality of African American Women


Akasha Gloria Hull - 2001
    • Features illuminating insights from Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bambara, Lucille Clifton, Dolores Kendrick, Sonia Sanchez, Michele Gibbs, Geraldine McIntosh, Masani Alexis DeVeaux and Namonyah Soipan. • By a widely published scholar, poet, and activist who has been interviewed by the press, television, and National Public Radio's All Things Considered From the last part of the twentieth century through today, African-American women have experienced a revival of spirituality and creative force, fashioning a uniquely African-American way to connect with the divine. In Soul Talk, Akasha Gloria Hull examines this multifaceted spirituality that has both fostered personal healing and functioned as a formidable weapon against racism and social injustice. Through fascinating and heartfelt conversations with some of today's most creative and powerful women--women whose spirituality encompasses, among others, traditional Christianity, Tibetan Buddhism, Native American teachings, meditation, the I Ching, and African-derived ancestral reverence--the author explores how this new spiritual consciousness is manifested, how it affects the women who practice it, and how its effects can be carried to others. Using a unique and readable blend of interviews, storytelling, literary critique, and practical suggestions of ways readers can incorporate similar renewal into their daily lives, Soul Talk shows how personal and social change are possible through reconnection with the spirit.

Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad


Eber M. Pettit - 2001
    First published in 1879, Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad chronicles the perilous journeys and thrilling adventures of nearly two-dozen escaped slaves and the brave souls who helped them along the way. Compiled by a conductor on the Railroad, these sketches bring the horrors of slavery to vivid life and serve as an enduring testament to the power of the human spirit.   This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

Anti-Indianism in Modern America: A Voice from Tatekeya's Earth


Elizabeth Cook-Lynn - 2001
    . . don't we?In this powerful and essential work, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn confronts the politics and policies of genocide that continue to destroy the land, livelihood, and culture of Native Americans. Anti-Indianism in Modern America tells the other side of stories of historical massacres and modern-day hate crimes, events that are dismissed or glossed over by historians, journalists, and courts alike. Cook-Lynn exposes the colonialism that works both overtly and covertly to silence and diminish Native Americans, supported by a rhetoric of reconciliation, assimilation, and multiculturalism. Comparing anti-Indianism to anti-Semitism, she sets the American history of broken treaties, stolen lands, mass murder, cultural dispossession, and Indian hating in an international context of ethnic cleansing, "ecocide" (environmental destruction), and colonial oppression.Cook-Lynn also discusses the role Native American studies should take in reasserting tribal literatures, traditions, and politics and shows how the discipline has been sidelined by anthropology, sociology, postcolonial studies, and ethnic studies. Asserting the importance of a "native conscience"--a knowledge of the mythologies, mores, and experiences of tribal society--among American Indian writers, she calls for the expression in American Indian art and literature of a tribal consciousness that acts to assure a tribal-nation people of its future.Passionate, eloquent, and uncompromising, Anti-Indianism in Modern America concludes that there are no real solutions for Indians as long as they remain colonized peoples. Native Americans must be able to tell their own stories and, most important, regain their land, the source of religion, morality, rights, and nationhood. As long as public silence accompanies the outlaw maneuvers that undermine tribal autonomy, the racist strategies that affect all Americans will continue.It is difficult, Cook-Lynn concedes, to work toward the development of legal mechanisms against hate crimes, in Indian Country and elsewhere in the world. But it is not too late.

Troubling Intersections of Race and Sexuality: Queer Students of Color and Anti-Oppressive Education: Queer Students of Color and Anti-Oppressive Educ


Kevin K. Kumashiro - 2001
    Queer). They have provided us with rich resources for addressing racism and heterosexism; however, few have examined the unique experiences of students who are both queer and of color, and few have examined the heterosexist or white-centered nature of anti-racist or anti-heterosexist education (respectively). What of the students and educators who live and teach at the intersection of race and sexuality? By combining autobiographical accounts with qualitative and quantitative research on queer students of different racial backgrounds, these essays not only trouble the ways we think about the intersections of race and sexuality, they also offer theoretical insights and educational strategies to educators committed to bringing about change.

Free to Die for Their Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War II


Eric L. Muller - 2001
    Two years later, the government demanded even more, drafting them into the same military that had been guarding them as subversives. Most of these Americans complied, but Free to Die for Their Country is the first book to tell the powerful story of those who refused. Based on years of research and personal interviews, Eric L. Muller re-creates the emotions and events that followed the arrival of those draft notices, revealing a dark and complex chapter of America's history.

Burning All Illusions: Writings from The Nation on Race


Paula J. Giddings - 2001
    It features selections by such insurgent American writers as Martin Luther King, Jr., Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ishmael Reed, and Patricia J. Williams, representing a diverse range of political and personal points of view that illuminate The Nation's steadfast commitment to racial justice, each infused with the moral passion and urgency that the subject demands. The writers in this anthology have addressed these questions not to embitter but to provoke, educate, arouse, and inspire. James Baldwin once wrote that "the story of the Negro in America is the story of America.... It is not a very pretty story." Baldwin and others in this collection shed light on the ugliness of American racism to certify that it is intolerable, that America can—must—do better. "The Nation's editors ... have provided space for those persistent and ... often lonely voices inveighing against the evils of racial injustice."—Derrick Bell

A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba


Alejandro de la Fuente - 2001
    The nationalist coalition that fought for Cuba's freedom, a movement in which blacks and mulattoes were well represented, had envisioned an egalitarian and inclusive country--a nation for all, as Jose Marti described it. But did the Cuban republic, and later the Cuban revolution, live up to these expectations?Tracing the formation and reformulation of nationalist ideologies, government policies, and different forms of social and political mobilization in republican and postrevolutionary Cuba, Alejandro de la Fuente explores the opportunities and limitations that Afro-Cubans experienced in such areas as job access, education, and political representation. Challenging assumptions of both underlying racism and racial democracy, he contends that racism and antiracism coexisted within Cuban nationalism and, in turn, Cuban society. This coexistence has persisted to this day, despite significant efforts by the revolutionary government to improve the lot of the poor and build a nation that was truly for all.

American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm


Gail Lumet Buckley - 2001
    Through hundreds of original interviews with veterans of every war since World War I, historic accounts, and photographs, Gail Buckley brings these heroes and their struggles to life. We meet Henry O. Flipper, who withstood silent treatment from his classmates to become the first black graduate of West Point in 1877. And World War II infantry medic Bruce M. Wright, who crawled through a minefield to shield a fallen soldier during an attack. Finally, we meet a young soldier in Vietnam, Colin Powell, who rose through the ranks to become, during the Gulf War, the first black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Fourteen years in the making, American Patriots is a landmark chronicle of the brave men and women whose courage and determination changed the course of American history.

An American Health Dilemma: Race, Medicine, and Health Care in the United States 1900-2000


W. Michael Byrd - 2001
    Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Inside the Nation of Islam: A Historical and Personal Testimony by a Black Muslim


Vibert L. White Jr. - 2001
    DuBois Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts, AmherstThis detailed study of the internal workings of the Nation of Islam under the leadership of Louis Farrakhan examines the evolution of the organization since 1977 and its strange ideological menu of Black Nationalism, political-economic development, anti-Semitism, and conservative Republican ideals. Vibert White maintains that Farrakhan’s Nation has become a cult that utilizes black nationalistic and religious dogma and its ability to create political and racial controversy to exploit poor and working-class black Americans for the leaders’ economic and political gain. At the heart of Inside the Nation is White’s chronicle of his own sojourn during the 1980s and 1990s as a registered Muslim--from his days as a foot soldier in the Fruit of Islam, the Nation’s military organization, through his rise to the status of minister and advisor to the leadership.  Included are White’s dealings with such leaders as Louis Farrakhan, Akbar Muhammad, Khallid Muhammad, and Benjamin Chavis Muhammad and his involvement in such activities as the Million Man March. As one who traveled for the organization throughout Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the United States, White was able to observe the leadership and the operation of the group at close hand. He reveals for the first time the detailed structure of NOI’s business and religious operation. He explores and separates the Nation of Islam, the religious arm that is incorporated only in Chicago, from the Final Call, its business center operated only by the Farrakhan family.   As a professional historian, White was able to separate the passion of the group’s rhetoric from its real objectives, which centered on building a personal empire for Louis Farrakhan.Vibert L. White, Jr., is professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois, Springfield.  He has lectured extensively on the Nation of Islam and has published articles in the Journal of Caribbean Studies, Psychohistory Review, Journal of Illinois History, UCLA Black Law Journal, Chicago Defender, and Cincinnati Enquirer.

Double Crossings: Madness, Sexuality and Imperialism


Anne McClintock - 2001
    She reveals the connections among gender, race and madness created by the dominant power centers. In her examples, she is equally at home with the short story writer Bessie Head, the novelists Charlotte Bronte and Joseph Conrad and the psychoanalyst Carl Jung - as well as with the many commercial advertisements from the nineteenth century that conjoin whiteness and moral superiority. While fascinated by the ways in which the self, nation and race are constructed in discourse, McClintock also asks us to move beyond discourse studies to investigate the actual people who bore the marks of imperial legislation on their bodies.

The Problem of Race in the Twenty-First Century


Thomas C. Holt - 2001
    E. B. Du Bois wrote in 1903, and his words have proven sadly prophetic. As we enter the twenty-first century, the problem remains--and yet it, and the line that defines it, have shifted in subtle but significant ways. This brief book speaks powerfully to the question of how the circumstances of race and racism have changed in our time--and how these changes will affect our future.Foremost among the book's concerns are the contradictions and incoherence of a system that idealizes black celebrities in politics, popular culture, and sports even as it diminishes the average African-American citizen. The world of the assembly line, boxer Jack Johnson's career, and The Birth of a Nation come under Holt's scrutiny as he relates the malign progress of race and racism to the loss of industrial jobs and the rise of our modern consumer society. Understanding race as ideology, he describes the processes of consumerism and commodification that have transformed, but not necessarily improved, the place of black citizens in our society.As disturbing as it is enlightening, this timely work reveals the radical nature of change as it relates to race and its cultural phenomena. It offers conceptual tools and a new way to think and talk about racism as social reality.

Baseball History from Outside the Lines: A Reader


John E. Dreifort - 2001
    These well-written essays describe developments in the game's past, assess their impact, and explain how they reflect the period in which they occurred. The essays also explore baseball's influences outside the field of play as well as the effect of external factors on the game. The contributors discuss such key issues as demographics, communities, social mobility, race and ethnicity, baseball as a business, player-management relations, amateurs, women, and international play.

Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany


Andrew Zimmerman - 2001
    Nowhere was this more true than in nineteenth-century Germany. It was there, Andrew Zimmerman argues, that the battle lines of today's "culture wars" were first drawn when anthropology challenged humanism as a basis for human scientific knowledge.Drawing on sources ranging from scientific papers and government correspondence to photographs, pamphlets, and police reports of "freak shows," Zimmerman demonstrates how German imperialism opened the door to antihumanism. As Germans interacted more frequently with peoples and objects from far-flung cultures, they were forced to reevaluate not just those peoples, but also the construction of German identity itself. Anthropologists successfully argued that their discipline addressed these issues more productively—and more accessibly—than humanistic studies.Scholars of anthropology, European and intellectual history, museum studies, the history of science, popular culture, and colonial studies will welcome this book.

Dark Continent of Our Bodies: Black Feminism and the Politics of Respectability


E. Frances White - 2001
    From Charles Darwin and nineteenth-century racism to black nationalism and the Nation of Islam, from Baptist women's groups to James Baldwin; E. Frances White takes on one institution after another as she re-centers the role of black women in the United States' intellectual heritage. White presents identity politics as a complex activity, with entangled branches of race and gender, of invisibility and voyeurism, of defiance and passivity and conformism.White's powerful introduction draws on oral narratives from her own family history to illuminate the nature of narrative, both what is said and what is left unsaid. She then sets the historical stage with a helpful history of the inception and development of black feminism and a critique of major black feminist writings. In the three chapters that follow, she addresses the obstacles black feminism has already surmounted and must continue to traverse. Confronting what White calls "the politics of respectability," these chapters move the reader from simplistic views of race and gender in the nineteenth century through black nationalism and the radical movements of the sixties, and their relationship to feminist thought, to the linkages between race, gender, and sexuality in the works of such giants as Toni Morrison and James Baldwin. No one who finishes Dark Continent of Our Bodies will look at race and gender in the same way again.

Black Feminist Cultural Criticism


Jacqueline Bobo - 2001
    In this outsdanding collection, writers and scholars in literature, film, television, theatre, music, art, material culture, and other cultural forms explicate Black women's artistry within the context of an activist framework. The contributors are concerned with the politics of cultural production and the ways in which Black women have confronted institutional and social barriers.

Racial Conditioning of our Children: Ending Psychological Genocide in Schools


Nathan Rutstein - 2001
    Once the frog gets used to living in a box with a lid, it stays inside. Even when the lid is removed, the frog doesn't try to jump out again. When a baby is born, she lives free of boxes. By the time the child goes to school, she lives in a box with a lid on it. The box is called prejudice. Even when the lid is removed, the child has forgotten how to jump out to freedom. In "The Racial Conditioning of Our Children: Ending Psychological Genocide in Our Schools", Nathan Rutstein takes the lid off the box. He also shows educators and parents how to jump out, lift our children outside and throw the box awayl This is a book than can change the lives of our children, the atmosphere of our schools, the killing of tender spirits, the very hearts of caring educators and parents the world over.

Enemies Of The State: An Interview with Anti-imperialist Political Prisoners


David Gilbert - 2001
    An extended interview with the three political prisoners - a frank discussion of past political movements, victories and errors, and the current political climate for revolutionary struggle within the USA.