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This volume is the Tenth Anniversary Edition of a book that was honored in 1992 as an "Outstanding Book" by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in the United States. Reprinted many times since its first publication in 1991, Who Is Black? has become a staple in college classrooms throughout the United States, helping students understand this nation's history of miscegenation and the role that the "one-drop rule" has played in it. In this special anniversary edition, the author brings the story up to date in an epilogue. There he highlights some revealing responses to Who Is Black? and examines recent challenges to the one-drop rule, including the multiracial identity movement and a significant change in the census classification of racial and ethnic groups.
How does a person get defined as a black, both socially and legally, in the United States? This is the first comprehensive study of the so-called "one-drop rule" that defines as black any person having at least one black ancestor. Who is Black? provides both a history and an analysis of miscegenation in the United States, showing how a black person is defined, how this definition emerged from the slave South to become the nation's definition with the backing of state and federal courts, how the definition works in everyday life, and what the consequences of the definition are. According to the one-drop rule, anyone with at least one African black ancestor is black, even if the individual app...
Focusing primarily on Americans' views of blackness, Davis provides cross-cultural comparisons to demonstrate how other countries' interpretations of who is black vary. He details and closely analyzes the history of the "one-drop rule," which states that any person having at least one black ancestor is defined as black. He probes the social and legal consequences of this definition, and examines other ways of viewing who is black in the United States. Davis also includes an insightful look at black singer Lena Horne's struggles with her own racial identity. ISBN 0-271-00739-7: $25.00.
The amount of algebraic topology a graduate student specializing in topology must learn can be intimidating. Moreover, by their second year of graduate studies, students must make the transition from understanding simple proofs line-by-line to understanding the overall structure of proofs of difficult theorems. To help students make this transition, the material in this book is presented in an increasingly sophisticated manner. It is intended to bridge the gap between algebraic and geometric topology, both by providing the algebraic tools that a geometric topologist needs and by concentrating on those areas of algebraic topology that are geometrically motivated. Prerequisites for using this ...
This important study examines the market trade of medieval England by providing a wide-ranging critique of the moral and legal imperatives that underpinned retail trade. James Davis shows how market-goers were influenced not only by practical and economic considerations of price, quality, supply and demand, but also by the moral and cultural environment within which such deals were conducted. This book draws on a broad range of cross-disciplinary evidence, from the literary works of William Langland and the sermons of medieval preachers, to state, civic and guild laws, Davis scrutinises everyday market behaviour through case studies of small and large towns, using the evidence of manor and borough courts. From these varied sources, Davis teases out the complex relationship between morality, law and practice and demonstrates that even the influence of contemporary Christian ideology was not necessarily incompatible with efficient and profitable everyday commerce.
The trial of Angela Davis is remembered as one of America's most historic political trials, and no one can tell the story better than Davis herself. Opening with a letter from James Baldwin to Angela, and including contributions from numerous radicals and commentators such as Black Panthers George Jackson, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale and Erica Huggins, this book is not only an account of Davis's incarceration and the struggles surrounding it, but also perhaps the most comprehensive and thorough analysis of the prison system of the United States and the figure embodied in Davis's arrest and imprisonment-the political prisoner. Since the book was written, the carceral system in the US has grown from strength to strength, with more of its black population behind bars than ever before. The scathing analysis of the role of prison and the policing of black populations offered by Davis and her comrades in this astonishing volume remains as relevant today as the day it was published.
In Matthew 5:38-42, Jesus overrides the Old Testament teaching of 'an eye for eye and a tooth for a tooth' - the Lex Talionis law - and commands his disciples to turn the other cheek. James Davis asks how Jesus' teaching in this instance relates to the Old Testament talionic commands, how it relates to New Testament era Judaism and what Jesus required from his disciples and the church. Based on the Old Testament texts such as Leviticus 24, Exodus 22 and Deuteronomy 19, a strong case can be made that the Lex Talionis law was understood to have a literal application there are several texts that text of Leviticus 24 provides the strongest case that a literal and judicial application. However, b...
In this major new history of the making of the state, Davis tells a sweeping story of Illinois, from the Ice Age to the eve of the Civil War.
Providing a crucial record of the painter Noah Davis’s extraordinary oeuvre, this monograph tells the story of a brilliant artist and cultural force through the eyes of his friends and collaborators. Despite his exceedingly premature death at the age of 32, Davis’s paintings have deeply influenced the rise of figurative and representational painting in the twenty-first century. Davis’s emotionally charged work places him firmly in the canon of great American painting. Stirring, elusive, and attuned to the history of painting, his compositions infuse scenes from everyday life with a magical realist atmosphere and contain traces of his abiding interest in artists such as Marlene Dumas, K...
A chilling story of madness and murder, The Fog is a classic horror novel from James Herbert, author of The Rats. Life in tranquil Wiltshire is shattered by an earth-splitting disaster. Yet the true danger is just beginning. A malevolent fog ascends from the abyss, spreading through the air, destined to devastate the lives of all those it encounters . . . 'James Herbert comes at us with both hands' – Stephen King A classic of horror and supernatural thrillers, The Fog is an exploration of the immense destruction chemical weapons can cause – a stark reminder of humanity's frailty in face of uncontrollable forces.