You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The selected correspondence of the great American abolitionist and reformer dating from the immediate post-Civil War years This third volume of Frederick Douglass's Correspondence Series exhibits Douglass at the peak of his political influence. It chronicles his struggle to persuade the nation to fulfill its promises to the former slaves and all African Americans in the tempestuous years of Reconstruction. Douglass's career changed dramatically with the end of the Civil War and the long-sought after emancipation of American slaves; the subsequent transformation in his public activities is reflected in his surviving correspondence. In these letters, from 1866 to 1880, Douglass continued to correspond with leading names in antislavery and other reform movements on both sides of the Atlantic, and political figures began to make up an even larger share of his correspondents. The Douglass Papers staff located 817 letters for this time period and selected 242, or just under 30 percent, of them for publication. The remaining 575 letters are summarized in the volume's calendar.
Since 1966, Kwanzaa has been celebrated as a black holiday tradition – an annual recognition of cultural pride in the African American community. But how did this holiday originate, and what is its broader cultural significance? Kwanzaa: Black Power and the Making of the African-American Holiday Tradition explores the political beginning and later expansion of Kwanzaa, from its start as a Black Power holiday, to its current place as one of the most mainstream of the black holiday traditions. For those wanting to learn more about this alternative observance practiced by countless African Americans and how Kwanzaa fits into the larger black holiday tradition, Keith A. Mayes gives an accessible and definitive account of the movements and individuals that pushed to make this annual celebration a reality, and shows how African-Americans brought the black freedom struggle to the American calendar. Clear and thoughtful, Kwanzaa is the perfect introduction to what is now the quintessential African American holiday.
The sacred forest is a concrete place with a rich symbolic meaning. For the Laimbwe ethnic group of the North West Region of Cameroon, it is the centre of the social life, around which the people organize their matrilineal system. Henry Kam Kah describes the origin, development and the changes in matriliny as a gender construction from an insider point of view. Using written material and interviews with 150 persons, he shows how the system overcame all the various challenges since the 18th century, especially the rejection of matriliny by the colonial powers and Christian missionaries. With this study, Henry Kam Kah calls into question different prejudices of a Eurocentric gender research which believes in the dominance of patriarchal structures and the decline of other gender systems under the impact of global influence and pressure. Henry Kam Kah is Senior Lecturer at the Department of History of the University of Buea (Cameroon).
For black women in antebellum Charleston, freedom was not a static legal category but a fragile and contingent experience. In this deeply researched social history, Amrita Chakrabarti Myers analyzes the ways in which black women in Charleston acquired, defined, and defended their own vision of freedom. Drawing on legislative and judicial materials, probate data, tax lists, church records, family papers, and more, Myers creates detailed portraits of individual women while exploring how black female Charlestonians sought to create a fuller freedom by improving their financial, social, and legal standing. Examining both those who were officially manumitted and those who lived as free persons bu...
"Sinha not only has taken on this vast subject, but has greatly expanded its definition, both temporally and spatially. . . . She covers these difficult issues with remarkable skill and clarity." —S. C. Gwynne, New York Times Book Review We are told that the present moment bears a strong resemblance to Reconstruction, the era after the Civil War when the victorious North attempted to create an interracial democracy in the unrepentant South. That effort failed—and that failure serves as a warning today about violent backlash to the mere idea of black equality. In The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic, acclaimed historian Manisha Sinha expands our view beyond the accepted tempo...
Covers material related to the impeachments of Richard M. Nixon, Harry E. Clairborne, Alcee L. Hastings, and Walter L. Nixon, Jr.
The award-winning Revisioning American History series continues with this “groundbreaking new history of Black women in the United States” (Ibram X. Kendi)—the perfect companion to An Indigenous People’s History of the United States and An African American and Latinx History of the United States. An empowering and intersectional history that centers the stories of African American women across 400+ years, showing how they are—and have always been—instrumental in shaping our country. In centering Black women’s stories, two award-winning historians seek both to empower African American women and to show their allies that Black women’s unique ability to make their own communitie...
Examines the ways in which women across the globe, individually and collectively, are responding to new economic pressures and historical circumstances that are shaping their lives.