You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The little-known history of black soldiers and defense workers in the First World War, and what happened afterward: “Highly recommended.” —Choice In one of the few book-length treatments of the subject, historian Nina Mjagkij conveys the full range of the African American experience during the “Great War.” Prior to World War I, most African Americans did not challenge the racial status quo. But nearly 370,000 black soldiers served in the military during the war, and some 400,000 black civilians migrated from the rural South to the urban North for defense jobs. Following the war, emboldened by their military service and their support of the war on the home front, African Americans w...
Rooted in extensive archival research and personal interviews, A Queer Capital is the first history of LGBT life in the nation’s capital. Revealing a vibrant past that dates back more than 125 years, the book explores how lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals established spaces of their own before and after World War II, survived some of the harshest anti-gay campaigns in the U.S., and organized to demand equal treatment. Telling the stories of black and white gay communities and individuals, Genny Beemyn shows how race, gender, and class shaped the construction of gay social worlds in a racially segregated city. From the turn of the twentieth century through the 1980s, Beemyn explores the experiences of gay people in Washington, showing how they created their own communities, fought for their rights, and, in the process, helped to change the country. Combining rich personal stories with keen historical analysis, A Queer Capital provides insights into LGBT life, the history of Washington, D.C., and African American life and culture in the twentieth century.
Soon to be a Netflix series starring Octavia Spencer, On Her Own Ground is the first full-scale biography of “one of the great success stories of American history” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), Madam C.J. Walker—the legendary African American entrepreneur and philanthropist—by her great-great-granddaughter, A’Lelia Bundles. The daughter of formerly enslaved parents, Sarah Breedlove—who would become known as Madam C. J. Walker—was orphaned at seven, married at fourteen, and widowed at twenty. She spent the better part of the next two decades laboring as a washerwoman for $1.50 a week. Then—with the discovery of a revolutionary hair care formula for black women—everything changed. By her death in 1919, Walker managed to overcome astonishing odds: building a storied beauty empire from the ground up, amassing wealth unprecedented among black women, and devoting her life to philanthropy and social activism. Along the way, she formed friendships with great early-twentieth-century political figures such as Ida B. Wells, Mary McLeod Bethune, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Booker T. Washington.
With information on over 500 organizations, their founders and membership, this unique encyclopedia is an invaluable resource on the history of African-American activism. Entries on both historical and contemporary organizations include: * African Aid Society * African-Americans forHumanism * Black Academy of Arts and Letters * BlackWomen's Liberation Committee * Minority Women in Science* National Association of Black Geologists andGeophysicists * National Dental Association * NationalMedical Association * Negro Railway Labor ExecutivesCommittee * Pennsylvania Freedmen's Relief Association *Women's Missionary Society, African Methodist EpiscopalChurch * and many more.
The Rise and Fall of Modern Black Leadership is designed to show how black leaders responded to the omnipresent racism of twentieth century America. Although the efforts of black leadership eventually succeeded in eradicating de jure discrimination and brought the nation closer to realizing the idealized tenets of American democracy, their achievements occurred at a cost to their influence as leaders of the entire race. Synopses appear on the lives of the influential men and women who comprised the leadership cadre so that readers can understand the motives underlying leadership goals, and comprehend why the lofty objectives of the Civil Rights Movement remain unfulfilled.
"Even before wartime incarceration, Japanese Americans largely lived in separate cultural communities from their West Coast neighbors. The first-generation American children, the Nisei, were American citizens, spoke English, and were integrated in public schools, yet were also socially isolated in many ways from their peers and subject to racism. Their daughters especially found rapport in a flourishing network of ethnocultural youth organizations. Until now, these groups have remained hidden from the historical record, both because they were girls' groups and because evidence of them was considered largely ephemeral. In her second book, Valerie Matsumoto has recreated this hidden world of f...
With significant lessons from the history and evolution of HBCUs, a guide to the strategic conversations all higher education institutions must have to prepare students for a complex world. In Hope and Healing, former Morehouse College president John Silvanus Wilson, Jr. looks to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to examine what it takes not only to survive as a relevant institution of higher education, but to thrive. Wilson draws on pivotal moments in the timelines of HBCUs and the work of past visionaries such as W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington to yield important perspectives on the future of higher education and the role of HBCUs within it. Wilson documents the s...
Part I examines the ethos of self-making and boosterism that has defined the city since its settlement in the 1830s, and argues that these energies formed the context for hinterland migration during the nineteenth century and beyond. Part 2 highlights the emotional and cultural foraces that continued to tie many migrants to the hinterland even after their arrival in Chicago. Part 3 looks at Chicago's ethnic communities through the eyes of hinterland migrants, underscoring the cultural authority of these native-born newcomers in mediating the assimilation of foreign immigrants. Chapter 6 focuses on the work of Jane Addams and Chapter 7 considers how Chicago's multiethnic community is portrayed in Edith Wyatt's and Elia Peattie's fiction and in Carl Sandburg's poetry.
Acknowledgments1. The YMCA, Gender, Class, and Social Change, 1877-1920: An Introduction2. "A Zeal for Religious Work and an Open Door of Opportunity": YMCA Secretaries and Nineteenth-Century Ideals of Manhood3. "We Have Only to Step in and Occupy the Land": The YMCA, Labor Conflict, and the Rise of Welfare Capitalism4. "To Aid in the Upbuilding of Character": The YMCA, Welfare Capitalism, and a Language of Manhood5. "A Most Effective Ally in the Work of Labor Advancement": Workingmen and the YMCA6. "None of Your Milk-and-Water Sops, Flabby-Handed and Mealy-Mouthed, for Dealing with Such Men": The YMCA, the Secretaryship, and Professionalization7. Personality, Character, and Self-Expression: The YMCA and a Language of Manhood and ClassConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
Fusing riveting testimony from African American veterans with the most incisive research of current military scholars, Black Veterans, Politics, and Civil Rights in 20th-Century America: Closing Ranks explores the intersecting characteristics of civil rights struggle and political activism that was reflected in the lives of ex-GIs throughout Twentieth Century American history. The volume examines black veterans’ social and political activities throughout the 20th Century, from the World Wars, through the Korean and Vietnam War, and ends with the Persian Gulf War. Presenting the full flesh and blood experiences of black veterans who came from backgrounds and from all walks of life, each ess...