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Urban Renewal and the End of Black Culture in Charlottesville, Virginia
From the 1920s through the 1950s, the center of black social and business life in Charlottesville, Virginia, was the area known as Vinegar Hill. But in 1960, noting the prevalence of aging frame houses and “substandard” conditions such as outdoor toilets, voters decided that Vinegar Hill would be redeveloped. Charlottesville’s black residents lost a cultural center, largely because they were deprived of a voice in government. Vinegar Hill’s displaced residents discuss the loss of homes and businesses and the impact of the project on black life in Charlottesville. The interviews raise questions about motivations behind urban renewal. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
The Dorothy West Martha's Vineyard
This book is a compilation of selected stories, essays, and reminiscences that Dorothy West wrote for the Vineyard Gazette from the 1960s to the early 1990s. In these entries, West retraces life on the island as she experienced it from 1908, when she was an infant, to 1993 when she wrote her final column. Born in 1907 in Boston, Dorothy West went on to develop into a prize-winning author by the time she was in her teens. The 1926 award she received in New York, and the lure of the city itself, inspired West to leave Boston and join what was then a fledgling literary movement that would evolve into the Harlem Renaissance. She circulated among what in essence was the black literary "royalty" o...
Howard Frank Mosher and the Classics
Howard Frank Mosher has spent the greater part of his career depicting a relatively isolated section of Vermont known as the Northeast Kingdom. Yet, even as he writes about that particular area in the Green Mountain State, he is investigating age-old themes from among the best English and American literary works. His first novel, Disappearances (1977), signaled the arrival of a master craftsman harkening us back to Melville's Billy Budd and Moby-Dick, in terms of humankind's struggle against an ever present evil. A full 33 years after the publication of his first novel, the Vermont author, in Walking to Gatlinburg (2010), examined the polarity between cowardice and honor. In the intervening years, between Disappearances and Gatlinburg, Mosher explored crucial matters such as the disappearing wilderness, industrialization, black male/white female encounters, the necessity of humor, the quest for salvation, and the immortality of romantic love, all issues that he delved into as he staked out a unique terrain within the pantheon of Bunyan, Shakespeare, Dreiser, Twain, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Harper Lee, and others.
Rebuilding Shattered Worlds
Rebuilding Shattered Worlds explores the ways a demolished neighborhood in Easton, Pennsylvania, still resonates in the imaginations of displaced residents. Drawing on six years of ethnographic research, the authors highlight the intersecting languages of blight, race, and place as elderly interlocutors attempt to make sense of the world they lost when urban renewal initiatives razed "Syrian Town"--a densely packed neighborhood of Lebanese American, Italian American, and African American residents. This ethnography of remembering shows how former residents engage collective memory-making through their shared place, language, and class position within the larger cityscape. Demonstrating the creative power of linguistic resources, material traces, and absent spaces, Rebuilding Shattered Worlds brings together insights from linguistic anthropology and material studies, foregrounding the role language plays in signaling "pastness."
Black Winning Jockeys in the Kentucky Derby
Oliver Lewis was champion jockey of the Kentucky Derby in 1875 with a winning race time of two minutes and 37 seconds. Jockey Willie Simms won in 1896, bringing his horse in at two minutes and seven seconds. James Winkfield was the winning jockey in both 1901 and 1902 with winning race times of two minutes and seven seconds and two minutes and eight seconds, respectively. Each of these men possessed the skill and power necessary to spur a horse to glorious victory. All are members of the small, select group of Derby-winning jockeys who were African Americans. The stakes were high: Black jockeys who won a race in the late 1700s and 1800s sometimes won freedom from slavery as well. This work examines the presence of black jockeys in the Kentucky Derby, from the first instance of slaves working as stable hands and tending their masters’ horses to the first black jockey to win the prestigious Kentucky Derby in 1875 and the continued participation of black jockeys in the Kentucky Derby. Black owners and trainers in the Kentucky Derby are also discussed. Three appendices list black winning jockeys, black trainers and black owners of Kentucky Derby horses.
Baseball/Literature/Culture
The Indiana State University Conference on Baseball in Literature and American Culture has consistently produced a strong body of scholarship since its inception in 1995. Eighteen essays presented at the 2004 and 2005 ISU conferences are published in this work. In "Baseball is a Place: Reflections On Building a Baseball Novel," novelist Mick Cochrane discusses writing a baseball novel, using his 2002 novel Sport to exemplify the process. Tracy Collins, in "Women, American Society, and Baseball Literature in the High Cannon," examines the ways in which canonical baseball novels are obliged to exclude women. In "'A Grim Harvest': Baseball's Changing of the Guard, 1931," Steve Gietschier shows ...
La Calle
"Otero is re-voicing the silenced and examining the role of power and voice in creating an imagined history. She offers a rich understanding of how resistance exists in everyday practices by individuals and how such resistance continues in the face of powerful-and disempowering---institutional and social relations." Gabriela F. Arredondo, author of Mexican Chicago: Race, Identity and Nation, 1916-1939 "Based on meticulous research and oral histories, Lydia Otero's La Calle documents the Tucson Mexican American community's tragic experience with urban renewal during the 1960s. It is an indictment of the politics, greed, and racism that led to the destruction of the Mexican American economic, ...
The Conspiracy of the Good
The Conspiracy of the Good addresses nagging questions that are part of the public debate over schooling. Why do our public schools, especially those in poor and working-class communities of color, fail to live up to the promises of the American dream? Why do reforms, those standard items in political campaigns, fail to create meaningful change? This book argues that «progressive», well-meaning, good-hearted men and women, who often advocate «good intentions» in the name of «helping those in need», have ended up doing more harm than good. The Conspiracy of the Good explores how these «good intentions» go awry. Michael E. James argues that the core value of the American experience is conflict - not consensus - despite what mainstream historians have espoused over the last few decades.
Blacks in Niagara Falls
Blacks in Niagara Falls narrates and analyzes the history of Black Niagarans from the days of the Underground Railroad to the Age of Urban Renewal. Michael B. Boston details how Black Niagarans found themselves on the margins of society from the earliest days to how they came together as a community to proactively fight and struggle to obtain an equal share of society's opportunities. Boston explores how Blacks came to Niagara Falls in increasing numbers usually in search of economic opportunities, later establishing essential institutions, such as churches and community centers, which manifested and reinforced their values, and interacted with the broader community, seeking an equitable share of other society opportunities. This singular examination of a small city significantly contributes to Urban History and African American Studies scholarly research, which generally focuses on large cities. Combining primary source data with extensive interviews gathered over an eighteen-year period in which the author immersed himself in the Niagara community, Blacks in Niagara Falls offers an insightful study of how one small city community grew over its unique history.
Razing Africville
In the 1960s, the city of Halifax razed the black community of Africville under a program of urban renewal and 'slum clearance.' The city defended its actions by citing the deplorable living conditions in Africville, ignoring its own role in the creation of these conditions through years of neglect and the refusal of essential services. In the 1980s, the city created a park on Africville's former site, which has been a place of protest and commemoration for black citizens since its opening. As yet, however, the city has not issued a formal apology to Africville residents and has paid no further compensation. Razing Africville examines this history as the prolonged eviction of a community fro...
