William A. Link: Atlanta Rising After Sherman
Atlanta’s white boosters embraced a new narrative about the city’s past which wiped clean the slaveholding past and adopted a message of openness to investment by northern capitalists
Archive of posts filed under the Guest Bloggers category.
Michael T. Bernath: Confederate Teachers United in a War of Their Own
It was 150 years ago, on April 28, 1863 in Columbia, South Carolina, that nearly seventy delegates from six Confederate states met to form the South’s first and only national teachers’ organization, The Educational Association of the Confederate States of America.
Eric S. Yellin: Woodrow Wilson’s Inauguration a Disheartening Anniversary
It was not just careers that came to an end in Woodrow Wilson’s Washington. African Americans also lost a claim to their legitimacy as American citizens and participants in the national state. Marked as corrupt and untrustworthy, black Americans have struggled ever since to clear their names as honest and trust-worthy citizens, a struggle that continues into our own time.
Randal Maurice Jelks: Remembering “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”
King’s letter scribbled on the edges of a newspaper is a democratic critique and draws attention to public aspect of faith traditions. In a democracy, faiths must always be self-critical and publicly criticized.
David W. Stowe: A Conversation about the Jesus Movement with Malcolm Magee
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKs3aBuFhVQ”>Chuck
The Jesus music had a visceral effect on my peers and me. Music was all around us and a constant emotional and intellectual force in the 1970s. It was very much the vehicle for communicating this faith. Music identified us. It captured the emotion that was largely absent in the churches that emerged from the 1950s. The music communicated both an identity and a mission. We all felt like we were going to somehow change the world. Music, however could be exploited.
Gordon K. Mantler: Remembering that Other March on Washington
Only during the Poor People’s Campaign did activists of so many different backgrounds—from veterans of the labor and southern civil rights movements to Chicano, American Indian, antiwar, and welfare rights activists—attempt to construct a physical and spiritual community that addressed poverty and broader issues of social justice for longer than a one-day rally.
Howard Risatti: Environmentalism Reviving Tradition in Art
I want to stress that what artists like M. C. Richards and other were doing by raising our sensitivity to ecological issues was indeed very important. It was an attempt to help us find the will to actually do something.
David W. Stowe: From the Book to the Breakfast Table
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFZUDQ85bFU”
I had a new image of the Times Op-Ed department as a kind of graduate seminar on steroids, not just fact-checking and copy-editing but asking the rigorous questions.
Rod Andrew Jr.: When South Carolina Had Two Governors
Hampton sought to overthrow the corrupt Republican regime in Columbia and promised to protect black civil rights; Chamberlain had tried to bring reform and publicly dismissed Hampton’s promises to black voters.
Anastasia C. Curwood: National Black Marriage Day and the New Negro Era’s Legacy
Politically active and largely urban, the so-called New Negroes of the 1910s through 1930s confronted dilemmas of the modern age when it came to marriage. Evolving ideas about sexuality and gender roles made ideal marriages a moving target. The old politics of respectability confronted a new frankness in matters of sexual expression and new claims of women on personal and economic autonomy.
Alexandra Harmon: Public Reaction to Indians’ Pursuit of Wealth
That reaction to Indians’ pursuit of wealth has a lot to teach us, not only about common conceptions of Indians but also about dilemmas inherent in Indian/non-Indian relations and in America’s economy because of that economy’s foundation in lands and resources appropriated from indigenous peoples.
Gordon K. Mantler: For Latinos, It’s Not All about Immigration
The argument that an endorsement of immigration reform by the GOP—or, for that matter, by many Democrats—will miraculously translate into more votes by Latinos reflects a simplistic understanding of their experience and history.
Howard Risatti: Monetary Motivations in Art and Perceptions of Craft
Evidently money and marketing, which support these biennials, are a big part of this change. They have transformed art into a high-profile activity in which the elite now collect contemporary art instead of old masters as they did at the beginning of the last century.
Miriam Rubin: Talking Tomatoes
My summer begins when I bite into a perfect Brandywine or Cherokee Purple—whichever ripens first. The flavor is part of my taste memory, yet still—each season—the experience is fresh and new. Tomatoes are the reason I plant my garden.
Lisa Materson: African American Women, the Great Migration, and the Obama Presidency
The political influence of black Chicago emerged decades before Obama announced his first candidacy for president, during the years of the Great Migration when tens of thousands of southern blacks relocated to northern cities.
