Tag: florida

New and Recently Released UNC Press Audiobooks

We are pleased to announce the availability of the following UNC Press titles in audiobook format (sample audio excerpts are available via the links below): Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South by Stephanie M. H. Camp, published by Tantor Media “Wonderfully evocative. . . . A provocative book full of astonishing, sometimes unforgettable moments.”—Virginia… Continue Reading New and Recently Released UNC Press Audiobooks

Florida’s Environmental Issues and the Price of Unchecked Development

Happy Earth Week and #EHW2021! Guest blog post by Jason Vuic, author of The Swamp Peddlers: How Lot Sellers, Land Scammers, and Retirees Built Modern Florida and Transformed the American Dream (available now for preorder, and on sale June 2021) In early April 2021, to honor the U.S. Senate’s “Small Business of the Week,” Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) was in Tampa… Continue Reading Florida’s Environmental Issues and the Price of Unchecked Development

J. Michael Butler: Wendel Blackwell, Philando Castile, and the Continuing Black American Freedom Struggle

In 1969 the Pensacola NAACP’s Youth Council listed “police brutality” as one of their two primary concerns for the coming decade, and numerous incidents supported their claim into the 1970s. Continue Reading J. Michael Butler: Wendel Blackwell, Philando Castile, and the Continuing Black American Freedom Struggle

J. Michael Butler: Confederate Symbolism and School Integration

In January 1973, an African American EHS student and her mother asked for a permanent injunction against the school’s images. They did not file a new lawsuit; instead, they appealed under the Augustus v. Escambia School Board integration order on the basis that the symbols represented “symbolic resistance” to a court-ordered unitary school system. Winston Arnow, a federal district court judge, agreed. In a fourteen-page opinion, he called the Confederate icons “racially irritating,” declared they “generated a feeling of inequality and inferiority among black students,” and proclaimed them “a source of racial violence” at EHS. Because the county school board failed to resolve the conflict, Arnow reasoned, it violated earlier school desegregation mandates and he issued a permanent injunction against the “Rebels” nickname and all related imagery. His decision was not without precedent. Continue Reading J. Michael Butler: Confederate Symbolism and School Integration

Jay Barnes: Hurricanes and Politics

Much of the news coverage for Issac has focused on Tampa, host city for the Republican National Convention set to get underway on Monday. There’s good reason to focus attention on Tampa too, because along with the entire Tampa Bay area, it is the U.S. city most vulnerable to a major hurricane. Continue Reading Jay Barnes: Hurricanes and Politics