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February 21, 2014

Alex Lubin: Malcolm X’s Afro-Arab Political Imaginary

Malcolm’s transition would include rejecting the homegrown and Ahmadiyya-based, heterodox Islam practiced by the Nation of Islam and embracing the intellectual, moral, and political currents of orthodox Sunni Islam, African decolonization, and Arab nationalism. In this way, Malcolm’s political and moral commitments combined sometimes-contradictory political ideologies, including those of Muslim Brothers, secular pan-Africanists, and Nasserist pan-Arabists. Continue Reading Alex Lubin: Malcolm X’s Afro-Arab Political Imaginary

Categories Africa & African Diaspora/African American History/African American Studies/American History/Author blog entry/Global Studies/Guest Bloggers/History/Islamic Studies/Middle Eastern Studies/Religion
February 12, 2014

2014 African American History Month Reading List

UNC Press has a long history on publishing outstanding work of African American history. In honor of African American History Month, we’d like to highlight some of the amazing new work being done in the field. Here are books on African American history, culture, and modern society that UNC Press has published over the past year. Continue Reading 2014 African American History Month Reading List

Categories African American History/African American Studies/Current Events
February 5, 2014

E. Patrick Johnson’s ‘Sweet Tea’ on stage in Durham

Author, actor, and activist E. Patrick Johnson is bringing his one-man show Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South (based on his award-winning book of the same name) to Durham. Continue Reading E. Patrick Johnson’s ‘Sweet Tea’ on stage in Durham

Categories African American Studies/Events/Gay / Lesbian Studies/Gender Studies/UNC Press Authors/Video
January 29, 2014

Beth Tompkins Bates: Will a New Detroit Rise out of the Depths of Despair and Hopelessness?

Will a new Detroit rise out of the ashes of its current crisis? Some cannot imagine the city Forbes recently picked as the nation’s most miserable can reinvent itself. Others place their hopes in the rise of small businesses, including urban farms, manufacturing urban bicycles, hand-made jeans, and even luxury watches. Although new startups have, so far, created only a few hundred jobs, they represent economic diversification, which may prove significant for creating a viable new Detroit after depending on one industry to anchor the community’s welfare for a century.

This is not the first time Detroit has been reinvented. In the early twentieth century the City Council was reorganized and the judicial system was transformed when an autocratic structure that denied the majority access to due process was overturned. The issue of judicial reorganization emerged as the city’s industrial elite attempted to seize control of the courts. It was the last in a series of maneuvers created and led by Henry Ford to regulate and manage the lives of Detroit’s demographically diverse autoworkers. Continue Reading Beth Tompkins Bates: Will a New Detroit Rise out of the Depths of Despair and Hopelessness?

Categories African American History/African American Studies/Author blog entry/Current Events/Guest Bloggers/History
January 28, 2014

Video: Jonathan Holloway on Jim Crow Wisdom: Memory and Identity in Black America since 1940

A video of Jonathan Holloway’s talk about his book Jim Crow Wisdom, which was given at the Gilder Lehrman Institute in January 2014 in New York City. This video was made by the Gilder Lehrman Institute. Continue Reading Video: Jonathan Holloway on Jim Crow Wisdom: Memory and Identity in Black America since 1940

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American Studies/Interviews/Video
January 13, 2014

Video: Komozi Woodard on the Legacy of Amiri Baraka

Poet, playwright, and political activist Amiri Baraka passed away last Thursday at the age of 79. As one of the most significant black literary voices of his time, Baraka helped shape the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. His book Blues People: Negro Music in White America, is highly remembered as a classic chronicle on the role of jazz and the blues in American culture. Komozi Woodard, author of A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics, spoke on a panel about Amiri Baraka’s legacy on Democracy Now. Continue Reading Video: Komozi Woodard on the Legacy of Amiri Baraka

Categories African American History/African American Studies/Cultural Studies/Literature/Video
December 10, 2013

Video: Rebecca Sharpless on Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens

A video of Rebecca Sharpless’s talk on the history of African American women cooks in white households in the South, given at the 16th annual Southern Foodways Symposium, October 2013. Video produced by the Southern Foodways Alliance. Continue Reading Video: Rebecca Sharpless on Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Civil Rights/Cooking / Food/History/Southern Studies/Video/Women's Studies
December 9, 2013

Join Us as We Celebrate African American Music Trails of Eastern NC

Eastern North Carolina has produced some of the most transformative figures in the history of jazz, gospel and popular music. Among them are internationally renowned jazz pianists and composers Thelonious Monk from Rocky Mount and Billy Taylor from Greenville. African American Music Trails of Eastern North Carolina celebrates people, places and events in Eastern North Carolina, showcasing the music that… Continue Reading Join Us as We Celebrate African American Music Trails of Eastern NC

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Events/History/Local Indy Booksellers/Music/North Carolina/Travel
December 5, 2013

The Best of Enemies: Durham History from Page to Stage

Durham’s ManBites Dog Theater hosts “The Best of Enemies,” a play based on the book by Osha Gray Davidson about the unlikely friendship between a poor white member of the KKK and a poor black civil rights activist in 1960s North Carolina. Continue Reading The Best of Enemies: Durham History from Page to Stage

Categories African American Studies/American History/Civil Rights/Events/History/North Carolina/Sociology/Southern Studies/Theatre & Performing Arts/Video
December 4, 2013

Jaime Amanda Martinez: Why Exactly are We Commemorating “Confederate Pensioners of Color”?

Eager to discuss African American participation in the Civil War, we are nonetheless troubled by the aura of Confederate nostalgia surrounding the ceremony, as well as the news coverage that (at least in the Charlotte-area press) seemed intent on calling the ten men Confederate soldiers or veterans. Continue Reading Jaime Amanda Martinez: Why Exactly are We Commemorating “Confederate Pensioners of Color”?

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Author blog entry/Civil War/Guest Bloggers/History/North Carolina
November 22, 2013

50 Years Ago: Historians on the Legacies of JFK

Blair L. M. Kelley and Kathryn Cramer Brownell consider the assassination of JFK in the contexts of the civil rights movement, media spectacle, and shifting political structures. Continue Reading 50 Years Ago: Historians on the Legacies of JFK

Categories African American Studies/American History/American Studies/Civil Rights/History/Media Studies/Politics
November 7, 2013

Jonathan Scott Holloway: Sincere Fictions, Real Horrors, and the Tourism Trade

Goree Island is not the only site of slave trade remembrance on the African coast. Further south, in Ghana, there are two prominent warehouses, most often referred to as the slave castles at Cape Coast and Elmina, that are part of a thriving tourism trade catering mainly to black American travelers, many of whom are on roots journeys to “return home.” Just as Post reporter Fisher is right for asking critical questions related to Obama’s photo op at Goree Island, we can profit from asking challenging questions about a tourist trade that offers an uncomplicated reconciliation and welcome home at the same time that it traffics in horror. Continue Reading Jonathan Scott Holloway: Sincere Fictions, Real Horrors, and the Tourism Trade

Categories Africa & African Diaspora/African American History/African American Studies/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/History
October 29, 2013

Sarah Caroline Thuesen: The North Carolina NAACP: 80 Years at the Forefront of Struggles for Equality

It is fitting that in this 80th anniversary year of the 1933 rally the North Carolina NAACP is once again in the headlines, this time for its leading role in the recent Moral Monday protests at the state legislature. Continue Reading Sarah Caroline Thuesen: The North Carolina NAACP: 80 Years at the Forefront of Struggles for Equality

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Author blog entry/Civil Rights/Current Events/Education/Guest Bloggers/History/North Carolina/Politics
October 23, 2013

Jaime Amanda Martinez: Zeb Vance, Ken Cuccinelli, and Chris Christie: Governors as Bellwethers

The elections in Virginia and New Jersey have been touted as indicators of where the Republican Party, and indeed the entire country, will head in 2014 and beyond. The North Carolina governor’s race in 1864 served a similar role. Though often overshadowed in discussions of Civil War politics by the U.S. presidential election of 1864, the North Carolina race, which pitted incumbent Zebulon Baird Vance against newspaper editor William W. Holden, tells an equally important story about shifting political winds. Continue Reading Jaime Amanda Martinez: Zeb Vance, Ken Cuccinelli, and Chris Christie: Governors as Bellwethers

Categories African American Studies/American History/Author blog entry/Civil War/Current Events/Guest Bloggers/History/North Carolina/Politics
October 16, 2013

Jonathan Scott Holloway: Where Does a Historian Find the Truth?

I still rely on and value deeply these brick-and-mortar archives, but my research in Jim Crow Wisdom has taught me to value the archive of the imagination as well. Like any archive, the imagination is a place that is fundamentally about assemblage: a mixture of our best efforts to remember the past accurately, the eroding effects of time, and a desire for narrative clarity and poignancy. Relying on the imagination for its archival properties is central to this book and helps us develop a richer sense of memory and of history. Continue Reading Jonathan Scott Holloway: Where Does a Historian Find the Truth?

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/American Studies/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/History
September 18, 2013

Tracy K’Meyer: The Ongoing Struggle for Civil Rights in Schools

The modern civil rights movement fought for racial equality and to create an interracial “beloved community.” People in the movement did not make a distinction between action in the schools, the voting booth, or the streets toward those goals. Education was another arena for fighting racism and securing equal resources and opportunity. Seeing school desegregation as an integral part of the civil rights movement reminds us that an equal education is a basic human right that has been fought for but not yet achieved, and that overcoming racism in the classroom as in the community remains a moral imperative. For many local people, like Suzy Post, in Louisville and Jefferson County, the civil rights movement continues because the struggle to protect desegregation and through it achieve educational equity and better human understanding has not yet been won. Continue Reading Tracy K’Meyer: The Ongoing Struggle for Civil Rights in Schools

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Author blog entry/Civil Rights/Education/Guest Bloggers/History
September 17, 2013

Twelve Years a Slave: The Narrative Behind the Film

The film tells the story of Solomon Northrup (Ejiofor), a free man and fiddle-player from New York who was drugged, kidnapped, and sold into slavery in Louisiana. It explores Northrup’s efforts to retain his dignity in the face of inhumanity as he longs for the family he was taken from and hopes for freedom throughout time in the employ of three different masters, ranging from a kindly preacher (Benedict Cumberbatch) to a cruel plantation owner (Fassbender). Remarkably, and horrifically, the story is a true one. Continue Reading Twelve Years a Slave: The Narrative Behind the Film

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Biography / Autobiography/Film/History/Literature/Southern Studies
September 4, 2013

Jonathan Scott Holloway: Whose Dream? Whose History?

Even though the museum recognizes Smith’s protest, if only barely, her protest tells us something valuable about the production of history and the sanctification of certain experiences over others. Here, a single person with a particular set of memories and a determination to remember a figure of such importance as King in a specific way finds herself facing an institution with a public commitment to remembrance that has become her own horror. Continue Reading Jonathan Scott Holloway: Whose Dream? Whose History?

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/American Studies/Author blog entry/Civil Rights/Guest Bloggers/History