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June 19, 2015

Steve Estes: Faith in Charleston

Charleston is nicknamed the “Holy City,” because of the many steeples that punctuate the graceful poetry of its skyline. There are more than 900 houses of worship in the Low Country, representing all of the world’s major faiths, and more than a few minor ones. Some of the congregations were founded in the 1600s, others in the 2010s. Some meet in grand buildings on the National Historic Registry, others in humble strip mall storefronts. Regardless of how old they are or where they meet, Charleston’s congregations are driven by faith. That faith was sorely tested this week with the racially motivated murders of worshipers in Emanuel AME church. How could a city so steeped in faith witness a scene of such unimaginable horror in one of its holy places? Continue Reading Steve Estes: Faith in Charleston

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Author blog entry/Civil Rights/Current Events/Guest Bloggers/History/Religion
June 8, 2015

Interview: Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett on Harry Golden, ‘Carolina Israelite’

A favorite trick of Golden’s was to add a well-known author, philanthropist, politician, or actor to the circulation list of the Carolina Israelite without the celebrity’s knowledge, then mention the famous person in print as one of the newspaper’s loyal subscribers. It’s amazing how often this led to real friendship! The famous and powerful liked Golden for the same reasons so many regular folks did—his straight talk, his encyclopedic knowledge on politics and history, and his refreshingly tart humor. Continue Reading Interview: Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett on Harry Golden, ‘Carolina Israelite’

Categories Biography / Autobiography/Civil Rights/History/Interviews/Jewish Studies/North Carolina/Politics/Southern Studies
June 2, 2015

Steve Estes: Cameras and Cops

By the 1980s, the Charleston police department and departments around the country were deployed to fight two “wars” on the home front. They fought a war on crime, of course, but also on drugs. Thinking about policing as war and civilians as the enemy led to a crackdown on impoverished urban minority communities the likes of which the country had never seen before. Continue Reading Steve Estes: Cameras and Cops

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Author blog entry/Civil Rights/Current Events/Guest Bloggers/History
January 29, 2015

Marcie Cohen Ferris: Civil Rights, Lunch Counters, and North Carolina Basketball

In 1966, Charles “Charlie” Scott (b. 1948 in NYC) became the first African American student to attend the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill on an athletic scholarship. He decided to attend UNC rather than basketball powerhouse Davidson College after a wrenching moment at a small café in Davidson, North Carolina. Former Davidson College basketball star Terry Holland, who both played and later served as assistant coach under the college’s legendary coach Lefty Driesell, and UNC law professor and civil rights attorney Daniel H. Pollitt, who was a passionate advocate for social justice in Chapel Hill during the 1950s and 1960s, vividly recall Scott’s historic decision. Pollitt worked with Dean Smith, UNC’s beloved basketball coach (1961-1997) and Robert Seymour, progressive minister at the Olin T. Binkley Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, to recruit Charlie Scott and to help integrate the university community. Continue Reading Marcie Cohen Ferris: Civil Rights, Lunch Counters, and North Carolina Basketball

Categories African American History/Author blog entry/Civil Rights/Cooking / Food/Guest Bloggers/History/North Carolina/Sports
May 27, 2014

Sonia Song-Ha Lee: Black-Puerto Rican Coalitions in the Civil Rights Movement

Puerto Ricans played a pivotal role in the building of the civil rights movement in New York City—one of the less-heralded but still vital sites of movement. Continue Reading Sonia Song-Ha Lee: Black-Puerto Rican Coalitions in the Civil Rights Movement

Categories African American History/Author blog entry/Civil Rights/Guest Bloggers/Latino Studies
May 20, 2014

Anne Balay: For Transgender Steelworkers, Invisibility Isn’t an Option

Transgender steelworkers are the most vulnerable people I interviewed. The option of invisibility isn’t available to those who transition at work. And every change that shows, every single solitary detail, becomes a focus of teasing, harassment, violence, and abuse. Continue Reading Anne Balay: For Transgender Steelworkers, Invisibility Isn’t an Option

Categories Author blog entry/Civil Rights/Gay / Lesbian Studies/Gender Studies/Guest Bloggers/Labor Studies/Women's Studies
April 7, 2014

Anne Balay: Queer Steelworkers and Labor Unions

I asked him to recall all the people he has worked with—all his union brothers and sisters, down through the years—and count the gay ones. Almost surprised, he said there were none. Of course, he knew as well as I do that there have been many, but that they did not identify themselves as such. My task is then to convince him that their silence was not simply a choice, but rather that it was made in fear, and comes with crippling consequences. Continue Reading Anne Balay: Queer Steelworkers and Labor Unions

Categories American Studies/Author blog entry/Civil Rights/Gay / Lesbian Studies/Gender Studies/Guest Bloggers/Labor Studies/Women's Studies
March 31, 2014

Interview: Blain Roberts on the Intersection of Beauty and Race in the South

The image of the beautiful southern belle/lady was, by definition, racially exclusive, and many black women would have keenly felt its discriminatory power. There were occasions, however, when individuals and institutions attempted to claim the image for black women, to challenge its underlying racial assumptions and reframe its meaning. An interesting example is a photo spread that ran in Ebony magazine in 1971 entitled “Belles of the South” that featured young women from southern historically black colleges. The magazine said very explicitly that it wanted to prove that not all southern beauties were white—that black women were belles of the South, too. Continue Reading Interview: Blain Roberts on the Intersection of Beauty and Race in the South

Categories African American History/American History/Civil Rights/Southern Studies/Women's Studies
March 12, 2014

Anne Balay: The Consequences of Marriage Inequality

For my narrators—the forty transgender, lesbian, and gay steelworkers I interviewed—marriage is complicated. Insurance and survival benefits are not just theoretical issues for them. Continue Reading Anne Balay: The Consequences of Marriage Inequality

Categories Author blog entry/Civil Rights/Gay / Lesbian Studies/Gender Studies/Guest Bloggers/Women's Studies
February 6, 2014

Anne Balay: As GLBT freedoms expand, who benefits–and who doesn’t

Queer rights becomes the paradigmatic symbol of the west – in Russia, gay liberation had gained some momentum until Putin linked gay rights with Western values, which then led to the systematic, legal oppression of gays in Russia today. The government is literally going into homes of gay people and taking their children away. And these Russian gays can’t hide, because during the period of comparative freedom, they had come out, and now have public personas. There’s no such thing as going back into the closet – once you’re out, that’s that. Their little window of freedom now targets them for state-sponsored abuse as the freedom and progress queers experience in the USA is used to punish queers globally. Continue Reading Anne Balay: As GLBT freedoms expand, who benefits–and who doesn’t

Categories Author blog entry/Civil Rights/Gay / Lesbian Studies/Gender Studies/Guest Bloggers/Labor Studies/Women's Studies
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 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
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
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
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 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
April 24, 2013

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. Continue Reading Eric S. Yellin: Woodrow Wilson’s Inauguration a Disheartening Anniversary

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American Studies/Author blog entry/Civil Rights/Guest Bloggers/History/Politics
April 18, 2013

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. Continue Reading Randal Maurice Jelks: Remembering “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/American Studies/Author blog entry/Civil Rights/Guest Bloggers/History
April 4, 2013

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. Continue Reading Gordon K. Mantler: Remembering that Other March on Washington

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