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March 22, 2022

A Photobiography of A Time and Place

The following is an excerpt from O.N. Pruitt’s Possum Town: Photographing Trouble and Resilience in the American South, written by professor Berkley Hudson. Photographer O. N. Pruitt (1891–1967) was for some forty years the de facto documentarian of Lowndes County, Mississippi, and its county seat, Columbus–known to locals as “Possum Town.” His body of work recalls many FSA photographers, but… Continue Reading A Photobiography of A Time and Place

Categories American Studies/Excerpts/History/Photography/Southern
March 17, 2022

Racial Capitalism: The Nonobjective Character of Capitalist Development

The following is an excerpt from Cedric J. Robinson’s Black Marxism, Revised and Updated Third Edition: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. In this ambitious work, first published in 1983, Cedric Robinson demonstrates that efforts to understand Black people’s history of resistance solely through the prism of Marxist theory are incomplete and inaccurate. Marxist analyses tend to presuppose European… Continue Reading Racial Capitalism: The Nonobjective Character of Capitalist Development

Categories African American Studies/Excerpts/Political Science
March 15, 2022

Putinomics: Putin’s Economic Inheritance

The following is an excerpt from Chris Miller’s Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia. When Vladimir Putin first took power in 1999, he was a little-known figure ruling a country that was reeling from a decade and a half of crisis. In the years since, he has reestablished Russia as a great power. How did he do it? What… Continue Reading Putinomics: Putin’s Economic Inheritance

Categories Diplomatic History / International Affairs/Economics/European History/Excerpts/History
March 1, 2022

Class Interruptions: The Wrong Side of The Tracks

Happy Women’s History Month! Women’s History Month had its origins as a national celebration in 1981 when Congress passed Pub. L. 97-28 which authorized and requested the President to proclaim the week beginning March 7, 1982 as “Women’s History Week.” Throughout the next five years, Congress continued to pass joint resolutions designating a week in March as “Women’s History Week.”… Continue Reading Class Interruptions: The Wrong Side of The Tracks

Categories Africa & African Diaspora/African American Studies/Excerpts/Literature/Women's Studies
February 24, 2022

Birth of the New Afrikan Independence Movement: A Historical Overview

The following is an excerpt from Edward Onaci’s Free the Land: The Republic of New Afrika and the Pursuit of a Black Nation-State. On March 31, 1968, over 500 Black nationalists convened in Detroit to begin the process of securing independence from the United States. Many concluded that Black Americans’ best remaining hope for liberation was the creation of a… Continue Reading Birth of the New Afrikan Independence Movement: A Historical Overview

Categories African American Studies/Excerpts/Political Science
February 23, 2022

Race and Class Identities in Early American Department Stores

The following is an excerpt form Traci Parker’s Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and Civil Rights from the 1930s to the 1980s. In this book, Traci Parker examines the movement to racially integrate white-collar work and consumption in American department stores, and broadens our understanding of historical transformations in African American class and labor formation. Built… Continue Reading Race and Class Identities in Early American Department Stores

Categories African American Studies/Excerpts/Labor Studies
February 17, 2022

Reimagining Africa: How Black Women Invented the Language of Soul in the 1950s

The following is an excerpt from Tanisha C. Ford’s Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul. From the civil rights and Black Power era of the 1960s through antiapartheid activism in the 1980s and beyond, black women have used their clothing, hair, and style not simply as a fashion statement but as a powerful tool of… Continue Reading Reimagining Africa: How Black Women Invented the Language of Soul in the 1950s

Categories Africa & African Diaspora/African American Studies/American Studies/Excerpts/Gender Studies/Women's Studies
January 31, 2022

Negotiating Paradise: Mass Tourism, Empire, and Soft Power

The following is an excerpt from Dennis Merrill’s Negotiating Paradise: U.S. Tourism and Empire in Twentieth-Century Latin America. Accounts of U.S. empire building in Latin America typically portray politically and economically powerful North Americans descending on their southerly neighbors to engage in lopsided negotiations. Dennis Merrill’s comparative history of U.S. tourism in Latin America in the twentieth century demonstrates that… Continue Reading Negotiating Paradise: Mass Tourism, Empire, and Soft Power

Categories Diplomatic History / International Affairs/Excerpts/Latin American & Caribbean Studies/Political Science
January 27, 2022

Permanent Markers: Geno-Myths

The following is an excerpt from Sarah Abel’s Permanent Markers: Race, Ancestry, and the Body after the Genome. Over the past twenty years, DNA ancestry testing has morphed from a niche market into a booming international industry that encourages members of the public to answer difficult questions about their identity by looking to the genome. At a time of intensified… Continue Reading Permanent Markers: Geno-Myths

Categories African American Studies/Excerpts/Latin American & Caribbean Studies/Political Science/Science
January 25, 2022

Crossing Jim Crow: Enlisting and Traveling to Boot Camp

The following is an excerpt from David P. Cline’s Twice Forgotten: African Americans and the Korean War, an Oral History. Journalists began to call the Korean War “the Forgotten War” even before it ended. Without a doubt, the most neglected story of this already neglected war is that of African Americans who served just two years after Harry S. Truman ordered the desegregation of the military. Twice Forgotten draws on… Continue Reading Crossing Jim Crow: Enlisting and Traveling to Boot Camp

Categories African American Studies/Excerpts/Military History
January 24, 2022

But for Birmingham: The National Movement

The following is an excerpt from Glenn T. Eskew’s But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle. Birmingham served as the stage for some of the most dramatic and important moments in the history of the civil rights struggle. In this vivid narrative account, Glenn Eskew traces the evolution of nonviolent protest in the city,… Continue Reading But for Birmingham: The National Movement

Categories African American History/African American Studies/Excerpts/History
January 18, 2022

O. N. Pruitt’s Possum Town: Listening To Pictures

The following is an excerpt from Berkley Hudson’s O. N. Pruitt’s Possum Town: Photographing Trouble and Resilience in the American South. Photographer O. N. Pruitt (1891–1967) was for some forty years the de facto documentarian of Lowndes County, Mississippi, and its county seat, Columbus–known to locals as “Possum Town.” His body of work recalls many FSA photographers, but Pruitt was… Continue Reading O. N. Pruitt’s Possum Town: Listening To Pictures

Categories American Studies/Excerpts/History/Photography
January 13, 2022

North Carolina In The Connected Age: The Creation of the Connected Age

The following is an excerpt from Michael L. Walden’s North Carolina In The Connected Age: Challenges and Opportunities in a Globalizing Economy. At a time when North Carolina’s population is exploding and its economy is shifting profoundly, one of the state’s leading economists applies the tools of his trade to chronicle these changes and to inform North Carolinians in easy-to-understand… Continue Reading North Carolina In The Connected Age: The Creation of the Connected Age

Categories Business/Excerpts/North Carolina
January 11, 2022

Chronicling Stankonia: The Mountaintop Ain’t Flat

To celebrate Regina Bradley’s Chronicling Stankonia being featured on Blackfeminisms.com’s Academic Books by and About Black Women – 2021 Edition list, we’ve decided to share an excerpt from the book. This vibrant book pulses with the beats of a new American South, probing the ways music, literature, and film have remixed southern identities for a post–civil rights generation. For scholar… Continue Reading Chronicling Stankonia: The Mountaintop Ain’t Flat

Categories African American Studies/American Studies/Excerpts/Literature/Music
January 10, 2022

Creating Consumers: Envisioning the Rational Consumer, 1900–1920

The following is an excerpt from Carolyn M. Goldstein’s Creating Consumers: Home Economists in Twentieth-Century America. Home economics emerged at the turn of the twentieth century as a movement to train women to be more efficient household managers. At the same moment, American families began to consume many more goods and services than they produced. To guide women in this… Continue Reading Creating Consumers: Envisioning the Rational Consumer, 1900–1920

Categories American Studies/Business/Excerpts/Women's Studies
December 29, 2021

Steel Closets: Setting The Scene

The following is an excerpt from Anne Balay’s Steel Closets: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Steelworkers. Even as substantial legal and social victories are being celebrated within the gay rights movement, much of working-class America still exists outside the current narratives of gay liberation. In Steel Closets, Anne Balay draws on oral history interviews with forty gay, lesbian, and transgender… Continue Reading Steel Closets: Setting The Scene

Categories American Studies/Excerpts/Gender Studies/Labor Studies/LGBT Studies
December 27, 2021

Tears, Fire, and Blood: No Premature Independence, 1941–1951

The following is an excerpt from James H. Meriwether’s Tears, Fire, and Blood: The United States and the Decolonization of Africa. In the mid-twentieth century, the struggle against colonial rule fundamentally reshaped the world and the lives of the majority of the world’s population. Decolonization, Black and Brown freedom movements, the establishment of the United Nations and NATO, an exploding… Continue Reading Tears, Fire, and Blood: No Premature Independence, 1941–1951

Categories Africa & African Diaspora/Diplomatic History / International Affairs/Excerpts/Political Science
December 21, 2021

Civil Rights Unionism: Those Who Were Not Afraid

The following is an excerpt from Robert R. Korstad’s Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers and the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth-Century South. Drawing on scores of interviews with black and white tobacco workers in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Robert Korstad brings to life the forgotten heroes of Local 22 of the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers of America-CIO. These… Continue Reading Civil Rights Unionism: Those Who Were Not Afraid

Categories African American Studies/Excerpts/Labor Studies/North Carolina/Southern Studies
December 16, 2021

Feminism for the Americas: A New Force in the History of the World

The following is an excerpt from Katherine M. Marino’s Feminism for the Americas: The Making of an International Human Rights Movement. This book chronicles the dawn of the global movement for women’s rights in the first decades of the twentieth century. The founding mothers of this movement were not based primarily in the United States, however, or in Europe. Instead,… Continue Reading Feminism for the Americas: A New Force in the History of the World

Categories Excerpts/Gender Studies/Latin American & Caribbean Studies/Sociology/Women's Studies
December 14, 2021

Pauli Murray: For All My Bravado, Deeply Engrained Notions of Respectability Filled Me With Distress, 1926 – 1940

Recently Pauli Murray: A Personal and Political Life by Troy R. Saxby was selected for North Carolina Reads, North Carolina Humanities’ statewide book club for 2022 that features five books that explore issues of racial, social, and gender equality and the history and culture of North Carolina. To celebrate this accomplishment, we’ve decided to share an excerpt from this book. The Rev. Dr.… Continue Reading Pauli Murray: For All My Bravado, Deeply Engrained Notions of Respectability Filled Me With Distress, 1926 – 1940

Categories African American Studies/Biography / Autobiography/Excerpts/Gender Studies/LGBT Studies