Search Results for: black history month

Zandria F. Robinson: OutKast Reunion Tour: After Twenty Years, the South Still Got Something to Say

I grew up watching OutKast videos on the now-defunct Video Jukebox Network, affectionately known as “The Box.” Although OutKast received some play on MTV and BET in the early 1990s, it was on The Box, which featured a range of underground southern hip-hop artists, where I could be sure to see André “André 3000” Benjamin, Antwan “Big Boi” Patton, and other southern rappers in regular rotation. Although initially record labels largely ignored southern artists, through homegrown ingenuity, southern rappers soon emerged as a formidable force in the global music industry. By 2005, top spots on music charts were regularly held by southern hip-hop artists, southern R&B singers, or hits produced by southern artists. As Memphis rapper Project Pat noted in 2006: “Now y’all was thinkin’ Dirty South was like, ‘hee-haw, hee-haw’/Is you worth over a hundred mil? We are, we are.” Indeed, the South had something to say. Continue Reading Zandria F. Robinson: OutKast Reunion Tour: After Twenty Years, the South Still Got Something to Say

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

Tiffany A. Sippial: Cuba’s New Economic Policies: Event Horizon or Business as Usual?

In my opinion, the most interesting topic for discussion is not that Cubans are finally embracing private enterprise, but rather that the new legislation will surely change the existing face of private enterprise on the island. Talk to Cubans about the new business, property, and internet reform measures and you are less likely to hear them marveling at the wonders of capitalism than to hear them debate the variety of state-imposed taxes that often leave them with only a few CUC (Cuban Convertible Pesos that carry a 1:1 exchange rate with the U.S. dollar) at the end of each month. Continue Reading Tiffany A. Sippial: Cuba’s New Economic Policies: Event Horizon or Business as Usual?

Interview: Lawrence S. Earley on The Workboats of Core Sound

More than anything else in a Core Sound fishing community, a workboat is a living social history of the people who have been connected to it. It was built by one person for another person and named after a third. This little web of names expands over time as the boat is sold to other people and renamed, is repaired, and rebuilt by others, or is relocated to another community. Fishermen seem to have little difficulty in remembering this web of connections, and so workboats function as memory banks that contain much of the social history of the community and carry it from one generation to the next. As boats disappear, it’s not clear what will happen to this history. Continue Reading Interview: Lawrence S. Earley on The Workboats of Core Sound

Tracy E. K’Meyer: Busing and the Desegregation of Louisville Schools

For historians of school desegregation, Louisville’s story challenges a narrative that has been dominated by resistance, disillusion, and failure. For citizens, these stories remind us how our predecessors struggled for equality in education and inspire us to keep up a fight that is far from over. Continue Reading Tracy E. K’Meyer: Busing and the Desegregation of Louisville Schools

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

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. Continue Reading Rod Andrew Jr.: When South Carolina Had Two Governors

Lara Putnam: Families and the Cost of Borders

Some of the deepest costs of our prohibitionist immigration system have to do with family. And they’re not just emotional costs—they’re economic costs as well. Continue Reading Lara Putnam: Families and the Cost of Borders

Marc Stein: Five Myths about Roe v. Wade

On 22 January 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in Roe v. Wade, the abortion rights case that culminated in one of the most controversial legal rulings in the country’s history. Forty years later, numerous myths continue to circulate about the contents and meanings of Roe. Here are five of the most significant. Continue Reading Marc Stein: Five Myths about Roe v. Wade

New Omnibus E-Book: Nell Wise Wechter’s Stories of the North Carolina Coast for Kids

Available for the first time as an Omnibus Ebook, this collection brings together two of Nell Wise Wechter’s beloved stories of young people on the North Carolina Coast. These wonderful stories will entertain and enlighten readers of all ages. Continue Reading New Omnibus E-Book: Nell Wise Wechter’s Stories of the North Carolina Coast for Kids

Excerpt: The Fire of Freedom, by David S. Cecelski

In years to come, he would gain a wider reputation as a moving, eloquent speaker and a fierce debater. But at no time of his life was he a more effective orator than in those first months of freedom on the North Carolina coast. The prodigal ex-slave was always at his best among other former slaves. Continue Reading Excerpt: The Fire of Freedom, by David S. Cecelski

Interview: Daniel W. Patterson on The True Image

A thousand unique gravestones cluster around old Presbyterian churches in the piedmont of the two Carolinas and in central Pennsylvania. Most are the vulnerable legacy of the Bigham family, Scotch Irish stonecutters whose workshop near Charlotte created the earliest surviving art of British settlers in the region. In The True Image, Daniel Patterson documents the craftsmanship of this group and the current appearance of the stones. In two hundred of his photographs, he records these stones for future generations and compares their iconography and inscriptions with those of other early monuments in the United States, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. Continue Reading Interview: Daniel W. Patterson on The True Image

Excerpt: The House on Diamond Hill, by Tiya Miles

It was lovely, this old plantation house, perched, as it was, atop a hillside. Striking in its grandeur. Alluring in its light. I could almost believe, staring up at the glowing, Palladian window panes, that the year was 1806, that Cherokees still possessed the lands of northern Georgia, that the wealthy Cherokee family who once dwelled in this home would appear at a doorway in waistcoats and bustles. Continue Reading Excerpt: The House on Diamond Hill, by Tiya Miles

Excerpt: This Voilent Empire, by Carroll Smith-Rosenberg

The fear of alien attacks, the need to violently exclude Others seen as dangerous or polluting has formed a critical component of the United States’ national identity from the Alien and Sedition Acts of the 1790s through Joseph McCarthy’s war on domestic Communists to the present. To fear and dehumanize alien Others, to ruthlessly hunt them down, is truly American. Continue Reading Excerpt: This Voilent Empire, by Carroll Smith-Rosenberg

Excerpt: Help Me to Find My People, by Heather Andrea Williams

African Americans now had both more freedom to move about and more reason to believe they could begin to live the lives they had previously only imagined. For many, this meant reuniting with family, so they urgently attempted to get to the places where they thought their loved ones might be. Sometimes they found them there; other times the people were gone. Continue Reading Excerpt: Help Me to Find My People, by Heather Andrea Williams

Interview: Heather Andrea Williams on the search for family lost in slavery

I think the quilt on the cover really captures some of the pain of separation as well as the hope that some enslaved people held on to. There is a little girl’s dress, but no little girl, and the handwriting is traced from a letter sent by an enslaved woman to the family of her former owner asking what had ever become of her little girl. Vilet Lester, the child’s mother, was literate enough to write this letter seeking information about her daughter. She was hopeful that her current owner would be able to purchase the child and restore Lester’s family. One of the sad things about doing this work is that I do not know if Vilet Lester ever received an answer to her letter or whether she ever saw her daughter again. Continue Reading Interview: Heather Andrea Williams on the search for family lost in slavery

Excerpt: The Peninsula Campaign & the Necessity of Emancipation, by Glenn David Brasher

Turning to the war, Davis confirmed reports that some slaves were armed and fighting for the South, but he assured his audience that it “was done solely on compulsion.” Having been a slave foreman, he perceptively compared their plight to that of slaves who “were often made to fill the place of whipping-master.” He maintained that the best way to prevent the South from continually taking military advantage of the enslaved community was to free the slaves so they could “go forth conquering.” Continue Reading Excerpt: The Peninsula Campaign & the Necessity of Emancipation, by Glenn David Brasher