There is no way to tell the story of what happened on June 17, 2015, without talking about deeper histories of race, religion, and violence. Continue Reading History Matters: Historians Respond to the Charleston Shooting [Updated]
The reason social critics and entertainers still point out white appropriation when they see it is because the American public, and its leaders, have not matured the way black music and culture have. Even though millions of whites may profess to love and respect black music, their daily decisions—and those of their elected and institutional leaders—indicate that they do not love black people. Continue Reading David Gilbert: Who Owns Black Culture?: Racial Appropriation and the Marketplace
At critical junctures in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, African American history intersected with the national story and altered the American landscape. Whether the Emancipation Proclamation or the March on Washington, black history merges and flows into the wider ocean of the American experience. All of these events, in one way or another, highlight the central role played by African Americans in the national life. Continue Reading Stephen G. Hall: Black History Today
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?
Abolitionists, fed on the fictional fare of the tragic mulatto, expected New Orleans to be filled with “white” slaves catering to the sexual appetites of immoral men. Other visitors to the city, informed by sensationalized travelers’ accounts, hoped for a glimpse of one of its renowned kept women of color, and perhaps contemplated engaging one for themselves. Continue Reading Excerpt: The Strange History of the American Quadroon, by Emily Clark
Politically active and largely urban, the so-called New Negroes of the 1910s through 1930s confronted dilemmas of the modern age when it came to marriage. Evolving ideas about sexuality and gender roles made ideal marriages a moving target. The old politics of respectability confronted a new frankness in matters of sexual expression and new claims of women on personal and economic autonomy. Continue Reading Anastasia C. Curwood: National Black Marriage Day and the New Negro Era’s Legacy
Philip F. Rubio, postal worker-turned-history scholar and author of There’s Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice, and Equality, has recently lent his expertise on race issues in government employment and especially the postal service in two very different but equally fascinating news outlets. In a recent Huffington Post feature, “Black… Continue Reading Philip Rubio comments on black unemployment & the legacy of segregation
As you probably know, February is African American History Month, when we celebrate the countless contributions of African Americans to our country and recognize the struggles of generations past and present. Titles that treat the many facets of African American culture and history have always been one of the strongest and most important components of UNC Press’s list. Here are… Continue Reading Everything You Need for an African American History Month Reading List
A couple years ago some colorful and inspiring murals started popping up in Durham, NC, where I live. On Foster Street, down by the YMCA and the Farmers’ Market. On Chapel Hill Street, on the side of the Durham Food Co-op building. Three more within a stone’s throw of each other on Chapel Hill Road, along the exterior walls of… Continue Reading Let the Month of Murray Begin
Earlier this month the 12th annual Harlem Book Fair hosted a panel that included UNC Press authors Frank A. Guridy and Stephen Gillroy Hall. A video of the discussion, called “Can We Tell the Truth About the Black Past?”, is available through C-SPAN’s Book TV, which can be viewed here. Guridy is the author of Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African… Continue Reading WATCH: Harlem Book Fair Panel – “Can We Tell the Truth about the Black Past?”
We welcome a guest post today from Anne E. Marshall, author of Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State, which we’ll publish in December 2010. The book traces the development of a Confederate identity in Kentucky between 1865 and 1925 that belied the fact that Kentucky never left the Union and that… Continue Reading Confederate History Month and the Politics of Memory
If you are familiar with the UNC Press Blog, you probably know that we know a thing or two about celebrating. If it has a national celebration day, week, or month, we probably have it marked on our calendars well in advance. Why else would we have a 1000-word post on the merits of National Chili Day, like we did… Continue Reading National Women’s History Month: Women at War
This Black History Month we’re highlighting Black stories and amplifying Black voices. The following is a Q&A with Casey D. Nichols, assistant professor of history at Texas State University and author of Poverty Rebels: Black and Brown Protest in Post–Civil Rights America publishing next month, but available for pre-order now. What led you to write Poverty Rebels: Black and Brown Protest… Continue Reading Q&A With Casey Nichols
For Black History Month we’ve been highlighting some of our African American Studies books and amplifying Black voices here on the blog. Next up in our series is a Q&A with Aria S. Halliday, associate professor of gender and women’s studies and African American and Africana studies at the University of Kentucky and author of Black Girls and How We Fail… Continue Reading Q&A With Aria S. Halliday
This week for Black History Month, we’re sharing an excerpt from the introduction of Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement by Bobby J. Smith II which was the first book in our Black Food Justice Series. “[Smith] shows how the struggles of the region’s Black communities laid the groundwork for the modern food justice… Continue Reading Food As a Weapon: An excerpt from “Food Power Politics”
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
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
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
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
You must be logged in to post a comment.