Tag: excerpt

The Making of a Young Intellectual

The following is an excerpt from Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics by Anastasia C. Curwood, available wherever books are sold. The Making of a Young Intellectual Although Shirley Chisholm would eventually be a formidable Black feminist political force, young Shirley St. Hill was ambivalent about pursuing politics during college and her early career. She was inspired by… Continue Reading The Making of a Young Intellectual

Cross-Border Cosmopolitans: An Excerpt

The following is an excerpt from Cross-Border Cosmopolitans: The Making of a Pan-African North America by Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey, available everywhere books are sold. THE MESSIANIC MOMENT, 1919–1931 The year 1919 marked the tercentennial of chattel slavery’s genesis in English North America. White supremacy may have warped notions of forgiveness, of forbearance, and of the significance of African bondage,… Continue Reading Cross-Border Cosmopolitans: An Excerpt

Native Americans and Enslaved Africans

The following is an excerpt from The Southern Way of Life: Meanings of Culture and Civilization in the American South by Charles Reagan Wilson, available everywhere books and ebooks are sold. Native Americans and Enslaved Africans Southern colonists, including Jefferson’s forebears, had been on the periphery of Western civilization at the beginning of settlement, but they self-consciously came as predominantly… Continue Reading Native Americans and Enslaved Africans

Agriculture’s Energy: Introduction

The following is an excerpt from the introduction of Agriculture’s Energy: The Trouble with Ethanol in Brazil’s Green Revolution by Thomas D. Rogers, available now wherever books are sold. From 1900 to 2000, in the midst of dramatic population growth, Brazil experienced a neat demographic inversion. At the same time that it grew by a factor of ten, from 17… Continue Reading Agriculture’s Energy: Introduction

A Camp Meeting at the Gallows

The following is an excerpt from The End of Public Execution: Race, Religion, and Punishment in the American South by Michael Ayers Trotti, available now wherever books are sold. A Camp Meeting at the Gallows There is a fountain fill’d with blood,Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,Lose all their guilty stains,Lose all their guilty stains.The dying thief rejoiced… Continue Reading A Camp Meeting at the Gallows

The Construction of Youth and the Rise of the Black High School

The following is an excerpt from A New Kind of Youth: Historically Black High Schools and Southern Student Activism, 1920–1975 by Jon N. Hale, available now wherever books are sold. The Construction of Youth and the Rise of the Black High School Though often overshadowed by the work of Black colleges or Black churches, southern Black high schools were an… Continue Reading The Construction of Youth and the Rise of the Black High School

Making Our Future: An Excerpt

The following is an excerpt from the introduction of Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore and Everyday Culture in Appalachia by Emily Hilliard, available everywhere books are sold. I have spent much of the past six years traveling in and across West Virginia, crisscrossing mountains, hollers, creeks, and rivers along dirt roads and highways on fieldwork trips to interview quilters, fiddlers, striking… Continue Reading Making Our Future: An Excerpt

Global Christianity and the Cold War

The following is an excerpt from Global Faith, Worldly Power: Evangelical Internationalism and U.S. Empire edited by John Corrigan, Melani McAlister, Axel R. Schäfer. Global Christianity and the Cold War The military and economic footprint of the U.S. abroad expanded rapidly after World War II. The growth of evangelical mission and humanitarian aid activities needs to be viewed in this context. The… Continue Reading Global Christianity and the Cold War

Refugees or Asylum-Seekers

The following is an excerpt from Detention Empire: Reagan’s War on Immigrants & the Seeds of Resistance by Kristina Shull, available now everywhere books are sold. Refugees or Asylum-Seekers The massive scope and devastations of the Vietnam War indelibly scarred US political and social life, reshaping subsequent US refugee politics. Growing public divisions over the war also help to explain the seeming paradox… Continue Reading Refugees or Asylum-Seekers

Lost in Fresia

The following is an excerpt from The Investigative Brigade: Hunting Human Rights Criminals in Post-Pinochet Chile by Pascale Bonnefoy Miralles, available now from your favorite bookstore. Lost in Fresia The rain poured down in torrents, and wind whipped against the small Cessna plane suspended in the black of night in flight from Santiago to Puerto Montt. The four passengers on board… Continue Reading Lost in Fresia

Remembering the Arab Scare: America’s Response to the Munich Olympic Attacks 50 Years Later

Fifty years ago, on September 5, 1972, Palestinian nationalist militants from the Black September organization stunned the world with an attack on Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich, West Germany. Satellite television turned the hostage-taking siege into an international live-action news drama, which reached a bloody climax in the deaths of a police officer, five militants, and all… Continue Reading Remembering the Arab Scare: America’s Response to the Munich Olympic Attacks 50 Years Later

Child-Saving During World War II

The following is an excerpt from Suffer the Little Children: Child Migration and the Geopolitics of Compassion in the United States by Anita Casavantes Bradford, available everywhere books and e-books are sold. Collateral Humanitarianism Child-Saving during World War II Between 1940 and 1945, concerned Americans continued to improvise child evacuation programs to safeguard endangered children across the Atlantic. The nonsectarian coalition brought… Continue Reading Child-Saving During World War II

How Starving Soldiers Survived

The following is an excerpt from Feeding Washington’s Army: Surviving the Valley Forge Winter of 1778 by Ricardo A. Herrera available everywhere books and e-books are sold. Faced with the collapse of the commissariat and the all too real potential of scattering the army across eastern Pennsylvania so that it might feed itself, Washington was on the horns of a dilemma.… Continue Reading How Starving Soldiers Survived

Built on Women’s Bodies

The following is an excerpt from Anne Gray Fischer’s The Streets Belong To Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification. Police power was built on women’s bodies. Men, especially Black men, often stand in as the ultimate symbol of the mass incarceration crisis in the United States. Women are treated as marginal, if not overlooked altogether, in… Continue Reading Built on Women’s Bodies

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

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

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

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

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

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