Tag: excerpts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: Now Who Are Your People?”

The following is an excerpt from Barbara Ransby’s Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. A gifted grassroots organizer, Baker shunned the spotlight in favor of vital behind-the-scenes work that helped power the black freedom struggle. She was a national officer and key figure in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, one of… Continue Reading “Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: Now Who Are Your People?”

“Sovereign Entrepreneurs: Economic Identities”

The following is an excerpt from Courtney Lewis’ “Sovereign Entrepreneurs: Cherokee Small-Business Owners and the Making of Economic Sovereignty“. By 2009, reverberations of economic crisis spread from the United States around the globe. As corporations across the United States folded, however, small businesses on the Qualla Boundary of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) continued to thrive. In this… Continue Reading “Sovereign Entrepreneurs: Economic Identities”

“Crafting an Indigenous Nation: Beyond Feathered War Bonnets”

The following is an excerpt from Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote’s “Crafting an Indigenous Nation: Kiowa Expressive Culture in the Progressive Era”. In this in-depth interdisciplinary study, Jenny Tone-Pah-Hote reveals how Kiowa people drew on the tribe’s rich history of expressive culture to assert its identity at a time of profound challenge. Examining traditional forms such as beadwork, metalwork, painting, and dance, Tone-Pah-Hote… Continue Reading “Crafting an Indigenous Nation: Beyond Feathered War Bonnets”

“Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Adapting to Segregation”

The following is an excerpt from Malinda Maynor Lowery’s Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Race, Identity, and the Making of a Nation. With more than 50,000 enrolled members, North Carolina’s Lumbee Indians are the largest Native American tribe east of the Mississippi River. Malinda Maynor Lowery, a Lumbee herself, describes how, between Reconstruction and the 1950s, the Lumbee… Continue Reading “Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Adapting to Segregation”

Uncontrollable Blackness: The Crucible of Black Criminality

The following is an excerpt from Douglas J. Flowe’s Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York, which recently won the American Historical Association’s 2021 Littleton-Griswold Prize. Early twentieth-century African American men in northern urban centers like New York faced economic isolation, segregation, a biased criminal justice system, and overt racial attacks by police and citizens.… Continue Reading Uncontrollable Blackness: The Crucible of Black Criminality

Tainted Tap: Preface

To spread awareness of National Water Quality Month, I decided to post an excerpt from one of the titles featured last week on our “Happy National Water Quality Month!” recommended reading list. This excerpt is from the Preface of Katrinell M. Davis’ Tainted Tap: Flint’s Journey from Crisis to Recovery. Assessing the challenges that community groups faced in their attempts… Continue Reading Tainted Tap: Preface

Unruly Bodies: tyranny of the visual

This week we’re sharing an excerpt from Susannah B. Mintz’s Unruly Bodies: Life Writing by Women with Disabilities to celebrate Disability Pride Month. The excerpt is titled tyranny of the visual, written by Lucy Grealy and Georgina Kleege. Earlier this month we published a recommended reading list featuring Mintz’s Unruly Bodies and other titles highlighting and sharing the experiences of… Continue Reading Unruly Bodies: tyranny of the visual

The Right to Live in Health: A Blessed Formula for Progress

Recently, we published a recommended reading list in support of Cuba’s most recent demand for liberation. Today we chose to publish an excerpt from one of the titles from that reading list, Daniel A. Rodríguez’s The Right to Live in Health: Medical Politics in Postindependence Havana. Out of the many reasons people in Cuba have chosen to protest, medical resources… Continue Reading The Right to Live in Health: A Blessed Formula for Progress

Harriet, the Moses of Her People: Preface

In celebration of Disability Pride Month, I decided to post an excerpt from one of the titles from our recommended reading list published last week. This excerpt is the preface from Sarah Hopkins Bradford’s Harriet, the Moses of Her People. The title I have given my black heroine, in this second edition of her story, viz.: THE MOSES OF HER… Continue Reading Harriet, the Moses of Her People: Preface

Capitalism and Slavery: The Development Of The Negro Slave Trade

For our last bit of JuneTeenth celebration this month, I decided to pull an excerpt from one of the books featured in our two part commemorative JuneTeenth recommended reading list (Part One, Part Two). This excerpt is from Eric Williams and Colin A. Palmer’s Capitalism and Slavery, Third Edition.  The negro slaves were “the strength and sinews of this western world.”… Continue Reading Capitalism and Slavery: The Development Of The Negro Slave Trade

Princess Noire: We Knew She Was a Genius

With a few more days left to celebrate Black Music Month, we chose to post this excerpt from Nadine Cohodas’ Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone. This book and a few other titles were featured on a recommended reading list commemorating some of the incredible things black people have brought to music as a whole. John Irvin sang… Continue Reading Princess Noire: We Knew She Was a Genius