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Author(s): John Butler [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.261331.4, 0000 0001 2285 7943, Ohio State University, , Columbus, OH, USA Taking place in Mississippi in 1964, the Freedom Summer was one [...]

In response to a political comment from NBA superstar LeBron James, a Fox News commentator suggested he 'shut up and dribble.' James and many others considered the comment racist. Defenders suggested the comment was driven by political ideology rather than race. Interestingly, both perspectives could find support in existing research, as some studies depict race as a central factor in responses to political athletes, while other studies dismiss the role of race and find that political ideology and nationalistic sentiments drive how people see activist athletes. Using responses to a large national survey asking whether respondents find athlete political activism 'acceptable,' here I find strong evidence that both ideology and race shape attitudes on the subject. The picture that emerges reveals that party and ideology matter, but even after controlling for them, the race and racial views of the respondent help shape their perspective on political athletes. Establishing the importance of race and racial views here helps illuminate why the intersection of sports and politics generates such fierce responses including unvarnished vitriol from some political figures., Author(s): David Niven [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.24827.3b, 0000 0001 2179 9593, Department of Political Science, University of Cincinnati, , PO Box 210375, 45221, Cincinnati, OH, USA Do racial views [...]

In the collaborative project Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life (1991) with Cornel West, when interviewing West, bell hooks traces 'the roots of (her) own critical consciousness' to her early experiences in the Black church and with religion in general, to the extent that her role as an intellectual is predicated on 'spiritual practice.' It is through this practice that hooks perceives her role as an intellectual as one that 'links religiosity to solidarity with the poor,' in a measured effort that avoids what she refers to as 'the commodification of religion.' To be sure, this form of commodification limits what an intellectual can and should do, when she views that role within the intersectionality of meaningful activism, critical religiosity, and the engaging of the public sphere. For hooks, an intellectual must be deeply invested in 'the kind of compassion, love, and openness' necessary for inclusiveness in the face of increasingly exclusive practices of the Black community, ultimately employed in how larger society devalues and degrades Black women and Black womanhood. Because of this, hooks ascribes to an insurgent intellectualism that, while recognizing her own situatedness between activism, religiosity, and the public sphere, is contingent on a kind of process thought: her intellectual insurgency is always 'becoming' and contains a phenomenological intendedness with moving beyond her ontological blackness and epistemological womanhood towards a metaphysical intellectualism and a deontology fundamentally inherent in it. She presents a Black feminist/Womanist thinking into an insurgent Heideggerian-like question of the meaning of being, as both a Black woman and a Black intellectual. To do this, her insurgency in the role of the public intellectualism is grounded on both Frederick Douglass' notion of 'a heavy and cruel hand' (1853) and James Baldwin's belief that being relatively conscious means 'to be in rage almost all the time' (1969)., Author(s): Hue Woodson [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (Aff1) grid.422791.b, 0000 0000 9563 3898, Tarrant County College, Northwest Campus, , Fort Worth, TX, USA Born Gloria Jean Watkins, 'bell hooks' is more [...]

Author(s): David Withun [sup.1] [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) 0000 0004 0435 1879grid.431861.9Faulkner University, Montgomery, AL, USA (2) Savannah Classical Academy, Savannah, GA, USA There has been a surge of recent [...]

This article examines Black student activism in the context of the Black activist-intellectual tradition. It explores activism as a form of learning. Examining the Black Student Movement in Los Angeles from 1965 to 1975 in the context of student engagement and high impact educational practices reveals that (1) it is appropriate to analyze the Black Student Movement, and related social movements, in the context of student engagement and high impact practices highlighting the intellectual agency of Black student activists, and (2) that the Black Student Movement of the 1960s and 70 s were part of the Black activist-intellectual tradition requiring a reconceptualization of Black student activists as intellectuals. This case study draws upon autobiographies and semi-structured interviews of former Black student activists illustrating that activism is an intellectually and academically enriching activity., Author(s): M. Keith Jr. Claybrook [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.253552.6, 0000 0001 2219 4764, Department of Africana Studies, CSU, , Long Beach, USA Black students were a major force in [...]

The black church was the most important institution in the African-American community before the civil rights movement. Using data from the 1996 National Black Election Study, this research examines the role of religiosity in encouraging community activism among contemporary black Americans in the modem era. The findings suggest that a delineation between politicized and non-politicized churches facilitates an understanding of community activism among black Americans. Keywords African Americans. Black church. Community activism. Politicized church

Colorblindness and social dominance orientation (SDO) are social attitudes that contribute to the continuation of racism in the United States (U.S.). Colorblindness encourages people to no longer see race, so when race does matter, they cannot see it. SDO reflects the extent to which people support group equality. The current study was conducted to examine if those social attitudes affected young adults (age 18-35) activist behavior against racism in the U.S. Two hundred twenty-two participants completed a survey consisted of previously validated scales: Colorblind Scale as reported by Neville et al. (Journal of Counseling Psychology 47:59-70, 2000 (See CR24)), Social Dominance Orientation.sub.7(s) as reported by Ho et al. (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 109:1003-1028, 2015 (See CR15)), and Activism Orientation Scale as reported by Corning and Myers (Political Psychology, 23:703-729, 2002 (See CR8)). The survey was distributed at a University in the Mid-Atlantic region with results revealing that colorblind attitude and social dominance orientation significantly associated negatively with activist behavior. I conclude with explaining the importance of combating colorblind ideology in the fight against racism in the U.S., Author(s): Kendell A. Daughtry [sup.1] , Valerie Earnshaw [sup.1] , Robin Palkovitz [sup.1] , Bahira Trask [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.33489.35, 0000 0001 0454 4791, University of Delaware Newark, , [...]

African American youth have responded with hope and action to protect their well-being in violent political, economic, and social conditions, through organizing. While contemporary organizing frameworks prioritize self-care to promote sustainability, there is little research on the meaning and definition of self-care for African American youth organizers, in their own words. In this paper, findings from interviews with 20 Black youths in navigating organizing spaces in New York City will be presented, highlighting how they destabilize the narrowness of commonly defined self-care to embody 'collective-self' care strategies. Implications for community practice, recovery from systemic violence, and historical trauma among African Americans will be explored., Author(s): Anna Ortega-Williams [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.257167.0, 0000 0001 2183 6649, Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College of the City University of New York, , 2180 Third [...]

Teaching was a popular career option pursued by African American women prior to the 1970s; since then, there has been a steady decline of interest in the profession. Historically, black sororities helped to recruit new teachers and provided social networks of support for professional African American women. In this article, we examine research literature from multiple disciplines that links the historic mission of black sororities to the ethic of caring and othermothering routinely practiced by teachers in their communities. We contend one way black sororities may demonstrate their relevance in contemporary society is by employing new strategies to help recruit and retain African American women teachers. Keywords African American sororities * Black teachers * Othermothering * Community service, Introduction In this paper, we explore the question of how historically black sororities can assist in the efforts to recruit and retain African American schoolteachers. To address this question, an [...]

This article examines the life and activism of Clarie Collins Harvey--entrepreneur, civil rights activist, and ecumenical leader. Despite her significant contributions to various aspects of American life, Harvey has not received the kind of scholarly attention she deserves. This essay offers a holistic presentation of Harvey's life in an effort to demonstrate not only the dynamic vision that guided her leadership, but also the significance of her work locally, nationally, and internationally. Furthermore, it underscores the importance of Black women's activism in movements for social justice. Keywords Mississippi * Civil rights movement * Womanpower unlimited * Church women united * Black women's activism, Clarie Collins Harvey was accompanied by her husband at a State Capital ceremony when she received the Outstanding Mississippian Award from Governor William Waller in honor of her 'noteworthy achievements [...]

There are many histories on the US Civil Right Movement, but none approaches the familiar saga of the Black freedom struggle with the intent to ground it within the discipline of Africana Studies. Mark Christian relies on decades of student curiosity and wonder about the Civil Rights Movement to structure his retelling in ways that align with his pedagogy. He features African American historical contexts, analyses of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., the activism of Black women in the Movement, and insightful chapters on the era's liberal politics. Christian prompts readers to broaden their application of the movement's contemporary interpretation by boldly offering more sociological and psychological explanations of racism and pathology and by grounding his arguments in an Africana Studies disciplinary lexicon., Author(s): Christel N. Temple [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.21925.3d, 0000 0004 1936 9000, University of Pittsburgh, , Pittsburgh, PA, USA The Civil Rights Movement is a dynamic twentieth-century era of [...]

Forty years after emerging from student protest, Black Studies continues to wrestle with its identity. While Black Studies established itself in academia, the racialethnic diversity of faculty began to change and the racialethnic composition of Black Studies departments changed as well. This study uses Mannheim's theory of cohort driven social change to examine how Black Studies faculty members differ in their views of the field. The analyses suggest that differences in professional attitudes are related to demographic trends in the field: much of the disagreement over the field's distinctiveness from other disciplines stems from an older cohort of non-African American professors. Recent cohorts of Black and non-African American Black Studies professors appear to have similar views of the field. We suggest that this may be a response to the political activism that motivated the field at its inception, which may not be a formative experience for recently hired professors. Keywords Black Studies * Faculty attitudes * Cohort analysis * Student activism * Intellectual change, Introduction The Civil Rights Movement sparked many profound changes in American higher education. Following desegregation, enrollments diversified as African American, Latino, and Asian American students sought advanced degrees in larger [...]

This essay examines the late 1960s politicization of the gang-turned-militant Young Lords Organization (YLO) by highlighting moments in the group's history that are characterized by dramatic struggles to claim space in order to mobilize activism against urban renewal in Chicago's Lincoln Park. The YLO's protests reveal the intensity of its members' allegiance to their neighborhood, challenging assumptions that Puerto Rico was the definitive spatial frame of reference in the development of US Puerto Rican radicalism., Author(s): Karen A. Secrist [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) Instituto Internacional de Madrid, , Madrid, Spain [Displayed Quote]Today in the United States there are internal and external exiles, voluntary and involuntary, [...]

Author(s): Mark Christian [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.212340.6, 0000000122985718, City University of New York - Lehman, , New York, USA Campus to Counter primarily examines civil and human rights activism [...]

The study discusses the role the non-Western and its theorization play in the discourse of the BAM movement, taking the writings of Larry Neal as a case study. The study starts with explaining its historicizing approach which situates both the texts under study and the approach itself in their historical context showing both limitations and advantages. Then, a number of theoretical techniques and strategies used by Neal to theorize the non-Western, namely, the epistemological departure from the West, glorifying popular culture, and activism, are discussed in detail. The study then argues that the discourse of Larry Neal might well fit within the notion of postocoloniality and concludes with a deconstructive critique of the notion of the non-Western and proposes a substitute term, 'De-westernization,' which might solve the inner contradictions in the discourse., Author(s): Mohammad Ibrahim Aljayyousi [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) Philadelphia University-Jordan, P.O. Box 1, 19392, Amman, Jordan Introduction The Black Arts Movement was often characterized as the cultural peer for the [...]

This study seeks to ascertain whether the Chicago Daily Defender's coverage of the December 4, 1969 assassination of Mark Clark and Fred Hampton represents a prevailing pattern among black newspapers or an aberration in the black media's treatment of the infamous event. Moreover, we wish to determine how the black press coverage differed from that of the mainstream media. The study proceeds with a brief synopsis of the police actions taken on that fateful December morning, after which the data and methodological design of the study are presented and followed by an analysis of the findings. We then offer a biographical capsule of Mark Clark's life and activism; heretofore, largely overlooked in the scholarly narratives of the raid. Finally, the study concludes with a discussion of the sources contributing to Clark's near erasure from the annals of history., Author(s): Judson L. Jeffries [sup.1] , Omari L. Dyson [sup.2] , Charles E. Jones [sup.3] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.261331.4Department of African American and African Studies, The Ohio State University, Columbus, [...]

Marshall 'Eddie' Conway is a former Black Panther Party member and former political prisoner, who worked as the Baltimore chapter's Minister of Defense until his imprisonment in 1971. In this interview, Conway speaks on his current activities as a community organizer in Baltimore, a public speaker, a journalist, and executive producer for the Real News Network. He also offers critical perspectives on various topics such as the limitations of contemporary mainstream 'progressive' social justice activism, the 2016 presidential election and the history of white nationalism, and the revolutionary potential of contemporary urban food sovereignty movements. Featured in this transcription are Conway's thoughts on the essential components for engaging in revolutionary political education within colleges and universities in the early twenty-first century USA., Author(s): Anthony Bayani Rodriguez [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.264091.8Department of Sociology and Anthropology, St. John's University, Jamaica, NY, USA Preface Marshall 'Eddie' Conway is a social justice activist and community [...]

This article explores Du Bois' theory of beauty that rests upon the axis of racial uplift and troubling, if not misogynistic, portrayals of women in his fictive works. The article employs depictions of women in two of Du Bois' endeavors--Dark Princess and Darkwater--finding that his rigid abidance to the mandate that 'all art should be propaganda' leaves women he deemed unattractive by the wayside. In his fiction and prose pieces, beauty is inextricably linked to politics and consequently the standards of including black women in art and literature became prescriptions for their places in life and his program of racial uplift. Had he taken the advice from other authors, such as Langston Hughes, he may have enjoyed the aesthetic liberty to invite all forms of exterior blackness into his project of aesthetic racial uplift serving early twentieth century black activism. Keywords Beauty * Du Bois * Femininity * Politics * Racial uplift, 'Beauty is fulfillment,' Du Bois wrote. 'It satisfies. It is always new and strange' (Du Bois 1921). Du Bois was a man who deeply appreciated beauty in its many manifestations [...]

In mid-February 1905, W.E.B. Du Bois traveled to Boston to attend the Third Annual Convention of the Religious Education Association. He participated as a discussant for a general session that addressed the topic 'How Can We Develop in the Individual a Social Conscience?' Published in the convention proceedings that year, Du Bois' untitled contribution is seemingly unknown to later scholars who research his thought and activism. 'The Individual and Social Conscience' (IASC), as his work may be titled, set forth a dialectic of human difference in which the self-development of a person's social responsibility was crucial to grounding the idea of the basic equality of all. Du Bois utilized a method inspired by the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel but tempered it with the philosophical concerns of pragmatist and Africana intellectual traditions. In addition to the full text of the IASC by Du Bois, the essay presents an analysis of the IASC's religious dimensions, its extension of themes from his earlier Souls of Black Folk, and its intellectual resonances with Africana, pragmatic, and Hegelian philosophies. Keywords W.E.B. Du Bois * G.W.F. Hegel. Africana philosophy * Pragmatism * The Souls of Black Folk, Introduction By 1905, W.E.B. Du Bois was a widely published author communicating his research on African-Americans through the academic and popular presses, as well as at the speaker's podium. As [...]

The story of the Black Student Movement at the University of Massachusetts (UMass), as demonstrated by the records of 1968-1971, my own administrative files, and interviews of several UMass Black Studies student activists of the period, enables us to understand more clearly the radical legacy of the origin of the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies. Arguably, most salient in this legacy are four lessons and achievements. The first lesson included the resistance, resiliency, and resourcefulness of the principal graduate co-founders of the department, Michael Thelwell and Bernard Bell, in seeking to manage threatening conflicts to radical yet peaceful reforms in education and in validating non-traditional students, faculty, and curricula. The second was our uneven and, ultimately, moderately successful efforts to emulate and unite synergistically Du Bois' standards of political activism and scholarly excellence while valorizing the recruitment and retention of high-risk students and a few uniquely qualified non-credentialed scholar/activist faculty. And the third and fourth achievements were the agency of the Black Student Movement in founding, respectively, the most unique department and consortium of five Black Studies departments in the nation. Keywords Radical legacy * Black studies * Afro-American studies, The Historic Student Movement for Black Studies at UMass When I began this memoir at the end of 2009, I did not plan for it to celebrate the 40th anniversary [...]

Hundreds of thousands of Black students forced the institutionalization of the discipline of Black Studies as part of a larger Black Campus Movement that diversified higher education. Several scholars have examined the movement at particular campuses, or they have addressed one of the factors leading to the origin of Black Studies. Examinations with a national scope are rare, and they have not centered the historiography on the efforts of the students. This paper provides a narrative and analytical overview of the nationwide struggle of the Black students that began in 1965 and climaxed in the spring of 1969 to push and pull the discipline of Black Studies into the academy. It details the major events and pioneers surrounding the birth and the slew of student protests and conferences that led to institutionalization of Black Studies in 1969. Keywords Black campus movement * Black studies * Black power * Student activism * Black student movement * The 1960s * Black students, Even though the discipline of Black Studies is more than 40 years removed from its formative years, little is known about the nationwide movement that forced its origin. Diminutive national [...]

With a beginning remarkably different than conventional academic disciplines, Black Studies emerged on the American college campus amidst Black Power protests and student demands. Now more than forty years old, Black Studies exists as an established discipline constituted by a robust scholarly discourse, an ever-expanding body of innovative interdisciplinary literature, hundreds of collegiate programs at the undergraduate level, a growing number of graduate and doctoral programs, and some of the world's most well-known intellectuals. This introduction--and special issue of the Journal of African American Studies--explores the origins and history of the Black Studies Movement in the United States. Our aim in this volume is to bring the political history to the forefront. Based on historical detail and deep archival research, the works ground the history of Black Studies in the radical Black politics of the late 1960s and 1970s, while emphasizing local materiality and ideological developments. The contributions in this special issue recover some of the names (and faces) of Black Studies' founders, offering a range of perspectives on the movement to establish the field both within and without the American academy. Keywords Black Studies * African-American Studies * Africana Studies * African Diaspora Studies * Black Power Movement * Black Student Movement * Black Campus Movement * Student protest * Student activism * 1960s * Black Radicalism * Black Colleges, As the discipline of Black/Africana Studies continues to evolve, it is appropriate to fix a focused gaze on the past as a means to provide guidance in confronting contemporary issues [...]

In this article, we examine the narratives of the Civil Rights Movement as presented in cinematic narratives and in accounts of civil rights leaders. We conduct a comparative analysis focusing on the comparison of the Civil Rights narratives of the Hollywood films The Long Walk Home (1989) and Driving Miss Daisy (1989), to the 1997 audio series Will the Circle Be Unbroken? In the analysis, we identify a Hollywood and a black consensus narrative, but there are important differences in the representational politics of black activists who participated during the Civil Rights Movement and that of Hollywood filmmakers. In particular, our findings reveal that the two Hollywood films downplay black agency, deploy the white heroin character, privilege sentimental aspects over historical references, limit the historical scope of the movement, and use a language of intimacy and optimism about race relations. These depictions sharply differ from the black consensus narrative in which life under Jim Crow, black activism, unity, struggle, and group resilience are emphasized. Keywords Civil Rights Movement * Collective memory * Race relations * Symbolic violence * Whiteness * Critical reading * African American history, Introduction The 'interracial black-led' (1) Civil Rights Movement (CRM) marked an era that lasted 16 years (1954-1970; Griffin 2004: 548). While goals for the Movement were numerous, they included the [...]

Before and during the Civil Rights era, mass protests were very effective in bringing attention to blatant racial inequalities. How do black churches address racism that seemingly is not there in a post-Civil Rights colorblind era? A growing trend amongst black churchgoers in the post-Civil Rights period is that of megachurches and neo-Pentecostalism. While both black megachurches and neo-Pentecostal churches tend to preach a theology of self-empowerment, this is just one of a range of theologies that may be preached in these churches. In a content analysis of the 2008 Easter sermons of three neo-Pentecostal megachurches in Maryland, I address how the type of theology preached in black megachurches can correspond with the way a collective racial identity is constructed, which could therefore influence how racism is resisted. Keywords Black church * Megachurches * Theology of self-empowerment * Colorblind racism * Black church activism, Imagery of the Civil Rights Movement often invokes a sense of nostalgia for black church involvement in protesting the U.S. government's mistreatment of African American citizens. The protests led by [...]

Social Gospel advocates suggest that Christianity should foster social reform, political activism, and collective empowerment. Black megachurches do not generally have a reputation for espousing such tenets. But, have they been inaccurately depicted? This analysis focuses on whether and how a Social Gospel message influences the purposes and programs for a group of Black megachurches. The study relies on ethnographic research and content analysis of 16 Black megachurches. Findings show that most sample clergy espouse a Social Gospel message that reflects social justice, servanthood, and self-help themes. Community empowerment programs are also influenced by factors such as pastor's vocation as well as church location and have a decidedly economic rather than political dimension. The implications of what constitutes Social Gospel in the twenty-first century are discussed. Keywords Social Gospel * Black megachurch * Community action, The high-energy televised worship services of Pastor T.D. Jakes, perceived controversial sound bites by Pastor Jeremiah Wright, or Pastor Eddie Long's recent accusations of sexual impropriety do little to inform [...]

This paper examines the racial dynamics of antigay activism, and the particular, disproportionate impact of antigay family policies on Black and Latino samesex couple families. Starting in the mid-1990s, antigay activists have passed dozens of laws and constitutional amendments banning and repealing state recognition of gay and lesbian relationships. For two decades the antigay movement has portrayed sexual orientation nondiscrimination laws as 'special rights' that threaten the civil rights of people of color, especially Black people. They have portrayed the gay and Black communities as mutually exclusive, and pointed out the obvious difference between race and sexual orientation, accusing gay activists of hijacking the civil rights legacy of the 1950s and 1960s. While antigay bias and racism are indeed different, legal protections for gay people and families do not threaten the civil rights of people of color, or anybody, for that matter. In fact, the creel irony is that the antigay policies of the Christian right pose a disproportionate threat to Black and Latino same-sex couple families. This is because Black and Latino same-sex couples are twice as likely as White same-sex couples to be raising children (particularly Black and Latino lesbian couples), and because they earn less and are less likely to own the home they live in. Policies restricting family recognition, whether of partner relationships or parent--child relationships, disproportionately harm Black and Latino same-sex couple families. Black samesex cohabiting partners are more likely than their White counterparts to hold public sector jobs which may offer domestic partner health insurance; many antigay marriage amendments and laws prevent public sector employers in those states from offering such benefits to gay and lesbian employees. Latino same-sex partners are more likely to be non-US citizens; this means they are disproportionately affected by the Immigration and Naturalization Service's failure to recognize same-sex couple families. Both Black and Latina female same-sex partners (partnered lesbians) are more likely than their heterosexual and White non-Hispanic counterparts to serve in the military, despite the ban. They are also discharged at a higher rate. For all these reasons, equal treatment for same-sex couples and gay, lesbian and bisexual people constitute issues of racial justice as well as human rights and equality. Keywords Black and Latino same-sex couple families * Same-sex marriage * Gay marriage * Gay rights. Antigay movement * 'Special rights' * Gay people of color * LGBT people of color * Black gay and lesbian * Latino gay and lesbian

The mobilization of ethnicity entails the production of culture--a process involving the interweaving of culture, history and identity, and the manipulation of cultural symbols to reconstruct and reshape conceptions of self and community. The shifting character and salience of ethnicity as demonstrated in the Back to Africa, Black Power, and Rastafari movements point to the flexibility of culture and identity. In demonstrating the interrelationships among activism, identity and culture and their impact on the creation of new and revitalized ethno-racial identities in the African-Caribbean Diaspora, all three movements allowed their socially dispossessed and culturally displaced adherents to be active social actors and knowledgeable agents capable of making their own history. This paper takes issue with the black cultural nationalists' deployment of a 'race-culture' essentialist discourse to: (i) frame notions of difference vis-a-vis the Other; and (ii) 'imagine' and homogenize blackness so as to produce ethno-racial solidarity in the minds of the disenfranchised.

The end of the twentieth century saw the collapse of a coherent urban policy in the United States and the rise of environmental racism. This paper examines the spatialization of race. Its framework is grounded in the environmental justice movement that combines the best of the 1960s War on Poverty with 1990s ecological activism to shape a new vision for Black America.

The recent surge in debates and legislation banning Critical Race Theory and other curricular reform that require reflection on historical racial injustices have challenged students and educators to live double lives. The exclusion of public discourse on social and political matters from the classroom further encourages the notion of educational institutions as silos of society encased in a thick glass wall. To that end, students and educators must grapple with the separation of their personal and educational lives as citizens. This article argues that to cultivate K-12 students as social justice citizens, democratic deliberation is not enough; rather, dissent and counternarrative should also be practiced within the classroom to underscore the nuances of achieving consensus and the need to amplify the voice of those historically marginalized. A reformed approach to educating for democracy that explores deliberation, dissent, and counternarrative would bridge the gap between students' and educators' now separate lives, encourage systemic change, and better transition students into full citizenry as engaged and active participants. Implications for K-12 educators with regards to honing skills and facilitation are discussed as they journey into the uncharted, but necessary terrain of deliberation, dissent, and counternarrative practice within the classroom setting., Author(s): Elsheika Pennerman [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.24827.3b, 0000 0001 2179 9593, University of Cincinnati, , P.O. Box 210115, 45221-0115, Cincinnati, OH, USA During a high school contemporary issues class [...]

This article examines the relationship between the Honorable Minister Malcolm X and the modern Civil Rights Movement's Big Six. Despite being experienced orators and highly educated champions of Black people, the dedicated soldiers that comprised the Big Six not only vehemently disagreed with Malcolm X's position on self-defense but also refused to debate him on the merits of a nonviolent strategy in the fight to bring about freedom, justice, and equality for Black Americans. This article explores why., Author(s): Judson L. Jeffries [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.261331.4, 0000 0001 2285 7943, Ohio State University, , Columbus, OH, USA Introduction The modern Civil Rights Movement represents one of the [...]

This article explores the student strike which won Ethnic Studies and Black college student admissions. The San Francisco State Strike of 1968 which shut down the campus for five months was unique in its vision, its intensity, its class composition, its strategies, and its relationship to both the Black community and non-Black student organizations. The event is significant because the creation of Ethnic Studies as an academic field has vastly expanded humanity's knowledge of African-American history and the history of other people of color, and the percentage of Black students completing four years of college more than doubled in the period following this strike and subsequent similar college movements. One of the authors was a leader of the Black Student Union Central Committee. The authors use interviews with the leaders, personal reflection, and archival material to draw conclusions about the reasons for the strike's success and long-lasting impact. Its lessons may have importance for the racial and social justice movements of today., Author(s): Kitty Kelly Epstein [sup.1] , Bernard Stringer [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.420735.7, 0000 0004 0446 3619, Holy Names University and Fielding Graduate University, , Oakland, CA, USA (2) S.F. [...]

This paper critiques black citizenship in America. Using the 'warring ideals' of W.E.B DuBois, it posits that African American citizenship is a complex interplay between the universality of citizenship, i.e., the ideals of the western liberal tradition, and the lived realities of citizenship. Highlighting the paradox of race, the article underscores that black citizenship has never been a guarantee in American society. 'Warring ideals' encompass a struggle between aspirational ideals of what American citizenship is supposed to be and what it actually is-especially for those who are marginalized. Lived realities of citizenship often mean coming to terms with daily encounters with racism and structural discrimination which affirm and reaffirm citizenship boundaries. The manuscript also evaluates how watershed movements such as the civil rights, black power, and Black Lives Matter movements have attempted to reconcile the ideals and the realities of American citizenship., Author(s): Denise N. Obinna [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.260308.f, 0000 0004 0399 5525, College of Liberal Arts, Mount St. Mary's University, , Emmitsburg, MD, USA Introduction This quote by W.E.B. [...]

When Pan-Africanism is not historicized by reflecting on its beginning towards the mid-twentieth century, its nowness is usually attached to the African continent. In other words, a twenty-first-century understanding of Pan-Africanism remains exclusively tied to the African continent, specifically leaving out Afro-diasporic subjects and even more so Afro-Europeans. In this paper, I provide reasons for this situation, but I also argue that if the current conception of Pan-Africanism can no longer incorporate the fate, role, and conditions of Black diasporic subjects in the West, particularly in Europe, then it is valid to parallelly speak of Afro-European Pan-Africanism: a new connection of black European youth against racial discrimination and for an Afro-European political identity. In the twentieth century, Europe was a center for black intellectuals' collaborations, but these black intellectuals were more of 'sojourners' for anti-colonial struggles than advocate for the improvement of the black condition in a European context. I suggest Afro-European Pan-Africanism as marking, in the twenty-first century, new diasporic linkages and movements of black Europeans of African and Afro-Caribbean descent., Author(s): Omar Dieng [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.67105.35, 0000 0001 2164 3847, Department of History, Case Western Reserve University, , 44106, Cleveland, OH, USA Pan-Africanism: A Truncated History In the [...]

This article interrogates the influence of Ghana and Kwame Nkrumah on the development of contemporary Pan-African consciousness in the USA. The research occurred between December 2018 and January 2020 in Accra Ghana, Washington, DC, and the San-Francisco Bay Area. The study included in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and participatory observation at Pan-African events such as Kwanzaa, PANAFEST, and African Liberation Day. The findings suggest the development of Pan-African consciousness is obtained through engagement and interaction with historical and contemporary Pan-African leaders. Two main themes emerged they are (1) Linkages exist between the development of Pan-African consciousness among the Diaspora and Kwame Nkrumah and Ghana's historical role in the Pan-African Movement, and (2) Pan-African institutions that engage in political education contribute to exposing the Diaspora to Pan-African consciousness., Author(s): Mjiba Frehiwot [sup.1] , Chy McGhee [sup.2] , Harriet Boateng Aduako [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.8652.9, 0000 0004 1937 1485, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, , P.O. [...]

This study examines the kinship between the female slave narrative and the writing of the female political prisoner during the Black Power Movement. The notion of imprisonment and escape has played an important role in the genre of African American Autobiography since its beginnings in the slavery era. To sustain this premise, this work will employ comparative analysis, which explores the constructional similarities between Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) and Assata Shakur's Assata: An Autobiography (1987 (See CR14)). This comparative analysis demonstrates that Autobiography is like Incidents in that Jacobs wrote a liberatory autobiographical text that offers mental emancipation despite her status of physical enslavement. The comparative analysis will reveal the commonality in the objectives of the struggle for survival presented in the slave narrative and the memoir of the political prisoner. Although the accounts are from two different eras, the examination will illuminate the verity that the captives give to those who are still in bondage and desperately searching for manumission. The comparison of the slave narrative and the autobiography of the political prisoner has not been widely explored in academia. In addition, the memoir of the African American woman prisoner has not been canonized as that of the woman's slave narrative. Furthermore, the conclusion drawn from this essay demonstrates that the political prisoner's memoir is a continuation of the same redemptive objective that is offered through the slave narrative., Author(s): NaTosha Briscoe [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.254275.3, 0000 0001 2224 3669, Department of African American Studies, Clark Atlanta University, , Atlanta, GA, USA Introduction This essay explores the organizational [...]

Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells is the inspirational autobiography of an African American civil rights leader and black feminist. Ida B. Wells, born into slavery in 1862, witnessed the Reconstruction era after the Civil War in the USA, the battle of suffrage, the World War I, and its aftermath. In her autobiography, she documents her individual struggle, her accomplishments, and her major activities in order to promote equality for women and African Americans. This autobiography provides a critical review of American racial and sexual relations. She did not simply observe the American scene, but she also transformed it as a leader in the women's movement and the African American Civil Rights movement. The autobiography is especially important in documenting the prevalent patterns of lynching of African American men by white mobs. While protesting and writing about these horrors, Wells also fought against these illegal and violent acts. She struggled with many people to have her radical and unflinching stands represented. She had opinion differences with some of the prominent leaders including Susan B. Anthony, W E. B. Du Bois, and Booker T. Washington. She depicts these differences in her autobiography while reflecting upon her unwillingness to compromise with her stand. Thus, the present paper tries to locate the Civil Rights movement in America through female perspective. The major aim of the paper is to construct a dialogue around the autobiography of Ida. B. Wells in order to understand the role of women leaders in the Civil Rights Movement in the USA., Author(s): Nitesh Narnolia [sup.1] , Naresh Kumar [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) Assistant Professor of English, Government Girls College, , Churu, Rajasthan, India (2) grid.448759.3, 0000 0004 1764 7951, Centre for [...]

Despite being considered a key text in African American literary history especially after its reevaluation in the 1980s, Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted (1892) by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper has generally been dismissed by critics for its aesthetic and political accommodationism, bourgeois didacticism, and alleged historical amnesia. Most of these critical evaluations focus exclusively on Iola's character. Situating Iola Leroy in its cultural and political context, this article rereads Iola's character in relation to other women characters to argue that Harper's text conceives a 'New Negro Woman' as a counterpart of the New Negro man, long before the term became popularized. Even more, this 'New Negro Woman' is shaped by African American racial heritage alongside postbellum racial uplift ideology contra the dominant 'bourgeois' conceptions of the New Negro that 'buried' the past in an attempt to 'escape the recollection of enslavement' Gates, 1988 (See CR18), 139., Author(s): Ayesha Siddiqa [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.412621.2, 0000 0001 2215 1297, Area Study Centre for Africa, North and South America, Quaid-I-Azam University, , Islamabad, Pakistan Iola Leroy, or Shadows [...]

To address the inadequate education that Black students were receiving in public schools, the Black Panther Party (BPP) opened its first liberation schools in June 1969, modeling them after the Mississippi Freedom Schools of the modern Civil Rights Movement. The most prominent of these schools was the Oakland Community School (OCS). Although OCS had an ephemeral existence from 1971 to 1982, the school redefined education for elementary and secondary students in poor public schools in Oakland, California. Teachers and administrators at OCS adopted a less traditional curriculum that incorporated community involvement and political awareness to take a progressive approach toward writing instruction. Anecdotal evidence suggests that OCS's language curriculum was entirely progressive; however, a closer examination of their pedagogy reveals teachers embraced several traditional approaches to writing instruction., Author(s): Destiny Joilene Benjamin [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.266869.5, 0000 0001 1008 957X, Learning Technologies, University of North Texas, , Denton, USA Introduction Although much had been accomplished as a [...]

The Black Panther Party was one of the most important American radical groups of the 1960s, although few scholars have examined them as a model of a revolutionary vanguard party. Following recent political theory, this study performs a discourse analysis of The Black Panther newspaper through the lens of infrastructure. It offers a reading of the Panthers as articulating an infrastructural politics by activating infrastructure as a site of political struggle, providing infrastructure to the people as a mode of political praxis, and drawing attention to the communicational infrastructures that sustain political movements. The study contributes to the growing literatures of infrastructure studies, critical theory, and the Black Panther Party., Author(s): D. W. Kamish [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.61971.38, 0000 0004 1936 7494, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, , Burnaby, Canada There is strong consensus that the Black Panther [...]

This study examines the Black Panther Party Oakland Community School's attempt to offer a liberatory education for its students. Drawing from Black intellectuals and contemporary education scholars, this study is placed within the context of critical race theory in education, Black revolutionary change, and Afrocentricity as a method to show how Black Radical ideologies may help to create more equitable outcomes for Black students. This study sits in contrast to much of the Anglo guided scholarship and examines pedagogy from a survivalist perspective, which as a theoretical philosophy maintains Blacks have prevailed in sustaining their African roots, culture, and identity. Using an intrinsic case study method, this study reviewed archival data highlight many of the radical practices deployed by the Black Panther Party that have yet to make it into mainstream schooling., Author(s): Akin Abioye [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) Altura Collaborative, , Baltimore, USA Introduction Black intellectuals have submitted that liberatory schooling is the best way to serve Black American emancipation and [...]

This study examines the progress of Black Studies at public universities toward incorporation into mainstream higher education following the academic scandal at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2011-2014). Drawing upon data from Black Studies websites at 196 flagship and other predominantly white institutions across the 50 US states, and other sources, findings reveal that (1) the formal identification most frequently found for Black Studies academic units is either 'Africana' or 'African American' Studies; (2) conformity with the original core curriculum model of the National Council for Black Studies across the four levels of the model is uneven; (3) reaching departmental status for Black Studies, as an indicator of incorporation into the mainstream, is highest in the East and lowest in the South; and (4) the strongest predictors of mainstream incorporation are being located in the East and the number of Blacks on an institution's faculty. The need for a national certifying body for Black Studies academic units and other implications of the UNC scandal are discussed., Author(s): Marvin P. Dawkins [sup.1] , Jomills Henry Braddock II [sup.1] , Felecia Theune [sup.1] , Shelby Gilbert [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.26790.3a, 0000 0004 1936 8606, Department of Sociology, [...]

This article examines the history of racism in the American presidency and the implications that it has had for Black residents of this country. The paper begins with a discussion of President Trump's racist rhetoric towards Blacks but notes that a history of racism is woven into the US presidency. We employ critical race theory as a theoretical framework to demonstrate why institutional racism has always been pervasive in the American presidency. Using a case study analysis, the authors conduct a comparative study of the history of racism of American presidents with the presidency of former president Donald J. Trump. The authors conclude that for most of the nation's history, racism and indifference to African Americans permeated the US presidency. It has only been since the advent of the second half of the twentieth century, for the most part, that there have been meaningful efforts by US presidents to address the concerns of African Americans., Author(s): Dewey M. Clayton [sup.1] , Sharon E. Moore [sup.2] , Sharon D. Jones-Eversley [sup.3] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.266623.5, 0000 0001 2113 1622, 111 Ford Hall, University of Louisville, , [...]

Throughout his career, Langston Hughes used self-consciously performative tactics to create artistic and public personae designed to attract the audiences he courted by synthesizing his shifting politics and style as a writer into an apparently unified whole. During most of his career, this practice was hidden through his mastery of the tropes of 'writing race,' and only the sudden, disharmonious shift from a writer of Blackness to a writer of Proletarianism during the 1930s revealed the constructedness of his practice, as well as his careful work balancing his sincere politics with his need for paying audiences to believe he shared and supported their ideologies. This process of realignment began with Scottsboro Limited in 1931, but reached fruition after his year in the Soviet Union from 1932 to 1933, and is revealed through his work on the uncompleted manuscript of the Living Newspaper Harvest. Both its Comintern approved form and its orthodox Communist ideology reveal how Hughes wrote his new radical self into being, a practice of conscious creation that he maintained throughout his career. As a result, this work-historically undervalued by scholars-becomes the key to a new understanding of Hughes's entire oeuvre., Author(s): Catherine Peckinpaugh Vrtis [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) Forestville, MD, USA Introduction In his second, 1956, autobiography, I Wonder as I Wander , Langston Hughes tells the following story: [Displayed [...]

This article investigates the role of poet, critic and vanguard Black intellectual Sterling A. Brown in the production of An American Dilemma (Myrdal et al., 1944 (See CR72)), a foundational book that would influence national policy in relation to race for at least 50 years after its publication. Commissioned to deliver an analysis of 'the Negro in American culture,' Brown set out to create a work of integrity that would convey the richness of African American cultural traditions and contribute to a balanced appraisal of their overarching experiences. The Carnegie Corporation selected outsider Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal to lead the study to ensure an unbiased analysis of the 'Negro problem.' This apparent commitment to impartiality obscures the reality of the impact of race on the book's construction. These dynamics had a particularly forceful impact on Brown, the only member of Myrdal's team with a deep understanding of the historical development, aesthetics and politics of the African American cultural tradition., Author(s): Ruth Beecher [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.4464.2, 0000 0001 2161 2573, Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of London, , 26 Russell Square, Room B33, WC1B 5DQ, Birkbeck, [...]

Kobe Bryant is now in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. He entered in what is perhaps the most decorated Hall of Fame class in the history of the institution. Among the events that inform how athletes and other public figures are perceived are off-court activities and events. On the last day of June 2003, Kobe Bryant had a sexual encounter with a young woman in his suite in a Colorado resort. What resulted from that encounter was part sports spectacle, part legal proceedings, and all public privacy. Legal decisions and actions of an NBA African American icon-under-construction became a part of news coverage for nearly 2 years. This coverage was the onset of Kobe's 'carceral shadow.' W.E.B. Du Bois (1899 (See CR9):254, 249) suggested that, 'Crime comes either in spite of intelligence or as a result of misdirected intelligence under severe economic and moral strain... We must add to this the influences of social position and connections in procuring whites pardons or lighter sentences.' That young Colorado woman accused Kobe of sexual assault. Graphic accounts and other evidence presented in the court of public opinion led to a large payment to the alleged victim which ended the civil suit and the legal process. Despite the absence of a trial and conviction, one can understand Kobe through the lens of a carceral citizenship. Similar circumstances-on mere allegation alone-often led to the lynching death of many Black men throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Kobe's carceral shadow followed him from that day forward through an arc of post-non-trial redemption. In this work, I consider these themes in relation to Kobe's iconic 'life incomplete.', Author(s): Townsand Price-Spratlen [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.261331.4, 0000 0001 2285 7943, Department of Sociology, Ohio State University, , 238 Townshend Hall, 1885 Neil Avenue, 43210, Columbus, OH, USA Dear [...]

Was the 1920s Harlem Renaissance an era of expanding opportunities for blacks to become artists, writers, musicians, and entertainers in the premier black communities of Harlem (New York) and Bronzeville (Chicago)? The present study addresses this question by analyzing location quotients, calculated with Census data for 1910-1940, of blacks' representation in these cultural expression occupations in New York and Chicago, relative to all other US places. Results show that blacks' representation in most cultural expression occupations increased only slightly or fell precipitously in New York and Chicago in the 1920s, implying that many blacks who aspired to enter such pursuits in the two cities were discouraged or pushed out by occupational saturation. The study concludes that during the Harlem Renaissance, blacks' cultural expression employment-a key dimension of blacks' placemaking-in Harlem and Bronzeville lacked the support anticipated by many studies of urbanism and early twentieth-century black communities., Author(s): Robert L. Boyd [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.260120.7, 0000 0001 0816 8287, Department of Sociology, Mississippi State University, , 207 Bowen Hall, 456 Hardy Road, 39762-5503, MS, Mississippi State, [...]

In the early decades of the twentieth century, Hollywood created its depictions of African Americans. Many of the images, which first appeared in Hollywood films and then on television, were derived from 'Dixie,' a term used to reference the antebellum American South, during a time when African Americans were enslaved. This article examines the account, given by the African American Press, of the ongoing dispute over black imagery between Hollywood and the NAACP. The heightened voice of the African American Press ultimately helped to push for the infusing of black presence in popular culture with the goal of depicting the possibilities of an integrated American society. The NAACP and the African American Press emerged as the leading voices in challenging Hollywood's black caricature culture, after recognizing that harmful black representation was injurious to the burgeoning civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century., Author(s): Teisha Dupree-Wilson [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.254678.a, 0000 0000 9747 8297, Department of Humanities, The History Program, Coppin State University, , Grace Hill Jacobs Building, Room 416, 2500 W. [...]

Author(s): Ava Anderson [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.261331.4, 0000 0001 2285 7943, The Ohio State University, , Columbus, Ohio, USA Julian Bond's Time to Teach: A History of the Southern [...]

Author(s): Zachary Manditch-Prottas [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.4367.6, 0000 0001 2355 7002, Department of African & African American Studies and American Cultures Studies Program, Washington University, , St. Louis, MO, [...]

The religious life of Malcolm X is a vital chapter in the history of Islam and a challenge to both anti-Black racism and Sunni hegemony. Malcolm's biographers have often separated his religion from his politics and his faith from his fight. This essay reads Malcolm's autobiography, alongside his many speeches, interviews, correspondences, and FBI files, in light of his Islam, contending that his faith anchored his dedication to his kin, guiding his struggle for Black liberation., Author(s): Adil Ahmed [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.17091.3e, 0000 0001 2288 9830, University of British Columbia, , Vancouver, BC, Canada Introduction: the Problem of 'Conversion' One of the key, largely [...]