Search

For centuries after the arrival of Africans in America, mobility served as a key form of protest against oppressive social systems that denied them freedom and equality. Enslaved Africans and [...]

For almost four centuries, African Americans in New York City have engaged in ethnic 'dream-work,' shaping the city and being shaped by the city in return. The longstanding practice of racism forced a heterogeneous community of Blacks--originating in different parts of the country and the world, speaking many languages, and comprised of different economic classes--to coalesce as a community in order to challenge their subjugation. This article explores the issues, conditions, and experiences that frame the coalescence of the African American community in New York City during the twentieth century, highlighting how racial identities have been produced in the city. In the first part of this article, I reflect on the presence of Blacks in New York City to illuminate some of the common themes that have emerged from the African American experience in Gotham. The second section is a historical exploration of the black experience in New York City, illuminating the conditions, expectations, events, and spaces that have shaped its formation Key Words: New York City, African Americans, race, immigration, urban history

No state in the United States represents the clash of regional identity more than Texas as people both within Texas and outside debate whether it is Southern or Western in its cultural and political orientation. Texas could never be considered just another southern state although southern history intersected with Texas history on almost every turn, as its founding by the Spanish, the presence of a third group, Hispanics, in the racial structure, its western cattle industry legacy, and its rapidly urbanizing economy all ensured that Old south racial values could never completely prevail.

The story of how the Euro-American settlers arriving near the Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area in central Kansas in the early 1870s converted the drought-ridden area into a wetland by undertaking projects like Lake Koen Navigation, building reservoirs, and establishing irrigation company is outlined. The continuous development of the area by draining the wetlands, has caused concern among wildlife biologists at Cheyenne Bottoms, who are struggling to convince the inhabitants about the need to maintain an adequate habitat in an area which plays host to numerous endangered species such as the Lest Tern, the Peregrine Falcon, the Piping Plover, the Bald Eagle and the Whooping Crane.

The pursuit of a girl named Alice Todd, captured by the native Indians, documents realistically one of the legendary searches for Indian captives. Alice's story, besides illustrating the guilt and frustration felt endured by the captives' parents, who felt responsible for having exposed their children to danger on the frontier, also demonstrates that federal government of the latter 1860s, which had just conquered Robert E. Lee and other southern rebels, was powerless to counter the tactics of a handful of aboriginal warriors on the western plains.

An overview of the race and politics in Arkansas, during the period 1910-1950m, is provided. It is seen that the period brought important political challenges and some significant changes for African Americans in Arkansas, with many of the legal and extra-legal provisions of race-based political exclusion gone by the end of the period.

The role of Ragsdale couple, Lincoln and Eleanor Ragsdale, during the early years of civil Rights movement, is portrayed. Their activism and commitment to tolerance and diversity helped in demonstrating how far America has come since World War II, and how far it has to go.

The First Negro Classic Ballet started by Joseph Rickard, a White, for helping blacks who were not allowed to attend the regular ballet school, provided them a unique means of expression during a critical era of social change in America. The ballet accomplished much more than beautiful dancing by serving as an example of multiethnic interaction in the arts in postwar Los Angeles.

Julius Rosenwald, who was the president of Sears, Roebuck and company from the year 1908 until 1924 made contributions which led the chances of acquiring a new and better school for African Americans. He used part of his fortune to help rural African Americans throughout the south realize the educational opportunities they sought by building schools.

Bud Billiken Day began as a mid-summer diversion, a frolic. But within a decade Bud Billiken Day and Parade had become Chicago's African American New Year, Decoration Day, Fourth of [...]

In March 1863 a Union officer wrote to his hometown newspaper inquiring, "Are there any contrabands wanted in Iowa City, or its vicinity for help this spring? If so, please […]

In recent years, historical archaeologists have become increasingly interested in exploring how to use material culture to study conflict and how the interpretation of their sites is affected by modern perception. Grounded in a dialectical epistemology, the experience of past peoples is considered part of an ongoing social confrontation between social actors. Archaeologists tend to consider cultures as neatly bounded homogeneous entities. The holistic, monolithic nature of cultures has been put into question by several empirical and theoretical studies. In northeastern Brazil, a large maroon kingdom called Palmares developed in the 17th century, and people have often interpreted it in two ways. Some prefer to stress the African character of the polity, while others emphasize the diversity within the community. Archaeological research at Palmares produced evidence of a heterogeneous society, an interpretive model that does not follow dominant epistemological schemes and prejudices.

The period of legal segregation in the United States is characterized in modern thought as a system of racial separation prevalent in the South around the first half of the 20th century. Separation implies a spatiality that seems to lend itself to a landscape study. In problematizing such a study, it becomes clear that the spatial signs of segregation are markers in a complex system of identity building and maintenance relationships. The association of identity politics with cultural landscape analysis provides a picture of segregation that pushes beyond the bounds of African American neighborhood or residential sites. Examining three turn-of-the-20th-century sites in Annapolis, Maryland, provides an example of how archaeology, in examining urban contexts, has a role in how this period of segregation is perceived.

Pragmatism's anti-essentialist emphasis on contingency and plurality and its notion of truth-as-created (not discovered) have important implications for the interpretation of archaeological data, and for the `public presentation' of archaeological research. This paper will examine a pragmatically oriented project in Brazoria, Texas, USA, in which archaeologists and local citizens (including site descendants) have collaborated to create an Internet website to discuss the politically and emotionally charged archaeologies and histories of an eighteenth-century sugar plantation. It will discuss ways in which a pragmatic philosophical framework has given archaeologists new ways of approaching and `conversing' about their data, and new ways of dealing, openly and non-hierarchically, with the communities most affected by their research. It will also discuss ways in which elements of post-processual archaeological theory--multivocality, interactivity, reflexivity and contextuality--were incorporated within both the content and delivery of the website, and will close with a short discussion about whether these strategies were effective in creating an open, relevant, democratic and multivocal discourse about archaeology. Keywords African-American archaeology; pragmatism; plantation archaeology; Levi Jordan Plantation; Internet; reflexivity; multivocality; post-processual theory.

In the late 1960s, there was active unrest in the African-American population, due to discrimination and second-class treatment. The Civil Rights Movement, based on the principles of nonviolence and petitions [...]

This essay presents a narrative about the Jackson School in Smith County, Texas, utilizing the voices of former teachers and students who experienced its origin and evolution between 1925 and [...]

A list of useful web sites for studying the history of African Americans is presented.

A model for economic boycotts of White-owned business supported by paramilitary organization was developed in Natchez, MS, in 1965. Armed resistance combined with economic pressure was successfully used to battle segregation in many Mississippi cities between 1965 and 1979.

NOT THE LEAST REMARKABLE FACT ABOUT C. VANN WOODWARD'S Origins of the New South is that, fifty years ago, Woodward knew better than to attempt what I have been asked [...]

Issues concerning the history of race relations in New Haven, CT, are examined, focusing on the rise of the Black Panther Party (BPP) between 1969-74, and militant black protest against the police policies of the time. Topics include the relationship between civil rights groups and the mayor's office, the BPP program for social change, and the manner in which FBI agents entered the inner workings of the BPP.

The relationship between black studies scholarship and black political activism is examined, focusing on the role of the activist scholars at the Institute of the Black World (IBW), which was founded in Atlanta, GA, shortly after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, in 1968. Topics include the birth of black studies programs at American universities, and the IBW philosophy that black studies research is a crucial ingredient to black self-determination.

Issues concerning the political history of the black national organization US, which referred to the 'us vs. them' dynamic between blacks and whites, are examined. Topics include the founding of the organization in 1965, profiles of its leaders, its relationship with the Black Congress, its role in the black politics of Los Angeles, CA, and its influence on African American leadership across the country.

The economic and political struggles of poor black women in Baltimore, MD, during the 1960s and 70s are examined. Topics include the founding of political organizations in Baltimore, the influence of Great Society programs, the deplorable urban conditions in which many black women lived, and the manner in which the Black Power national movement influenced the political action of black women, who might not have characterized themselves as being aligned with the Black Power movement.

Issues concerning the Black Power movement, during the era of the 1950s through the 1970s, are examined, focusing on the stages of the movement and how it fit into the struggle for civil rights and black liberation. Topics include black radical politics during the Civil War, the significance of the publication of 'The Autobiography of Malcolm X,' 1960s figures such as Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton, and an analysis of the past accomplishments of and future challenges for historical scholarship on the Black Power movement.

Let me begin with a famous misunderstanding. As he later recounted it, when Olaudah Equiano first saw the white slave traders who eventually carried him to the West Indies, he [...]

This article presents a historical overview of 'The Freedmen's Torchlight', a textbook newspaper published in 1866 by the African Civilization Society. The instructional periodical was designed to teach freed slaves how to survive in the new society and demonstrates African Americans' involvement in developing instructional technology.

105,832 freedmen registered to vote for 1867 Virginia election. 93,145 freedmen (88%) voted in the 1867 Virginia election. Historian Richard Lowe Of all [the] ridiculous and mischievous legislating, that of [...]

Notions of time and progress as they are portrayed in American antebellum literature are examined, focusing on the life stories of African Americans. Topics include the non-synchronous life patterns of white and black Americans; an argument against the idea that individual identities move toward a general, abstract, national identity through time; and a consideration of progress, labor, revolution, and literary studies.

Issues related to the manner in which the history of African Americans is experienced and communicated within the African American community are examined, focusing on how a lyric by Public Enemy that ambiguously equates 'trust' with 'truss' illuminates the role language has played in the evolution of the African American character. Topics include the oppressive context in which African American discourse developed, the metaphor of the African drum, the importance of constructing a social face, and the dichotomy between 'cool' and 'fool.'

This article discusses the use of oral history in educating students about the history of Chatham County, North Carolina. Topics include increased awareness of local history and social injustice and increased respect for the people who lived through it.

Black-white infant mortality rates showed a convergence from 1965, especially in rural areas of the southern USA, where race-specific policies may have contributed to this improvement. Rust belt data also show convergence.

Many of Virginia's white slaveholders were troubled by urban free blacks at the end of the 18th century, assuming an alliance between them and slaves. Often Revolutionary principles were abandoned and free blacks' movements were limited or the people expelled.

Yards, like buildings and more portable artifacts, are significant expressions of culture. Yet within African-American archaeology, yards have not been the focus of serious discussions addressing questions of work and leisure activities, community interactions, aesthetics, and culture change. The authors review archaeological, ethnographic, and historical evidence of yards associated with New World slave quarters and present a framework for analysis. Results of recent excavations at a slave quarter at Poplar Forest in central Virginia, occupied from ca. 1790 to 1812, are presented within the context of this framework. The archaeological study of yard spaces provides significant information about cultural meanings and uses of space.

Issues discussed concern the leadership of African-American educator William G. Price (1868-1941) at the Gloucester Agricultural and Industrial School in Virginia. Topics include Price's education at Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute and Harvard, and his devotion to the advancement of the African-American race.

An African American photographer recounts a lifelong study of the culture and traditions of the Africans as mirror images of the ones with which he had grown up. He tried to reconnect with what his people had left behind so many centuries ago in Africa and, in so doing, discovered there the vast evidence of past civilizations.

The author discusses the concepts of race and manhood among black men in the US between 1890 and 1910, as expressed by the movement to emigrate to Africa and the participation of black US soldiers in colonial wars.

Formal roles and informal customs created innumerable obstacles to the socioeconomic advance of Virginia's free black population. Laws prohibited free blacks from some activities and occupations and restricted their participation in others. Racism and Klan-like terrorism also made advancement difficult. Despite these disadvantages, Virginia's free black population fared rather well. They grew nearly as tall as white Americans and towered over contemporary Europeans. Primary sources and the secondary literature are consistent with the anthropometric evidence. Blacks had reasonable access to nutrients and black-white income differentials did not condemn the state's free blacks to an underclass culture of poverty.

Urban ethnogenesis is a process by which a group creates and maintains social networks and communication patterns as the basis for institutional and communal life in urban areas. Ethnogenesis is a foundation upon which most historical urbanward migrations have been built, including the 'Great Migration' of African Americans during the first half of this century. Although a period of decreased migration, the Depression was marked by sizeable movement in which nearly 10% of the total African American population moved interregionally. Ethnogenic measures such as NAACP activism, the number of community newspapers directed at African Americans, and the longevity of a chapter of the National Urban League significantly increased migration flows.

Colonel Samuel Ragland, an Alabama planter, received an unusual visitor one day in the early 1850s. The caller was James Rapier, a relatively prosperous free black man, and the visit [...]

The development of African-American studies as an interdisciplinary subject dates back to the 1960s and general ignorance of the culture and social life of African Americans. Social sciences and humanities have benefitted significantly since the 1960s by the new perspectives drawn by analysis of social, cultural, political and historical aspects of African Americans.