New Books in African American Studies
Episodes
Daniel HoSang and Joseph E. Lowndes, "Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity" (U Minnesota Press, 2019)
10 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Dan HoSang and Joe Lowndes’ new book,Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity (University of Minnesota Pres...
Amy Murrell Taylor, "Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps" (UNC Press, 2018)
29 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Civil War was just days old when the first enslaved men, women, and children began fleeing their plantations to seek refuge inside the lines of th...
Quincy D. Newell, "Your Sister in the Gospel: The Life of Jane Manning James, a Nineteenth-Century Black Mormon" (Oxford UP, 2019)
21 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
"Dear Brother," Jane Manning James wrote to Joseph F. Smith in 1903, "I take this opportunity of writing to ask you if I can get my endowments and als...
Derrick Spires, "The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Print Culture in the Early United States" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2019)
15 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
With talk about birthright citizenship and border walls running rampant in Trump’s America, there are many scholars reaching back to antebellum Amer...
Ali Michael, "Raising Race Questions: Whiteness and Inquiry in Education" (Teachers College Press, 2015)
13 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I talked with Ali Michael on her award-winning book, Raising Race Questions: Whiteness and Inquiry in Education (Teachers College Pre...
J Mase III, "And Then I Got Fired: One Transqueer’s Reflections on Grief, Unemployment, and Inappropriate Jokes About Death"
13 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In his own description of his book, And Then I Got Fired: One Transqueer’s Reflections on Grief, Unemployment, & Inappropriate Jokes About Death, J ...
Fernando Orejuela and Stephanie Shonekan, "Black Lives Matter and Music: Protest, Intervention, Reflection" (Indiana UP, 2018)
07 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Music has always been integral to the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, with songs such as Kendrick Lamar’s "Alright," J. Cole’s "...
Jeanne Theoharis, "The Strange Careers of the Jim Crow North: Segregation and Struggle outside of the South" (NYU Press, 2019)
06 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In this New Books Network/Gotham Center for NYC History podcast, guest host Beth Harpaz, editor of the City University of New York website SUM, interv...
Ernest McGowen III, "African Americans in White Suburbia: Social Networks and Political Behavior" (UP of Kansas 2017)
06 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Relative wealth has given suburban African Americans employment opportunities and political resources--but not necessarily neighbors, coworkers, or el...
Matthew Fox-Amato, "Exposing Slavery: Photography, Human Bondage, and the Birth of Modern Visual Politics in America" (Oxford UP, 2019)
25 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Shortly after its introduction, photography transformed the ways Americans made political arguments using visual images. In the mid-19th century, phot...
Andra Gillespie, "Race and the Obama Administration: Substance, Symbols, and Hope" (Manchester UP, 2019)
18 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Scholars and pundits have been busy trying to assess the legacy of President Barack Obama. Few have done so with the nuance and comparative approach o...
Anand Prahlad, "The Secret Life of a Black Aspie: A Memoir" (U Alaska Press, 2017)
17 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Anand Prahlad was born on a former plantation in Virginia in 1954. This memoir, vividly internal, powerfully lyric, and brilliantly impressionistic, i...
Jamila Lee-Johnson, and Ashley Gaskew, "Critical Theory and Qualitative Data Analysis in Education" (Routledge, 2018)
12 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jamila Lee-Johnson and Ashley Gaskew, doctoral students in education at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, join us in this episode to discuss th...
Max Felker-Kantor, "Policing Los Angeles: Race, Resistance, and the Rise of the LAPD" (UNC Press, 2018)
09 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In recent years, the treatment of African Americans by police departments around the country has come under increased public scrutiny. As any student ...
Su'ad Abdul Khabeer, “Muslim Cool: Race, Religion, and Hip Hop in the United States” (NYU Press, 2016)
05 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Islam in American has been profoundly shaped by the Black Muslim experience. However, Black Muslims are often marginalized both within their own relig...
Michael A. Schoeppner, "Moral Contagion: Black Atlantic Sailors, Citizenship, and Diplomacy in Antebellum America" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
04 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Between 1822 and 1857, eight Southern states barred the ingress of all free black maritime workers. According to lawmakers, they carried a 'moral cont...
LaTanya McQueen, "And It Begins Like This" (Black Lawrence Press, 2018)
03 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Today, I spoke with LaTanya McQueen, whose new collection of essays reckons with intriguing and timely questions about history, race, family, place, a...
Racquel J. Gates, "Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture" (Duke UP, 2018)
03 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Racquel J. Gates’ new book, Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture (Duke University Press, 2018), interrogates understandings of Afric...
Elena Schneider, "The Occupation of Havana: War, Trade and Slavery in the Atlantic World" (UNC Press, 2018)
02 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Histories of the British occupation of Havana in 1762 have focused on imperial rivalries and the actions and decisions of European planters, colonial ...
Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, "They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South" (Yale UP, 2019)
29 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Bridging women’s history, the history of the South, and African American history, this book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in A...
Brooke Newman, "A Dark Inheritance: Blood, Race, and Sex in Colonial Jamaica" (Yale UP, 2018)
27 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In an empire built on racial slavery, what roles do blood purity and citizenship play in the creation of subject citizens? This is one of the many que...
Candis Watts Smith, "Black Politics in Transition: Immigration, Suburbanization, and Gentrification" (Routledge, 2019)
27 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Candis Watts Smith and Christina Greer are the editors of Black Politics in Transition: Immigration, Suburbanization, and Gentrification (Routledge, 2...
Anne Cheng, "Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface" (Oxford UP, 2017)
25 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of the New Books Network, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Dr. Anne Cheng (she/hers)--Pr...
I. Gould Ellen and J. Steil, "The Dream Revisited: Contemporary Debates about Housing, Segregation, and Opportunity" (Columbia UP, 2019)
25 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Why do people live where they do? What explains the persistence of residential segregation? Why is it complicated to address residential segregation? ...
Steve Luxenberg, "Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America’s Journey from Slavery to Segregation" (Norton, 2019)
22 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Steve Luxenberg has created an unusual history of the famous Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson and the 19th century’s segregationist practices i...
Discussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing
19 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more de...
Andrew T. Fede, "Homicide Justified: The Legality of Killing Slaves in the United States and Atlantic World" (U Georgia Press, 2017)
18 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Andrew T. Fede is a lawyer in private practice in northern New Jersey and an adjunct professor of law at Montclair State University. His new book Ho...
Kellie Carter Jackson, "Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence" (U Penn Press, 2019)
18 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What the United States dubs “freedom” is inherently tied to methods of violence. The United States’s abolitionist movement was not free from thi...
Elizabeth Todd-Breland, "A Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago since the 1960s" (UNC Press, 2018)
14 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Elizabeth Todd-Breland’s new book A Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago since the 1960s (University of North Carolin...
Martha S. Jones, "Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
11 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Martha S. Jones, in her excellent new book Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America(Cambridge University Press, 2018), ...
Ronald L. Lewis and Robert L. Zangrando, "Walter F. White: The NAACP’s Ambassador for Racial Justice" (West Virginia UP, 2019)
01 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Though overshadowed today by more celebrated figures, Walter Francis White was one of the most prominent campaigners for civil rights in mid-20th-cent...
Matthew Bowman, "Christian: The Politics of a Word in America" (Harvard UP, 2018)
28 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The intersection of religion and politics in the United States is one of the nation's most enduring conversations. Christian: The Politics of a Word i...
Geraldine Heng, "The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
26 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press 2018), Geraldine Heng collects a remarkable array of medieval approac...
Adrienne Brown, "The Black Skyscraper: Architecture and the Perception of Race" (John Hopkins UP, 2017)
25 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Adrienne Brown joins the New Books Network this week to talk about her fascinating 2017 book, The Black Skyscraper: Architecture and the Perception of...
Bianca Williams, “The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Women, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism" (Duke UP, 2018)
15 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Analyses of the lives of black women in the United States often focus on narratives of struggle and sorrow, as black women must contend daily with the...
Debra Thompson, "The Schematic State: Race, Transnationalism, and the Politics of the Census" (Cambridge UP, 2016)
12 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Debra Thompson, in her award-winning* book The Schematic State: Race, Transnationalism, and the Politics of the Census (Cambridge University Press, 20...
Micah McCrary, "Island in the City" (U Nebraska Press, 2018)
08 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
If you read a lot of nonfiction, you may be familiar with what some call the “memoir quandary”—the complaint that memoir and autobiography are t...
Elliott J. Gorn, "Let the People See: The Story of Emmett Till" (Oxford UP, 2018)
05 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The story of Emmett Till’s death at the hands of white Mississippians is well known. For many Americans, it highlights the racism of the Jim Crow So...
Calvin Schermerhorn, "Unrequited Toil: A History of United States Slavery" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
25 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
At this point, it is hard to fathom the shear volume of studies of American slavery that scholars have produced. And new works on American slavery are...
Daina Ramey Berry and Leslie Harris, "Sexuality and Slavery: Reclaiming Intimate Histories in the Americas" (U Georgia Press, 2018)
24 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Scholarly interest in the institution of American slavery is enjoying a kind of resurgence. Researchers are examining heretofore rarely (or never) stu...
Clarence Taylor, "Fight the Power: African Americans and the Long History of Police Brutality in New York City" (NYU Press, 2018)
18 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In his most new book Fight the Power: African Americans and the Long History of Police Brutality in New York City (NYU Press, 2018), Clarence Taylor, ...
Ashley D. Farmer, "New Perspectives of the Black Intellectual Tradition" (Northwestern UP, 2018)
11 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The field of African American intellectual history is enjoying a kind of renaissance at the moment. The resurgence is due to the work of the African A...
Robin Marie Averbeck, "Liberalism is not Enough: Race and Poverty in Postwar Political Thought" (UNC Press, 2018)
10 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Robin Marie Averbeck is a writer, activist and teacher at California State University, Chico. Liberalism is not Enough: Race and Poverty in Postwar Po...
William D. Green, "The Children of Lincoln: White Paternalism and the Limits of Black Opportunity in Minnesota, 1860–1876" (U Minnesota Press, 2018)
08 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
At a speech before the unveiling of the Freedman’s Monument in 1876, Fredrick Douglass stated, “You are the children of Abraham Lincoln. We are on...
Michael Fischbach, "Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color" (Stanford UP, 2018)
04 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the great animating foreign policy issues of the twenty-first century, one that provokes fierce divisions a...
Maurice J. Hobson, "The Legend of the Black Mecca: Politics and Class in the Making of Modern Atlanta" (UNC Press, 2017)
02 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Maurice J. Hobson’s new book The Legend of the Black Mecca: Politics and Class in the Making of Modern Atlanta (University of North Carolina Pre...
Laura McEnaney, "Postwar: Waging Peace in Chicago" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018)
24 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When World War II ended, Americans celebrated a military victory abroad, but the meaning of peace at home was yet to be defined. From roughly 1943 onw...
Kellie Jones, "South of Pico: African American Artists in the 1960s and 1970s" (Duke UP, 2017)
24 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
New York City might have been the epicenter of the twentieth century American art scene, but Los Angeles was no slouch either, writes Kellie Jones in ...
James Baldwin, "Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood" (Duke UP, 2018)
21 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
This 2018 reprint of Little Man, Little Man exemplifies communal and collaborative textual production. The story was written by James Baldwin and illu...
Jessica Trounstine, "Segregation by Design: Local Politics and Inequality in American Cities" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
12 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
2018 has been a great year for books about sub-national government in the United States. The year ends with another to add to the list. Jessica Trouns...
McKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017)
06 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of Gener...
Aram Goudsouzian and Charles McKinney, "An Unseen Light: Black Struggles for Freedom in Memphis, Tennessee" (UP of Kentucky, 2018)
04 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Most people will know that Memphis, Tennessee is where Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968. That's too bad, because Memphis played an impo...
Adam Malka, "The Men of Mobtown: Policing Baltimore in the Age of Slavery and Emancipation" (UNC Press, 2018)
04 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Criminal justice, policing, and mass incarceration have gained significant political attention recently, and the problems of these systems have drawn ...
John C. Hajduk, "Music Wars: Money, Politics, and Race in the Construction of Rock and Roll Culture, 1940–1960" (Lexington Books, 2018)
03 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book Music Wars: Money, Politics, and Race in the Construction of Rock and Roll Culture, 1940–1960(Lexington Books, 2018), John C. Hajduk...
Sharon Block, "Colonial Complexions: Race and Bodies in Eighteenth-Century America" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018)
28 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we have a certain idea of "race"; it's socially constructed, conventional, and not really biological-grounded in any sense. Yet we commonly us...
Keisha Lindsay, "In a Classroom of Their Own: The Intersection of Race and Feminist Politics in All-Black Male Schools" (U Illinois Press, 2018)
28 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
According to most experts, boys have more trouble in schools than girls. Further, African-American boys have even more trouble than, say, white boys. ...
Michael E. Staub, “The Mismeasure of Minds: Debating Race and Intelligence Between Brown and The Bell Curve” (UNC Press, 2018)
21 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision required desegregation of America’s schools, but it also set in motion an agonizing multi-decade deb...
Ruma Chopra, “Almost Home: Maroons between Slavery and Freedom in Jamaica, Nova Scotia, and Sierra Leone” (Yale UP, 2018)
21 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
After being exiled from their native Jamaica in 1795, the Trelawney Town Maroons endured in Nova Scotia and then in Sierra Leone. In Almost Home: Maro...
Yael Ben-zvi, “Native Land Talk: Indigenous and Arrivant Rights Theories” (Dartmouth College Press, 2018)
15 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Histories of rights have too often marginalized Native Americans and African Americans. Addressing this lacuna, Native Land Talk: Indigenous and Arriv...
Vernon Keeve III, “Southern Migrant Mixtape” (Nomadic Press, 2018)
15 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we speak with Vernon Keeve III about his book Southern Migrant Mixtape (Nomadic Press, 2018), a collection published by Nomadic Pre...
Tracy Fessenden, “Religion Around Billie Holiday” (Penn State UP, 2018)
14 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Billie Holiday is one of the most iconic jazz performers of all time. Her voice is certainly unmistakable but for many her religious sensibilities may...
Alisha Gaines, “Black for a Day: White Fantasies of Race and Empathy” (UNC Press, 2017)
14 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How does one show empathy towards someone across racial lines? In her new book Black for a Day: White Fantasies of Race and Empathy (University of ...
Bernard Fraga, “The Turnout Gap: Race, Ethnicity, and Political Inequality in a Diversifying America” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
12 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Following a historic election, we return again to the question of turnout. Who turned out in large numbers to shift power in the House back to the Dem...
R. C. Romano and C. B. Potter, “Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America’s Past” (Rutgers UP,
07 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America’s Past (Rutgers University Press, 2018), edited by Renee C. Romano and Clair...
Caitlin C. Rosenthal, “Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management” (Harvard UP, 2018)
31 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The familiar narrative of American business development begins in the industrial North, where paternalistic factory owners, committed to a kind of Pro...
Stefan M. Bradley, “Upending the Ivory Tower: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Ivy League” (NYU Press, 2018)
26 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The eight elite institutions that comprise the Ivy League, sometimes known as the Ancient Eight—Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Columbia, Brown, Dar...
Jonathan Shandell, “The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era” (U Iowa Press, 2018)
26 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The role of the artist in the cause of Black freedom has been a hotly debated topic for generations now. Dr. Jonathan Shandell’s The American Negro ...
Sylvia Chan-Malik, “Being Muslim: A Cultural History of Women of Color in American Islam” (NYU Press, 2018)
17 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The story of Muslims in America has primarily been told through the experiences of men and often revolves around narratives of immigration. Sylvia Cha...
Andrew M. Busch, “City in a Garden: Environmental Transformations and Racial Justice in Twentieth-Century Austin, Texas” (UNC Press, 2017)
16 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Austin, Texas has a reputation as a vibrant, youthful capital city buoyed economically and culturally by the University of Texas. In City in a Garden:...
Stefan M. Wheelock, “Barbaric Culture and Black Critique: Black Antislavery Writers, Religion, and the Slaveholding Atlantic” (U Virginia Press, 2015)
15 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Barbaric Culture and Black Critique: Black Antislavery Writers, Religion, and the Slaveholding Atlantic (University of Virginia Press, 2015), Dr....
Treva Lindsey, “Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington D.C.” (U Illinois, 2017)
08 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The New Negro Movement is typically seen as a Harlem-based project. Dr. Treva Lindsey’s important book, Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhoo...
Matthew Harper, “The End of Days: African American Religion and Politics in the Age of Emancipation” (UNC Press, 2016)
02 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of the bloody Civil War, millions of slaves were emancipated. How did those freed slaves, along with African Americans freed before the Ci...
Laila Amine, “Postcolonial Paris: Fictions of Intimacy in the City of Light” (U Wisconsin Press, 2018)
27 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
At the heart of Laila Amine’s book is a crucial question: where is Paris? This question may be surprising for anyone who can readily point to the Fr...
Nicholas Grant, “Winning Our Freedoms Together: African Americans and Apartheid, 1945–1960” (UNC Press, 2017)
25 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The links between African Americans and the global struggle for decolonization, particularly in Africa are well-documented. Facing similar kinds of re...
Christina Snyder, “Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson” (Oxford UP, 2017)
18 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson (Oxford, 2017) is a dramatic and vibrant story of a little-known Kentucky school,...
Freeden Blume Oeur, “Black Boys Apart: Racial Uplift and Respectability in All-Male Public Schools” (U Minnesota Press, 2018)
13 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How do schools empower but also potentially emasculate young black men? In his new book, Black Boys Apart: Racial Uplift and Respectability in All-Ma...
M. Cooper Harriss, “Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Theology” (NYU Press, 2017)
12 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man is a milestone of American literature and the idea of invisibility has become a key way for understanding s...
Keri Leigh Merrit and Matthew Hild, eds., “Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power” (UP of Florida, 2018)
11 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In their new edited volume Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power (University Press of Florida, 2018), Keri Leigh Merritt and...
David García, “Listening for Africa: Freedom, Modernity, and the Logic of Black Music’s African Origins” (Duke UP, 2017)
05 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Listening for Africa: Freedom, Modernity, and the Logic of Black Music’s African Origins (Duke University Press, 2017), David García reminds us...
Millington W. Bergeson-Lockwood, “Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston” (UNC Press, 2018)
29 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Boston’s political culture is most known within the frame of antebellum political struggles over the institution of slavery. What about Reconstructi...
Brian Abrams, “Obama: An Oral History, 2009-2017” (Little A, 2018)
21 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Brian Abrams interviewed more than 100 people – Democrats, Republicans, cabinet officials, White House aides, campaign operatives, congresspeople an...
Lessie B. Branch, “Optimism at All Costs: Black Attitudes, Activism, and Advancement in Obama’s America” (U Massachusetts Press, 2018)
17 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Optimism at All Costs: Black Attitudes, Activism, and Advancement in Obama’s America (University of Massachusetts Press, 2018) takes as its point ...
Judith Weisenfeld, “New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity during the Great Migration” (NYU Press, 2017)
17 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A wave of religious leaders in black communities in the early twentieth-century insisted that so-called Negroes were, in reality, Ethiopian Hebrews, A...
Kristen Epps, “Slavery on the Periphery: The Kansas-Missouri Border in the Antebellum and Civil War Eras” (U Georgia Press, 2016)
16 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Kansas-Missouri border holds a place of infamy in the history of American slavery as the chief battleground of the Bleeding Kansas crisis of the m...
Naomi André, “Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement” (U Illinois Press, 2018)
08 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Naomi André’s innovative new book, Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement (University of Illinois Press, 2018) is an example of a concept she cal...
Heather Schoenfeld, “Building the Prison State: Race and the Politics of Mass Incarceration” (U Chicago Press, 2018)
08 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How did prisons become a tool of racial inequality? Using historical data, Heather Schoenfeld’s new book Building the Prison State: Race and the P...
Vanessa Valdés, “Diasporic Blackness: The Life and Times of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg” (SUNY Press, 2018)
03 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As every scholar of African Americans knows, Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is an essential resource for black history. But...
Wendy Laybourn and Devon Goss, “Diversity in Black Greek-Letter Organizations: Breaking the Line” (Routledge, 2018)
01 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Black Greek-Letter organizations (BGLOs) appeared as an initiative from black college students to provide support, opportunities and service, as well ...
J. Samuel Walker, “Most of 14th Street Is Gone: The Washington, DC Riots of 1968” (Oxford UP, 2018)
30 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Fifty years ago, the United States, and many other societies, experienced one of the most turbulent years of the century. In 1968, Americans were de...
Ian Rocksborough-Smith, “Black Public History in Chicago: Civil Rights Activism From World War II Into the Cold War” (U Illinois Press, 2018)
30 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Activism comes in many forms, be it political, educational, or social. Less often though, do people perceive historical activism in such conversations...
Kelley Fanto Deetz, “Bound to the Fire: How Virginia’s Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine” (UP of Kentucky, 2017)
26 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The concept of “Southern hospitality” began to take form in the late eighteenth century and became especially associated with Virginia’s grand p...
Tameka Bradley Hobbs, “Democracy Abroad, Lynching at Home: Racial Violence in Florida” (UP of Florida, 2015)
26 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The World War II era was a transformative period for the United States’ relationship to the rest of the world. Exporting liberal democracy was an im...
Anna-Lisa Cox, “The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality” (PublicAffairs, 2018)
09 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Most people’s image of the American frontier does not conjure anything relating to people of African descent. But, as Anna-Lisa Cox’s points ou...
Hilary Green, “Educational Reconstruction: African American Schools In The Urban South, 1865-1890” (Fordham UP, 2016)
09 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In cities ravaged by years of bloodshed and warfare, how did black populations, many formerly enslaved, help shape the new world that the Civil War le...
Roger Biles, “Mayor Harold Washington: Champion of Race and Reform in Chicago” (U Illinois Press, 2018)
05 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Harold Washington’s election as mayor of Chicago in 1983 sent a shockwave through the politics of America’s third largest city, one that reverbera...
Frank R. Baumgartner, “Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us about Policing and Race” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
04 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We recently marked the 50th Anniversary of Terry vs. Ohio, the US Supreme Court case that dramatically expanded the scope under which agents of the st...
Martha S. Jones, “Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
02 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The contemporary moment has brought to the forefront the question of what constitutes an American citizen. The legal question in popular understanding...
Christopher W. Schmidt, “The Sit-Ins: Protest and Legal Change in the Civil Rights Era” (U Chicago Press, 2018)
22 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The sit-in movement that swept the Southern states in 1960 was one of the iconic moments of the post-World War II civil rights movement. Yet the image...
Jacqueline Jones, “Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical” (Basic Books, 2017)
18 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The award-winning author Jacqueline Jones is the Ellen C. Temple Chair in Women’s History at the University of Texas. Goddess of Anarchy: The Life a...
Sami Schalk, “Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction” (Duke UP, 2018)
12 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What do werewolves, enslaved women and immortal beings have in common? And how can they shed light on contemporary questions of ableism and police bru...