This compelling book recounts the history of black gay men from the 1950s to the 1990s, tracing how the major movements of the times--from civil rights to black power to gay liberation to AIDS activism--helped shape the cultural stigmas that surrounded race and homosexuality. In locating the rise of black gay identities in historical context, Kevin Mumford explores how activists, performers, and writers rebutted negative stereotypes and refused sexual objectification. Examining the lives of both famous and little-known black gay activists--from James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin to Joseph Beam and Brother Grant-Michael Fitzgerald--Mumford analyzes the ways in which movements for social change both inspired and marginalized black gay men.
Most people think of George McJunkin or the Buffalo Soldiers when they think about African American history in New Mexico, but their history is richer and more complex and continues to this day. This collection is aimed at providing an overview of the dynamic presence of African Americans throughout the state and its history.
From early accounts of free blacks in the Colonies to slave narratives recorded by Works Progress Administration employees in the 1930s to a recent speech by Senator Barack Obama, this collection offers a treasure trove of carefully selected primary documents from and concerning African Americans.
In the Jim Crow era, along with black churches, schools, and newspapers, African Americans also had their own history. Making Black History focuses on the engine behind the early black history movement, Carter G. Woodson and his Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH). Author Jeffrey Aaron Snyder shows how the study and celebration of black history became an increasingly important part of African American life over the course of the early to mid-twentieth century. It was the glue that held African Americans together as “a people,” a weapon to fight racism, and a roadmap to a brighter future.
This almanac is a unique and valuable resource devoted to illustrating and demystifying the moving, difficult, and often lost history of black life in America. A legacy of pride, struggle, and triumph spanning more than 400 years is presented through a fascinating mix of biographies-including 500 influential figures-little-known or misunderstood historical facts, enlightening essays on significant legislation and movements, and 150 rare photographs and illustrations. Covering events surrounding the civil rights movement; African American literature, art, and music; religion within the black community; and advances in science and medicine, this reference connects history to the issues currently facing the African American community and provides a range of information on society and culture.
Call number: REF E185. B8127 2012
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., gives us a sumptuously illustrated landmark book tracing African American history from the arrival of the conquistadors to the election of Barack Obama. Informed by the latest, sometimes provocative scholarship and including more than seven hundred images -- ancient maps, fine art, documents, photographs, cartoons, posters -- Life Upon These Shores focuses on defining events, debates, and controversies, as well as the signal achievements of people famous and obscure. Gates takes us from the sixteenth century through the ordeal of slavery, from the Civil War and Reconstruction through the Jim Crow era and the Great Migration; from the civil rights and black nationalist movements through the age of hip-hop to the Joshua generation.
Call number: REF E185. G27 2011
The African American struggle for freedom and equality is one of the truly heroic elements of American history. Yet even today, African Americans as a whole still don't fully share in the American dream. This encyclopedia explores the struggle's successes and setbacks, from emancipation to the beginning of the 21st century. An impressive range of subjects covers everything from W.E.B. DuBois to early legislative acts, constitutional amendments of the mid-1800s, Black Is Beautiful, the tumultuous events of the 1960s, Al Sharpton, the Million Man March, and Adam Clayton Powell. Primary documents--personal vignettes, court cases, newspaper articles, and speeches--provide firsthand accounts and supplement the A-to-Z entries. An extensive timeline highlights key events.
Call number: REF E185.61. E54 2003
Here indeed is the pantheon of African American writers--Phillis Wheatley and Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du Bois, Gwendolyn Brooks and Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, John EdgarWideman and August Wilson, Jamaica Kincaid and Gloria Naylor, Stanley Crouch and Cornel West, and hundreds more. Moreover, the Companion includes entries on 150 major works of African American literature (including synopses of novels), on literary characters, and on such icons of black culture as Muhammad Ali, John Coltrane, Marcus Garvey, Jackie Robinson, John Brown, and Harriet Tubman. Here, too, are general articles on the traditional literary genres, such as poetry, fiction, and drama.
Call number: REF PS 153 N5 O96 1997
African American heritage is rich with stories of family, community, faith, love, adaptation and adjustment, grief, and suffering, all captured in a variety of media by artists intimately familiar with them. From traditional media of painting and artists such as Horace Pippin and Faith Ringgold, to photography of Gordon Parks, and new media of Sam Gilliam and Martin Puryear (installation art), the African American experience is reflected across generations and works. Eight pages of color plates and black and white images throughout the book introduce both favorite and new artists to students and adult readers alike.
Call number: REF N6538 N5 J44 2009
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Showcases all facets of African American music, including folk, religious, concert, and popular styles of today. Illuminates the profound role that African American music has played in American cultural history. Call number: REF ML101 U6 E53 2011 |
Despite their significant contributions to the American theater, African American dramatists have received less critical attention than novelists and poets. This reference offers thorough critical assessments of the lives and works of African American playwrights from the 19th century to the present. The book alphabetically arranges entries on more than 60 dramatists, including James Baldwin, Arna Bontemps, Ossie Davis, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and includes a biography, a discussion of major works and themes, a summary of the playwright's critical reception, and primary and secondary bibliographies. The volume closes with a selected, general bibliography.
Call number: REF PS338 N4 A69 2004
Africans brought as slaves to North America arrived without possessions, but not without culture. The fascinating elements of African life manifested themselves richly in the New World, and among the most lasting and influential of these was the art of African dance.This generously illustrated exploration of African American dance history follows the dynamics of the dance forms throughout each generation. Chapter 1 provides introductory information about the African continent and the heritage that spawned African American dance. Following is a discussion of the discrimination and marginalization endured by African Americans, and the fortitude with which the dance survived and became increasingly important in American culture. Chapters 2 and 3 explore black dance in the slavery era and the variety of black festivals and gatherings that helped to preserve and showcase African-based dance throughout the nineteenth century. Remaining chapters outline ten major characteristics that have consistently marked African American dance, and describe the various styles of black vernacular dance that became popular in America--the Ring Shout, Buzzard Lope, Cakewalk, Shimmy, Charleston, Black Bottom, Big Apple, Lindy Hop, and more. Chapter 8 concludes with a discussion of African dance at the end of the twentieth century and its important role in the flowering of African American arts.
Call number: GV1624.7.A34 G53 2007
*Also available as an eBook* Frederick Douglass Opie deconstructs and compares the foodways of people of African descent throughout the Americas, interprets the health legacies of black culinary traditions, and explains the concept of soul itself, revealing soul food to be an amalgamation of West and Central African social and cultural influences as well as the adaptations blacks made to the conditions of slavery and freedom in the Americas. Sampling from travel accounts, periodicals, government reports on food and diet, and interviews with more than thirty people born before 1945, Opie reconstructs an interrelated history of Moorish influence on the Iberian Peninsula, the African slave trade, slavery in the Americas, the emergence of Jim Crow, the Great Migration, the Great Depression, and the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. His grassroots approach reveals the global origins of soul food, the forces that shaped its development, and the distinctive cultural collaborations that occurred among Africans, Asians, Europeans, and Americans throughout history. Opie shows how food can be an indicator of social position, a site of community building and cultural identity, and a juncture at which different cultural traditions can develop and impact the collective health of a community.
Call number: TX 715. O548 2008