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Cutting Along the Color Line
Today, black-owned barber shops play a central role in African American public life. The intimacy of commercial grooming encourages both confidentiality and camaraderie, which make the barber shop an important gathering place for African American men to talk freely. But for many years preceding and even after the Civil War, black barbers endured a measure of social stigma for perpetuating inequality: though the profession offered economic mobility to black entrepreneurs, black barbers were obliged by custom to serve an exclusively white clientele. Quincy T. Mills traces the lineage from these nineteenth-century barbers to the bustling enterprises of today, demonstrating that the livelihood offered by the service economy was crucial to the development of a black commercial sphere and the barber shop as a democratic social space.Cutting Along the Color Linechronicles the cultural history of black barber shops as businesses and civic institutions. Through several generations of barbers, Mills examines the transition from slavery to freedom in the nineteenth century, the early twentieth-century expansion of black consumerism, and the challenges of professionalization, licensing laws, and competition from white barbers. He finds that the profession played a significant though complicated role in twentieth-century racial politics: while the services of shaving and grooming were instrumental in the creation of socially acceptable black masculinity, barbering permitted the financial independence to maintain public spaces that fostered civil rights politics. This sweeping, engaging history of an iconic cultural establishment shows that black entrepreneurship was intimately linked to the struggle for equality.
eBook
Eavesdropping on elephants : how listening helps conservation
\"Can understanding how forest elephants communicate help scientists find ways to protect them? Come behind the scenes of Cornell University's Elephant Listening Project to see what's being done to keep these majestic animals safe.\"-- Provided by publisher.
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A nation within a nation
John Ernest offers a comprehensive survey of the broad-ranging and influential African American organizations and networks formed in the North in the late eighteenth century through the end of the Civil War. He examines fraternal organizations, churches, conventions, mutual aid benefit and literary societies, educational organizations, newspapers, and magazines. Ernest argues these organizations demonstrate how African Americans self-definition was not solely determined by slavery as they tried to create organizations in the hope of creating a community.
eBook
Bury my heart in a free land : black women intellectuals in modern U.S. history
\"This book rejects the notion that black women were at the margin of American intellectual life. Black women as preachers, abolitionists, creative writers, and civil rights activists are examined here to illustrate the fundamental position that black women intellectuals occupied in modern U.S. history, while at the same time demonstrating how these women used the public sphere and writing as an attempt at self-articulation. For these women, writing and speaking served simultaneously as acts of self-articulation and as calls to action. The art of testimony and confession was utilized by black women in their campaigns of social reform and beyond. Michel Foucault argues that \"power is exercised from innumerable points, in the interplay of non-egalitarian and mobile relations.\" African American women despite living in an unequal society operationalized their voices in the quest for universal human rights throughout U.S. history as traditional, public, and organic intellectuals. This volume is divided into five major sections to illustrate this history.\"--Provided by publisher.
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Torchbearers of Democracy
On April 2, 1917, Woodrow Wilson thrust the United States into World War I by declaring, \"The world must be made safe for democracy.\" For the 380,000 African American soldiers who fought and labored in the global conflict, these words carried life or death meaning. Relating stories bridging the war and postwar years, spanning the streets of Chicago and the streets of Harlem, from the battlefields of the American South to the battlefields of the Western Front, Chad L. Williams reveals the central role of African American soldiers in World War I and how they, along with race activists and ordinary citizens alike, committed to fighting for democracy at home and beyond.Using a diverse range of sources, Williams connects the history of African American soldiers and veterans to issues such as the obligations of citizenship, combat and labor, diaspora and internationalism, homecoming and racial violence, \"New Negro\" militancy, and African American historical memories of the war. Democracy may have been distant from the everyday lives of African Americans at the dawn of the war, but it nevertheless remained a powerful ideal that sparked the hopes of black people throughout the country for societal change.Torchbearers of Democracyreclaims the legacy of black soldiers and establishes the World War I era as a defining moment in the history of African Americans and peoples of African descent more broadly.
eBook
Supreme models : iconic black women who revolutionized fashion
\"The first-ever book celebrating black models, filled with revealing essays, interviews, and stunning photographs\"--Provided by publisher.
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Life Histories of the Dobe !Kung
Life Histories of the Dobe !Kung re-examines an important anthropological data set for the Dobe !Kung, the well-known \"Bushmen\" of the Kalahari Desert, collected by Nancy Howell and colleagues. Using life history analysis, Howell reinterprets this rich material to address the question of how these hunter-gatherers maintain their notably good health from childhood through old age in the Kalahari's harsh environment. She divides the population into life history stages that correlate with estimated chronological ages and demonstrates how and why they survive, even thrive, on a modest allotment of calories. She describes how surplus food is produced and distributed, and she considers both the motives for the generous sharing she has observed among the Dobe !Kung and some evolutionary implications of that behavior.
eBook
African Americans and Africa : a new history
What is an \"African American\" and how does this identity relate to the African continent? Rising immigration levels, globalization, and the United States' first African American president have all sparked new dialogue around the question. This work provides an introduction to the relationship between African Americans and Africa from the era of slavery to the present, mapping several overlapping diasporas. It examines the diversity of African American identities through relationships with region, ethnicity, slavery, and immigration to investigate questions fundamental to the study of African American history and culture but often overlooked.
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Let Us Fight as Free Men
Today, the military is one the most racially diverse institutions in the United States. But for many decades African American soldiers battled racial discrimination and segregation within its ranks. In the years after World War II, the integration of the armed forces was a touchstone in the homefront struggle for equality-though its importance is often overlooked in contemporary histories of the civil rights movement. Drawing on a wide array of sources, from press reports and newspapers to organizational and presidential archives, historian Christine Knauer recounts the conflicts surrounding black military service and the fight for integration.Let Us Fight as Free Menshows that, even after their service to the nation in World War II, it took the persistent efforts of black soldiers, as well as civilian activists and government policy changes, to integrate the military. In response to unjust treatment during and immediately after the war, African Americans pushed for integration on the strength of their service despite the oppressive limitations they faced on the front and at home. Pressured by civil rights activists such as A. Philip Randolph, President Harry S. Truman passed an executive order that called for equal treatment in the military. Even so, integration took place haltingly and was realized only after the political and strategic realities of the Korean War forced the Army to allow black soldiers to fight alongside their white comrades. While the war pushed the civil rights struggle beyond national boundaries, it also revealed the persistence of racial discrimination and exposed the limits of interracial solidarity.Let Us Fight as Free Menreveals the heated debates about the meaning of military service, manhood, and civil rights strategies within the African American community and the United States as a whole.
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