Sojourning for Freedom portrays pioneering black women activists from the early twentieth century through the 1970s, focusing on their participation in the U.S. Communist Party (CPUSA) between 1919 and 1956. Erik S. McDuffie considers how women from diverse locales and backgroun…
Describes how the Pullman Company hired former slaves as sleeping car porters and became the largest employer of African American men in the country by the 1920s, creating a unique culture that blazed a path for a black middle class.
"Mary Helen Washington recovers the vital role of 1950s leftist politics in the works and lives of modern African American writers and artists. While most histories of McCarthyism focus on the devastation of the blacklist and the intersection of leftist politics and American cul…
In identifying the Jim Crow period with the coming of modernity, Smethurst upsets the customary assessment of the Harlem Renaissance as the first nationally significant black arts movement, showing how artists reacted to Jim Crow with migration narratives, poetry about the black…
"Giving voice to a population rarely acknowledged in southern history, Sweet Tea collects life stories from black gay men who were born, raised, and continue to live in the southern United States. E. Patrick Johnson challenges stereotypes of the South as 'backward' or 'repressiv…
"This text explores the dramatic evolution in Latin American social movements over the past fifteen years. Leading scholars examine a variety of cases that highlight significant shifts in the region. First is the breakdown of the Washington Consensus and the global economic cris…
Following his groundbreaking explorations of the blues and American popular music in Escaping the Delta and How the Beatles Destroyed Rock 'n' Roll, Elijah Wald turns his attention to the tradition of African American street rhyming and verbal combat that ruled urban neighborhoo…
"At its simplest, the dozens is a comic concatenation of "yo' mama" jokes. At its most complex, it is a form of social interaction that reaches back to African ceremonial rituals. Whether considered vernacular poetry, verbal dueling, a test of street cool, or just a mess of dirt…
"At its simplest, the dozens is a comic concatenation of "yo' mama" jokes. At its most complex, it is a form of social interaction that reaches back to African ceremonial rituals. Whether considered vernacular poetry, verbal dueling, a test of street cool, or just a mess of dirt…