Friday, October 30, 2015
The Anthology of African American Literature: Volume 1, 1746 - 1920
The Anthology of African American Literature is a comprehensive collection of poems, short stories, novellas, novels, plays, autobiographies, and essays authored by African Americans from the eighteenth century until the present. Evenly divided into two volumes, it is also the first such anthology to be conceived and published for both classroom and online education in the new millennium. * Reflects the current scholarly and pedagogic structure of African American literary studies * Selects literary texts according to extensive research on classroom adoptions, scholarship, and the expert opinions of leading professors * Organizes literary texts according to more appropriate periods of literary history, dividing them into seven sections that accurately depict intellectual, cultural, and political movements * Includes more reprints of entire works and longer selections of major works than any other anthology of its kind * This first volume contains a comprehensive collection of texts authored by African Americans from the eighteenth century until the 1920s The two volumes of this landmark anthology can also be bought as a set, at over 20% savings.
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Race Horse Men: How Slavery and Freedom Were Made at the Racetrack
Race Horse Men recaptures the vivid sights, sensations, and illusions of nineteenth-century thoroughbred racing, America's first mass spectator sport. Inviting readers into the pageantry of the racetrack, Katherine C. Mooney conveys the sport's inherent drama while also revealing the significant intersections between horse racing and another quintessential institution of the antebellum South: slavery.
A popular pastime across American society, horse racing was most closely identified with an elite class of southern owners who bred horses and bet large sums of money on these spirited animals. The central characters in this story are not privileged whites, however, but the black jockeys, grooms, and horse trainers who sometimes called themselves race horse men and who made the racetrack run. Mooney describes a world of patriarchal privilege and social prestige where blacks as well as whites could achieve status and recognition and where favored slaves endured an unusual form of bondage. For wealthy white men, the racetrack illustrated their cherished visions of a harmonious, modern society based on human slavery.
After emancipation, a number of black horsemen went on to become sports celebrities, their success a potential threat to white supremacy and a source of pride for African Americans. The rise of Jim Crow in the early twentieth century drove many horsemen from their jobs, with devastating consequences for them and their families. Mooney illuminates the role these too-often-forgotten men played in Americans' continuing struggle to define the meaning of freedom.
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Ancient Egypt: From Prehistory to the Islamic Conquest
Home to some of the most remarkable feats of engineering as well as awe-inspiring natural vistas, ancient Egypt was a land of great promise fulfilled. Its pyramids, writing systems, and art all predate the Islamic conquest and are symbols of the civilization’s vitality. This volume invites readers to indulge in the splendors of ancient Egyptian culture and discover the traditions that have fired imaginations for generations. A detailed appendix profiles important sites throughout Egypt, many of which still contain remnants and artifacts that illustrate the import of this extraordinary civilization.
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Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer
Representing the Race tells the story of an enduring paradox of American race relations, through the prism of a collective biography of African American lawyers who worked in the era of segregation. Practicing the law and seeking justice for diverse clients, they confronted a tension between their racial identity as black men and women and their professional identity as lawyers. Both blacks and whites demanded that these attorneys stand apart from their racial community as members of the legal fraternity. Yet, at the same time, they were expected to be "authentic"-that is, in sympathy with the black masses. This conundrum, as Kenneth W. Mack shows, continues to reverberate through American politics today.
Mack reorients what we thought we knew about famous figures such as Thurgood Marshall, who rose to prominence by convincing local blacks and prominent whites that he was-as nearly as possible-one of them. But he also introduces a little-known cast of characters to the American racial narrative. These include Loren Miller, the biracial Los Angeles lawyer who, after learning in college that he was black, became a Marxist critic of his fellow black attorneys and ultimately a leading civil rights advocate; and Pauli Murray, a black woman who seemed neither black nor white, neither man nor woman, who helped invent sex discrimination as a category of law. The stories of these lawyers pose the unsettling question: what, ultimately, does it mean to "represent" a minority group in the give-and-take of American law and politics?
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Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation
Around 1785, a woman was taken from her home in Senegambia and sent to Saint-Domingue in the Caribbean. Those who enslaved her there named her Rosalie. Her later efforts to escape slavery were the beginning of a family's quest, across five generations and three continents, for lives of dignity and equality. Freedom Papers sets the saga of Rosalie and her descendants against the background of three great antiracist struggles of the nineteenth century: the Haitian Revolution, the French Revolution of 1848, and the Civil War and Reconstruction in the United States.
Freed during the Haitian Revolution, Rosalie and her daughter Elisabeth fled to Cuba in 1803. A few years later, Elisabeth departed for New Orleans, where she married a carpenter, Jacques Tinchant. In the 1830s, with tension rising against free persons of color, they left for France. Subsequent generations of Tinchants fought in the Union Army, argued for equal rights at Louisiana's state constitutional convention, and created a transatlantic tobacco network that turned their Creole past into a commercial asset. Yet the fragility of freedom and security became clear when, a century later, Rosalie's great-great-granddaughter Marie-José was arrested by Nazi forces occupying Belgium.
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Of God and Gods: Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism
For thousands of years, our world has been shaped by biblical monotheism. But its hallmark - a distinction between one true God and many false gods - was once a new and radical idea. "Of God and Gods" explores the revolutionary newness of biblical theology against a background of the polytheism that was once so commonplace.Jan Assmann, one of the most distinguished scholars of ancient Egypt working today, traces the concept of a true religion back to its earliest beginnings in Egypt and describes how this new idea took shape in the context of the older polytheistic world that it rejected. He offers readers a deepened understanding of Egyptian polytheism and elaborates on his concept of the "Mosaic distinction," which conceives an exclusive and emphatic Truth that sets religion apart from beliefs shunned as superstition, paganism, or heresy.Without a theory of polytheism, Assmann contends, any adequate understanding of monotheism is impossible. This work will be of great interest to anyone seeking to understand the relationship between God and gods.
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The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True
Magic takes many forms. Supernatural magic is what our ancestors used in order to explain the world before they developed the scientific method. The ancient Egyptians explained the night by suggesting the goddess Nut swallowed the sun. The Vikings believed a rainbow was the gods’ bridge to earth. The Japanese used to explain earthquakes by conjuring a gigantic catfish that carried the world on its back—earthquakes occurred each time it flipped its tail. These are magical, extraordinary tales. But there is another kind of magic, and it lies in the exhilaration of discovering the real answers to these questions. It is the magic of reality—science.
Packed with clever thought experiments, dazzling illustrations and jaw-dropping facts, The Magic of Reality explains a stunningly wide range of natural phenomena. What is stuff made of? How old is the universe? Why do the continents look like disconnected pieces of a puzzle? What causes tsunamis? Why are there so many kinds of plants and animals? Who was the first man, or woman? This is a page-turning, graphic detective story that not only mines all the sciences for its clues but primes the reader to think like a scientist as well.
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Thursday, October 29, 2015
American Pain: How a Young Felon and His Ring of Doctors Unleashed America's Deadliest Drug Epidemic
The king of the Florida pill mills was American Pain, a mega-clinic expressly created to serve addicts posing as patients. From a fortress-like former bank building, American Pain’s doctors distributed massive quantities of oxycodone to hundreds of customers a day, mostly traffickers and addicts who came by the vanload. Inked muscle-heads ran the clinic’s security. Former strippers operated the pharmacy, counting out pills and stashing cash in garbage bags. Under their lab coats, the doctors carried guns—and it was all legal… sort of.
American Pain was the brainchild of Chris George, a 27-year-old convicted drug felon. The son of a South Florida home builder, Chris George grew up in ultra-rich Wellington, where Bill Gates, Springsteen, and Madonna kept houses. Thick-necked from weightlifting, he and his twin brother hung out with mobsters, invested in strip clubs, brawled with cops, and grinned for their mug shots. After the housing market stalled, a local doctor clued in the brothers to the burgeoning underground market for lightly regulated prescription painkillers. In Florida, pain clinics could dispense the meds, and no one tracked the patients. Seizing the opportunity, Chris George teamed up with the doctor, and word got out. Just two years later Chris had raked in $40 million, and 90 percent of the pills his doctors prescribed flowed north to feed the rest of the country’s insatiable narcotics addiction. Meanwhile, hundreds more pain clinics in the mold of American Pain had popped up in the Sunshine State, creating a gigantic new drug industry.
American Pain chronicles the rise and fall of this game-changing pill mill, and how it helped tip the nation into its current opioid crisis, the deadliest drug epidemic in American history. The narrative swings back and forth between Florida and Kentucky, and is populated by a gaudy and diverse cast of characters. This includes the incongruous band of wealthy bad boys, thugs and esteemed physicians who built American Pain, as well as penniless Kentucky clans who transformed themselves into painkiller trafficking rings. It includes addicts whose lives were devastated by American Pain’s drugs, and the federal agents and grieving mothers who labored for years to bring the clinic’s crew to justice
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No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy
Philanthro-capitalism: How charity became big business
The charitable sector is one of the fastest-growing industries in the global economy. Nearly half of the more than 85,000 private foundations in the United States have come into being since the year 2000. Just under 5,000 more were established in 2011 alone. This deluge of philanthropy has helped create a world where billionaires wield more power over education policy, global agriculture, and global health than ever before.
Charities link the farmers in Africa to the boardrooms of corporate foundations and the corridors of the World Economic Forum at Davos. Far from being selfless, plutocratic philanthropy may be the ultimate profit-making tool.
In No Such Thing as a Free Gift, author and academic Linsey McGoey puts this new golden age of philanthropy under the microscope—paying particular attention to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As large charitable organizations replace governments as the providers of social welfare, their largesse becomes suspect. The businesses fronting the money often create the very economic instability and inequality the foundations are purported to solve. We are entering an age when the ideals of social justice are dependent on the strained rectitude and questionable generosity of the mega-rich.
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100 Deadly Skills: The SEAL Operative's Guide to Eluding Pursuers, Evading Capture, and Surviving Any Dangerous Situation
A hands-on, practical survival guide from retired Navy SEAL Clint Emerson—adapted for civilians from actual special forces operations—to eluding pursuers, evading capture, and surviving any dangerous situation.
In today’s increasingly dangerous world, threats to your personal safety are everywhere. From acts of terror to mass shootings, and from the unseen (and sometimes virtual) matrix of everyday crime, danger is no longer confined to dark alleys or unstable regions. Potentially life-threatening circumstances can arise anywhere, anytime, and Clint Emerson—former Navy SEAL—wants you to be prepared.
100 Deadly Skills contains proven self-defense skills, evasion tactics, and immobilizing maneuvers—modified from the world of black ops—to help you take action in numerous “worst case” scenarios from escaping a locked trunk, to making an improvised Taser, to tricking facial recognition software. With easy-to-understand instructions and illustrations, Emerson outlines in detail many life-saving strategies and teaches you how to think and act like a member of the special forces.
This complete course in survival teaches you how to prevent tracking, evade a kidnapping, elude an active shooter, rappel down the side of a building, immobilize a bad guy, protect yourself against cyber-criminals, and much more—all using low-tech to “no-tech” methods. Clear, detailed, and presented in an easy-to-understand and execute format, 100 Deadly Skills is an invaluable resource. Because let’s face it, when danger is imminent, you don’t have time for complicated instructions.
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A Human Ideal in African Art: Bamana Figurative Sculpture
On view are 45 sculptures in an exhibition that explores and illustrates the traditional use of the human image in the art of the Mali's Bamana people. The focus of the exhibition is on the cultural and historical background of sculpture used in connection with a Bamana initiation association called "Jo." Produced for more than 500 years, some of this work is considered to have a monumental quality, making it among the most significant in African Art.
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Microshelters: 59 Creative Cabins, Tiny Houses, Tree Houses, and Other Small Structures
If you dream of living in a tiny house, or creating a getaway in the backwoods or your backyard, you’ll love this gorgeous collection of creative and inspiring ideas for tiny houses, cabins, forts, studios, and other microshelters. Created by a wide array of builders and designers around the United States and beyond, these 59 unique and innovative structures show you the limits of what is possible. Each is displayed in full-color photographs accompanied by commentary by the author. In addition, Diedricksen includes six sets of building plans by leading designers to help you get started on a microshelter of your own. You’ll also find guidelines on building with recycled and salvaged materials, plus techniques for making your small space comfortable and easy to inhabit.
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A Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life and Labor in Jamaica and Virginia
Forty years ago, after publication of his pathbreaking book Sugar and Slaves, Richard Dunn began an intensive investigation of two thousand slaves living on two plantations, one in North America and one in the Caribbean. Digging deeply into the archives, he has reconstructed the individual lives and collective experiences of three generations of slaves on the Mesopotamia sugar estate in Jamaica and the Mount Airy plantation in tidewater Virginia, to understand the starkly different forms slavery could take. Dunn’s stunning achievement is a rich and compelling history of bondage in two very different Atlantic world settings.
From the mid-eighteenth century to emancipation in 1834, life in Mesopotamia was shaped and stunted by deadly work regimens, rampant disease, and dependence on the slave trade for new laborers. At Mount Airy, where the population continually expanded until emancipation in 1865, the “surplus” slaves were sold or moved to distant work sites, and families were routinely broken up. Over two hundred of these Virginia slaves were sent eight hundred miles to the Cotton South.
In the genealogies that Dunn has painstakingly assembled, we can trace a Mesopotamia fieldhand through every stage of her bondage, and contrast her harsh treatment with the fortunes of her rebellious mulatto son and clever quadroon granddaughter. We track a Mount Airy craftworker through a stormy life of interracial sex, escape, and family breakup. The details of individuals’ lives enable us to grasp the full experience of both slave communities as they labored and loved, and ultimately became free.
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The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth
The Cultural Matrix seeks to unravel a uniquely American paradox: the socioeconomic crisis, segregation, and social isolation of disadvantaged black youth, on the one hand, and their extraordinary integration and prominence in popular culture on the other. Despite school dropout rates over 40 percent, a third spending time in prison, chronic unemployment, and endemic violence, black youth are among the most vibrant creators of popular culture in the world. They also espouse several deeply-held American values. To understand this conundrum, the authors bring culture back to the forefront of explanation, while avoiding the theoretical errors of earlier culture-of-poverty approaches and the causal timidity and special pleading of more recent ones.
There is no single black youth culture, but a complex matrix of cultures―adapted mainstream, African-American vernacular, street culture, and hip-hop―that support and undermine, enrich and impoverish young lives. Hip-hop, for example, has had an enormous influence, not always to the advantage of its creators. However, its muscular message of primal honor and sensual indulgence is not motivated by a desire for separatism but by an insistence on sharing in the mainstream culture of consumption, power, and wealth.
This interdisciplinary work draws on all the social sciences, as well as social philosophy and ethnomusicology, in a concerted effort to explain how culture, interacting with structural and environmental forces, influences the performance and control of violence, aesthetic productions, educational and work outcomes, familial, gender, and sexual relations, and the complex moral life of black youth.
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Wednesday, October 28, 2015
The Culture of AIDS in Africa: Hope and Healing Through Music and the Arts

The Culture of Aids in Africa enters into the many worlds of expression brought forth across this vast continent by the ravaging presence of HIV/Aids. Africans and non-Africans, physicians and social scientists, journalists and documentarians share here a common and essential interest in understanding creative expression in crushing and uncertain times. They investigate and engage the social networks, power relationships, and cultural structures that enable the arts to convey messages of hope and healing, and of knowledge and good counsel to the wider community. And from Africa to the wider world, they bring intimate, inspiring portraits of the performers, artists, communities, and organizations that have shared with them their insights and the sense they have made of their lives and actions from deep within this devastating epidemic.
Covering the wide expanse of the African continent, the 30 chapters include explorations on, for example, the use of music to cope with Aids; the relationship between music, HIV/Aids, and social change; visual approaches to HIV literacy; radio and television as tools for "edutainment;" several individual artists' confrontations with HIV/Aids; various performance groups' response to the epidemic; combating HIV/Aids with local cultural performance; and more. Source material, such as song lyrics and interviews, weaves throughout the collection, and contributions by editors Gregory Barz and Judah M. Cohen bookend the whole, to bring together a vast array of perspectives and sources into a nuanced and profoundly effective portrayal of the intricate relationship between HIV/Aids and the arts in Africa.
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An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa

Hardcover reprint of the original 1788 edition - beautifully bound in brown cloth covers featuring titles stamped in gold, 8vo - 6x9. No adjustments have been made to the original text, giving readers the full antiquarian experience. For quality purposes, all text and images are printed as black and white. This item is printed on demand. Book Information: Falconbridge, Alexander. An Account of The Slave Trade On The Coast of Africa. Indiana: Repressed Publishing LLC, 2012. Original Publishing: Falconbridge, Alexander. An Account of The Slave Trade On The Coast of Africa, London: Printed By J. Phillips, 1788. Subject: Slave Trade
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Africa Emerges

Sub-Saharan Africa is no longer a troubled ‘dark continent.’ Most of its constituent countries are now enjoying significant economic growth and political progress. The new Africa has begun to banish the miseries of the past, and appears ready to play an important role in world affairs. Thanks to shifts in leadership and governance, an African Renaissance could be at hand.
Yet the road ahead is not without obstacles. As a world-renowned expert on African affairs, Robert Rotberg, expertly shows, Africa today may be poised to deliver real rewards to its long suffering citizens but it faces critical new crises as well as abundant new opportunities. Africa Emerges draws on a wealth of empirical data to explore the key challenges in Africa must overcome in the coming decades. From peacekeeping to health and disease, from energy needs, to education, this illuminating analysis diagnoses the remaining impediments Africa will need to surmount if it is to emerge in 2050 as a prosperous, peaceful, dynamic collection of robust large and small nations.
Africa Emerges offers an unparalleled guide for all those interested in the dynamics of modern Africa’s political, economic, and social development.
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Subject to Colonialism: African Self-Fashioning and the Colonial Library
Subject to Colonialism provides a much needed revisionist perspective on the way twentieth-century Africa is viewed and analyzed among scholars. Employing literary, historical, and anthropological techniques, Gaurav Desai attempts to generate a new understanding of issues that permeate discussions of Africa by disrupting the centrality of postcolonial texts and focusing instead on the cultural and intellectual production of colonial Africans. In particular, Desai calls for a reevaluation of the “colonial library”—that set of representations and texts that have collectively “invented” Africa as a locus of difference and alterity.
Presenting colonialism not as a singular, monolithic structure but rather as a practice frought with contradictions and tensions, Desai works to historicize the foundation of postcolonialism by decentering both canonical texts and privileged categories of analysis such as race, capitalism, empire, and nation. To achieve this, he focuses on texts that construct or reform—rather than merely reflect—colonialism, placing explicit emphasis on processes, performances, and the practices of everyday life. Reading these texts not merely for the content of their assertions but also for how they were created and received, Desai looks at works such as Jomo Kenyatta’s ethnography of the Gikuyu and Akiga Sai’s history of the Tiv and makes a particular plea for the canonical recuperation of African women’s writing.
Scholars in African history, literature, and philosophy, postcolonial studies, literary criticism, and anthropology will welcome publication of this book.
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The Ethnic Avant-Garde: Minority Cultures and World Revolution
During the 1920s and 1930s, American minority artists and writers collaborated extensively with the Soviet avant-garde, seeking to build a revolutionary society that would end racial discrimination and advance progressive art. Making what Claude McKay called "the magic pilgrimage" to the Soviet Union, these intellectuals placed themselves at the forefront of modernism, using radical cultural and political experiments to reimagine identity and decenter the West.
Shining rare light on these efforts, The Ethnic Avant-Garde makes a unique contribution to interwar literary, political, and art history, drawing extensively on Russian archives, travel narratives, and artistic exchanges to establish the parameters of an undervalued "ethnic avant-garde." These writers and artists cohered around distinct forms that mirrored Soviet techniques of montage, fragment, and interruption. They orbited interwar Moscow, where the international avant-garde converged with the Communist International.
The book explores Vladimir Mayakovsky's 1925 visit to New York City via Cuba and Mexico, during which he wrote Russian-language poetry in an "Afro-Cuban" voice; Langston Hughes's translations of these poems while in Moscow, which he visited to assist on a Soviet film about African American life; a futurist play condemning Western imperialism in China, which became Broadway's first major production to feature a predominantly Asian American cast; and efforts to imagine the Bolshevik Revolution as Jewish messianic arrest, followed by the slow political disenchantment of the New York Intellectuals. Through an absorbing collage of cross-ethnic encounters that also include Herbert Biberman, Sergei Eisenstein, Paul Robeson, and Vladimir Tatlin, this work remaps global modernism along minority and Soviet-centered lines, further advancing the avant-garde project of seeing the world anew.
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Egyptian Mythology A to Z
Egypt's myths are among the earliest in the ancient world. "Egyptian Mythology A to Z, Revised Edition" brings to life the fascinating world of Egyptian mythology and religious beliefs for young readers. This new edition has been revised and updated to reflect the latest discoveries. New information covered in this thorough reference guide includes entries on such topics as pyramids and mythology, the cult of the king, human sacrifice, and many new gods and legendary figures. A bibliography at the end of the book encourages students to investigate topics that spark their interest. With its focus on Egyptian gods and goddesses and the relationship between Egyptian myths and the later Greek and Roman mythology, this volume is a useful reference and teaching aid for students with an interest in mythological studies.
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The Lost Treasure of King Juba: The Evidence of Africans in America before Columbus
The story of a mysterious southern Illinois treasure cave and its proof of the presence of Africans in North America long before Columbus.
• Includes over 100 photographs of the artifacts discovered.
• Re-creates the historic voyage of King Juba and his Mauretanian sailors across the Atlantic to rebuild their society in the New World.
• Explains the mystery of the Washitaws, a tribal group of African origin, first encountered by the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
In 1982 Russell E. Burrows, a treasure hunter in southern Illinois, stumbled on a cache of ancient weapons, jewels, and gold sarcophagi in a remote cave. There also were stone tablets inscribed with illustrations of Roman-like soldiers, Jews, early Christians, and West African sailors. These relics fueled a bitter controversy in the archaeological community regarding their authenticity, leading Burrows to destroy the entrance to the cave.
Researching more than 7,000 artifacts removed from the cave before it was sealed, Frank Joseph explains how these objects came to be buried in the middle of the United States. It started with Cleopatra, whose daughter was made queen of the semi-independent realm of Mauretania, present-day Morocco, which she ruled with her husband, King Juba II. Following the execution of their son, Ptolemy, by Emperor Caligula, the Mauretanians rebelled against their Roman overlords and made their way into what is now Ghana. There they constructed a fleet of ships for a transatlantic voyage to a land where they hoped to rebuild their kingdom safe from Roman rule. They took with them a great prize unsuccessfully sought by two Roman emperors: Cleopatra's golden treasure and King Juba's encyclopedic library of ancient wisdom.
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Fully illustrated with many previously unpublished photographs of artifacts retrieved from the southern Illinois site, The Lost Treasure of King Juba is a compelling story that could force us to rethink the early history of our nation and the possibility that Africans arrived on our continent nearly fifteen centuries before Columbus.
And Still I Rise: Black America Since MLK
The companion book to Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s PBS series, And Still I Rise—a timeline and chronicle of the past fifty years of black history in the U.S. in more than 350 photos.
Beginning with the assassination of Malcolm X in February 1965, And Still I Rise: From Black Power to the White House explores the last half-century of the African American experience. More than fifty years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the birth of Black Power, the United States has both a black president and black CEOs running Fortune 500 companies—and a large black underclass beset by persistent poverty, inadequate education, and an epidemic of incarceration. Harvard professor and scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. raises disturbing and vital questions about this dichotomy. How did the African American community end up encompassing such profound contradictions? And what will “the black community” mean tomorrow?
Gates takes readers through the major historical events and untold stories of the sixty years that have irrevocably shaped both the African American experience and the nation as a whole, from the explosive social and political changes of the 1960s, into the 1970s and 1980s—eras characterized by both prosperity and neglect—through the turn of the century to today, taking measure of such racial flashpoints as the Tawana Brawley case, OJ Simpson’s murder trial, the murders of Amadou Diallo and Trayvon Martin, and debates around the NYPD’s “stop and frisk” policies. Even as it surveys the political and social evolution of black America, And Still I Rise is also a celebration of the accomplishments of black artists, musicians, writers, comedians, and thinkers who have helped to define American popular culture and to change our world.
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Tuesday, October 27, 2015
The Brazilian Table
BRAZIL - EXOTIC, SENSUAL, MYSTERIOUS - mingles pleasure with high energy, and its cuisine is no different. The recipes of The Brazilian Table frequently blend the native ingredients of manioc, cacha a, pequi, hearts of palm, and Dend palm oil with the rich cultures of Portugal, Africa, Japan, the Middle East, and that of the indigenous population to create complex tastes that define this region of the world.
A sample of the extraordinary cuisine includes Tucupi Duck Soup, Fish Paupiette with Crabmeat Brazilian - Style, Papaya Galette, Chicken Xim - Xim, Coconut Custard Bah a Way, Gil Puff Pastry Tart, and Guava Paste Souffl . Authored by master chef Yara Castro Roberts - one of Brazil's most forthright advocates of its lifestyle and cuisine - this intimate look at the regions of Minas Gerais, the Amazon, the Cerado, and the Bah as from a food perspective not only introduces one hundred delicious recipes but also provides an in - depth cultural lesson on the regions and their unique foods.
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Futebol Nation: The Story of Brazil Through Soccer
No nation is as closely identified with the game of soccer as Brazil. For over a century, Brazil’s people, politicians, and poets have found in soccer the finest expression of the nation’s collective potential. Since the team’s dazzling performance in 1938 at the World Cup in France, Brazilian soccer has been revered as an otherworldly blend of the effective and the aesthetic.
Futebol Nation is an extraordinary chronicle of a nation that has won the World Cup five times and produced players of miraculous skill, such as Pelé, Garrincha, Rivaldo, Zico, Ronaldo, and Ronaldinho. It shows why the phrase O Jogo Bonito—the Beautiful Game—has justly entered the global lexicon. Yet there is another side to Brazil and its game, one that reflects the harsh sociological realities of the “futebol nation.” David Goldblatt explores the grinding poverty that creates a vast pool of hungry players, Brazil’s corrupt institutions exemplified by its soccer authorities, and the pervasive violence that has seeped onto the field and into the stands.
Futebol Nation illuminates both Brazilian soccer and Brazil itself; its brilliance, its magic, its style, and the fabulous myths that have been constructed around it; as well as its tragedies, its miseries, and its economic and political injustices. It is the story of Brazil told through its chosen national game.
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The Hidden History of Capoeira: A Collision of Cultures in the Brazilian Battle Dance
Capoeira, a Brazilian battle dance and national sport, has become popular all over the world. First brought to Brazil by African slaves and first documented in the late eighteenth century, capoeira has undergone many transformations as it has diffused throughout Brazilian society and beyond, taking on a multiplicity of meanings for those who participate in it and for the societies in which it is practiced. In this book, Maya Talmon-Chvaicer combines cultural history with anthropological research to offer an in-depth study of the development and meaning of capoeira, starting with the African cultures in which it originated and continuing up to the present day. Using a wealth of primary sources, Talmon-Chvaicer analyzes the outlooks on life, symbols, and rituals of the three major cultures that inspired capoeira--the Congolese (the historic area known today as Congo-Angola), the Yoruban, and the Catholic Portuguese cultures. As she traces the evolution of capoeira through successive historical eras, Talmon-Chvaicer maintains a dual perspective, depicting capoeira as it was experienced, observed, and understood by both Europeans and Africans, as well as by their descendants. This dual perspective uncovers many covert aspects of capoeira that have been repressed by the dominant Brazilian culture. This rich study reclaims the African origins and meanings of capoeira, while also acknowledging the many ways in which Catholic-Christian culture has contributed to it. The book will be fascinating reading not only for scholars but also for capoeira participants who may not know the deeper spiritual meanings of the customs, amulets, and rituals of this jogo da vida, "game of life."
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Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda
Although Rwanda is among the most Christian countries in Africa, in the 1994 genocide, church buildings became the primary killing grounds. To explain why so many Christians participated in the violence, this book looks at the history of Christian engagement in Rwanda and then turns to a rich body of original national and local-level research to argue that Rwanda's churches have consistently allied themselves with the state and played ethnic politics. Comparing two local Presbyterian parishes in Kibuye prior to the genocide demonstrates that progressive forces were seeking to democratize the churches. Just as Hutu politicians used the genocide of Tutsi to assert political power and crush democratic reform, church leaders supported the genocide to secure their own power. The fact that Christianity inspired some Rwandans to oppose the genocide demonstrates that opposition by the churches was possible and might have hindered the violence.
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Who Set You Flowin'? The African-American Migration Narrative
Twentieth-century America has witnessed the most widespread and sustained movement of African-Americans from the South to urban centers in the North. Who Set You Flowin'? examines the impact of this dislocation and urbanization, identifying the resulting Migration Narratives as a major genre in African-American cultural production. Griffin takes an interdisciplinary approach with readings of several literary texts, migrant correspondence, painting, photography, rap music, blues, and rhythm and blues. From these various sources Griffin isolates the tropes of Ancestor, Stranger, and Safe Space, which, though common to all Migration Narratives, vary in their portrayal. She argues that the emergence of a dominant portrayal of these tropes is the product of the historical and political moment, often challenged by alternative portrayals in other texts or artistic forms, as well as intra-textually. Richard Wright's bleak, yet cosmopolitan portraits were countered by Dorothy West's longing for Black Southern communities. Ralph Ellison, while continuing Wright's vision, reexamined the significance of Black Southern culture. Griffin concludes with Toni Morrison embracing the South "as a site of African-American history and culture," "a place to be redeemed."
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Sunday, October 25, 2015
George Washington Carver: In His Own Words
A black man praised by white America-George Washington Carver (1864-1943) was an anomaly in his own time. Now available in paperback, this choice selection of Carver's writings reveals the human side of the famous black scientist, as well as the forces that shaped his creative genius."
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Making Spirits: Materiality and Transcendence in Contemporary Religion
Academic analyses of religious phenomena have often placed an emphasis on beliefs and ideologies and prioritized the understanding of religious symbols over the material of symbolization. Through the ethnographic analysis of a variety of contemporary religious forms, Making Spirits questions the presumed separation of spirit and matter, and sheds light on the relational dynamics between spiritual and material domains, on the mechanisms and techniques through which they 'make' each other. Such reciprocal interactions and transformations between the spiritual and the material are evident across spirit mediums, fetishes and ritual objects in Cuba, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Brazil, Bolivia, Japan and Central Africa. With new insights that challenge the taken-for-granted categories of materiality and transcendence, thing and spirit, this book will be invaluable for scholars in religious studies, comparative religion, anthropology and sociology.
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The People's Place: Soul Food Restaurants and Reminiscences from theCivil Rights Era to Today
Celebrated former Chicago Sun-Times columnist Dave Hoekstra unearths stories as he travels, tastes, and talks his way through 20 of America’s soul food restaurants.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. loved the fried catfish and lemon icebox pie at Memphis’s Four Way restaurant. In New Orleans, beloved chef Leah Chase recalls introducing George W. Bush to baked cheese grits and scolding Barack Obama for putting Tabasco sauce on her gumbo. Following the “soul food corridor” from the South through northern industrial cities, The People’s Place gives voice to the remarkable chefs, workers, and small business owners who provided sustenance and a safe haven for civil rights pioneers, not to mention presidents and politicians; music, film, and sports legends; and countless everyday, working-class people. Featuring photographs, recipes, and ruminations from notable regulars—including Minnijean Brown, one of the Little Rock Nine who integrated Little Rock Central High School in 1957; former congressman and Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young; jazz legend Ramsey Lewis; James Meredith, the first African American student admitted to the segregated University of Mississippi; and many others—The People’s Place is an unprecedented celebration of soul food and community.
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The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball
From the first amateur leagues of the 1860s to the exploits of Livan and Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, here is the definitive history of baseball in Cuba. Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria expertly traces the arc of the game, intertwining its heroes and their stories with the politics, music, dance, and literature of the Cuban people. What emerges is more than a story of balls and strikes, but a richly detailed history of Cuba told from the unique cultural perch of the baseball diamond.
Filling a void created by Cuba's rejection of bullfighting and Spanish hegemony, baseball quickly became a crucial stitch in the complex social fabric of the island. By the early 1940s Cuba had become major conduit in spreading the game throughout Latin America, and a proving ground for some of the greatest talent in all of baseball, where white major leaguers and Negro League players from the U.S. all competed on the same fields with the cream of Latin talent. Indeed, readers will be introduced to several black ballplayers of Afro-Cuban descent who played in the Major Leagues before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier once and for all. Often dramatic, and always culturally resonant, Gonzalez Echevarria's narrative expertly lays open the paradox of fierce Cuban independence from the U.S. with Cuba's love for our national pastime. It shows how Fidel Castro cannily associated himself with the sport for patriotic p.r.--and reveals that his supposed baseball talent is purely mythical. Based on extensive primary research and a wealth of interviews, the colorful, often dramatic anecdotes and stories in this distinguished book comprise the most comprehensive history of Cuban baseball yet published and ultimately adds a vital lost chapter to the history of baseball in the U.S.
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Forgotten Civilization: The Role of Solar Outbursts in Our Past andFuture
Scientific confirmation of advanced civilization at the end of the last ice age, the solar catastrophe that destroyed it, and what the evidence means for our future
• Demonstrates, based on the 12,000-year-old megalithic complex of Göbekli Tepe, that advanced civilization extends thousands of years further back than generally acknowledged
• Examines the catastrophic solar outbursts that ended the last ice age, wiping out antediluvian civilization and incinerating much of the evidence of that period
• Reveals data that show solar outbursts powerful enough to devastate modern society could return in the future
Building upon his revolutionary theory that the Sphinx dates back much further than 2500 BCE, geologist Robert Schoch reveals scientific evidence of advanced civilization predating ancient Egypt, Sumeria, and Greece, as well as the catastrophe that destroyed it nearly 12,000 years ago and what its legacy can teach us about our own future.
Combining evidence from multiple scientific disciplines, Schoch shows how the last ice age ended abruptly in 9700 BCE due to coronal mass ejections from the Sun. These solar outbursts unleashed electrical/plasma discharges upon Earth and triggered volcanic activity, earthquakes, fires, and massive floods as glaciers melted and lightning strikes released torrential rains from the oceans. He explains how these events eradicated the civilization of the time and set humanity back thousands of years, only to reemerge around 3500 BCE with scattered memories and nascent abilities. He explores within this framework, how many megalithic monuments, underground cities, and ancient legends fall logically into place, as well as the reinterpreted Easter Island rongorongo texts and the intentional burial, 10,000 years ago, of the Göbekli Tepe complex in Turkey. Schoch reveals scientific evidence that shows how history could repeat itself with a coronal mass ejection powerful enough to devastate modern society.
Weaving together a new view of the origins of civilization, the truths behind ancient wisdom, and the dynamics of the planet we live on, Schoch maintains we must heed the megalithic warning of the past and collectively prepare for future events.
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Chapman-Andrews and The Emperor
Based on Chapman-Andrew's diary, the core of the book describes the extraordinary SOE operation in 1940 to re-instate the Emperor on his throne after being driven out by the invading Italians. Together with the legendary Orde Wingate, Chapman-Andrews accompanied the Emperor through Italian occupied Ethiopia and, after many adventures, the vital mission was accomplished. Later Chapman-Andrews was a key figure during the Suez Crisis and in Britain's relations with Egypt and Sudan as well as Ethiopia.
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Saturday, October 24, 2015
The Vatican Heresy: Bernini and the Building of the Hermetic Temple ofthe Sun
Reveals how the largest Sun Temple in the world, built according to Hermetic principles, is located at one of Christianity’s holiest sites: the Vatican
• Shows how famous Renaissance philosophers and scientists called for a Hermetic reformation of Christianity by building a magical Temple of the Sun in Rome
• Explains how the Vatican architect Bernini designed St. Peter’s Square to reflect heliocentric and Hermetic principles
• Reveals how the design was masterminded by Bernini, Jesuit scholars, the mystical Queen Christine of Sweden, and several popes
In 16th century Italy, in the midst of the Renaissance, two powerful movements took hold. The first, the Hermetic Movement, was inspired by an ancient set of books housed in the library of Cosimo de’ Medici and written by the Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus. The movement expounded the return of the “true religion of the world” based on a form of natural magic that could draw down the powers of the heavens and incorporate them into statues and physical structures. The other movement, the Heliocentric Movement launched by Copernicus, was a direct challenge to the Vatican’s biblical interpretation of a geocentric world system. Declared a heresy by the Pope, those who promoted it risked the full force of the Inquisition.
Exploring the meeting point of these two movements, authors Robert Bauval and Chiara Hohenzollern reveal how the most outspoken and famous philosophers, alchemists, and scientists of the Renaissance, such as Giordano Bruno and Marsilio Ficino, called for a Hermetic reformation of the Christian religion by building a magical utopic city, an architectural version of the heliocentric system. Using contemporary documents and the latest cutting-edge theses, the authors show that this Temple of the Sun was built in Rome, directly in front of the Vatican’s Basilica of St. Peter. They explain how the Vatican architect Bernini designed St. Peter’s Square to reflect the esoteric principles of the Hermetica and how the square is a detailed representation of the heliocentric system.
Revealing the magical architectural plan masterminded by the Renaissance’s greatest minds, including Bernini, Jesuit scholars, Queen Christine of Sweden, and several popes, the authors expose the ultimate heresy of all time blessed by the Vatican itself.
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Teff Love: Adventures in Vegan Ethiopian Cooking
Why wait for a trip to your favorite Ethiopian restaurant? Import the delicious flavors of Ethiopia right to your own kitchen! Kittee Berns has demystified this cuisine so you can savor authentic Ethiopian food without ever leaving home. Discover how to source and use the tantalizing seasonings and savory ingredients that are the foundation of these unique dishes.
Kittee introduces the holy trinity of Ethiopian cooking: a berbere spice blend, injera (the fermented sourdough staple), and ye qimem zeyet, a veganized clarified butter. Armed with these basics, you'll be ready to dazzle your family and friends with many of the popular dishes found on veggie combo platters in restaurants all over North America. From saucy wots, spicy stews, and succulent stir-fries to traditional injera-based dishes and fusion foods that blend these unique seasonings into a range of family favorites, fans of this cuisine will be thrilled. Recipes are almost entirely gluten- and soy-free, or can be made so with easy adaptions.
You'll also find tips on tools and equipment to time-saving techniques and menu suggestions. Just pull up a mesob (a traditional woven stand or basket), perch your platter on top, and get ready to party Ethiopian style!
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The Kemetic Diet: Ancient African Wisdom for Health of Mind Body and Spirit

FASTING Health issues have always been important to human beings since the beginning of time. The earliest records of history show that the art of healing was held in high esteem since the time of Ancient Egypt. In the early 20th century, medical doctors had almost attained the status of sainthood by the promotion of the idea that they alone were "scientists" while other healing modalities and traditional healers who did not follow the "scientific method' were nothing but superstitious, ignorant charlatans who at best would take the money of their clients and at worst kill them with the unscientific "snake oils" and "irrational theories". In the late 20th century, the failure of the modern medical establishment's ability to lead the general public to good health, promoted the move by many in society towards "alternative medicine".
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Voices in Exile: Jamaican Texts of the 18th and 19th Centuries
The songs, sermons and other materials collected in this anthology thoroughly characterize and demonstrate the distinctive language and culture that developed when African and European exiles came together on the plantations of Jamaica. Accounts of planters, slave-trading captains, and other testimonies from both the colonial and indigenous population effectively illustrate the unfolding of this unique culture.
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Native Apostles: Black and Indian Missionaries in the British AtlanticWorld
As Protestantism expanded across the Atlantic world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most evangelists were not white Anglo-Americans, as scholars have long assumed, but members of the same groups that missionaries were trying to convert. Native Apostles offers one of the most significant untold stories in the history of early modern religious encounters, marshalling wide-ranging research to shed light on the crucial role of Native Americans, Africans, and black slaves in Protestant missionary work. The result is a pioneering view of religion’s spread through the colonial world.
From New England to the Caribbean, the Carolinas to Africa, Iroquoia to India, Protestant missions relied on long-forgotten native evangelists, who often outnumbered their white counterparts. Their ability to tap into existing networks of kinship and translate between white missionaries and potential converts made them invaluable assets and potent middlemen. Though often poor and ostracized by both whites and their own people, these diverse evangelists worked to redefine Christianity and address the challenges of slavery, dispossession, and European settlement. Far from being advocates for empire, their position as cultural intermediaries gave native apostles unique opportunities to challenge colonialism, situate indigenous peoples within a longer history of Christian brotherhood, and harness scripture to secure a place for themselves and their followers.
Native Apostles shows that John Eliot, Eleazar Wheelock, and other well-known Anglo-American missionaries must now share the historical stage with the black and Indian evangelists named Hiacoomes, Good Peter, Philip Quaque, John Quamine, and many more.
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The New African Diaspora
The New York Times reports that since 1990 more Africans have voluntarily relocated to the United States and Canada than had been forcibly brought here before the slave trade ended in 1807. The key reason for these migrations has been the collapse of social, political, economic, and educational structures in their home countries, which has driven Africans to seek security and self-realization in the West. This lively and timely collection of essays takes a look at the new immigrant experience. It traces the immigrants' progress from expatriation to arrival and covers the successes as well as problems they have encountered as they establish their lives in a new country. The contributors, most immigrants themselves, use their firsthand experiences to add clarity, honesty, and sensitivity to their discussions of the new African diaspora.
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Friday, October 23, 2015
Ancient Egyptian Tombs: The Culture of Life and Death
This book explores the development of tombs as a cultural phenomenon in ancient Egypt and examines what tombs reveal about ancient Egyptian culture and Egyptians’ belief in the afterlife.
• Investigates the roles of tombs in the development of funerary practices
• Draws on a range of data, including architecture, artifacts and texts
• Discusses tombs within the context of everyday life in Ancient Egypt
• Stresses the importance of the tomb as an eternal expression of the self
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The Art of Egypt: The Time of the Pharaohs
Ancient Egyptian culture is one of the oldest & most magnificent of humankind. For a long while, the glories of ancient Egypt weren't recognized in the Western world. Grecian culture so overshadowed the accomplishment of the ancient peoples that, except for the Romans, the others were ignored. In the 18th century, however, recognition of the Egyptian contribution to the world's culture began. After the first discoveries of sculpture, reliefs & artifacts, interest in Egypt grew tremendously. The author illustrates a distinguishing characteristic of Egyptian culture as illustrated in their faith in immortality. No other culture or country saw people so centered on the concern for life after death. The Pyramids, the sphinxes, temples & tombs, through their impressive timeless power & silent grandeur, even today bear witness to the hope of eternal life. In clear text & fine illustrations, Irmgard Woldering presents this new addition to the Art of the World series, a brilliant survey of the Golden Age of Egyptian art.
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The Akhenaten Colossi of Karnak
Some of the fascinating sculptures to have survived from ancient Egypt are the colossal statues of Akhenaten, erected at the beginning of his reign in his new temple to the Aten at Karnak. Fragments of more than thirty statues are now known, showing the paradoxical features combining male and female, young and aged, characteristic of representations of this king. Did he look like this in real life? Or was his iconography skillfully devised to mirror his concept of his role in the universe? The author presents the history of the discovery of the statue fragments from 1925 to the present day; the profusion of opinions on the appearance of the king and his alleged medical conditions; and the various suggestions for an interpretation of the perplexing evidence. A complete catalog of all major fragments is included, as well as many pictures not previously published.
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Thursday, October 22, 2015
Living in a landscape of scarcity: Materiality and cosmology in WestAfrica
In her close ethnography of a Dogon village of Mali, Laurence Douny shows how a microcosmology develops from people's embodied daily and ritual practise in a landscape of scarcity. Viewed through the lens of containment practise, she describes how they cope with the shortage of material items central to their lives - water, earth and millet. Douny's study is an important addition to ecological anthropology, to the study of West African cultures, to the understanding of material culture and to anthropological theory.
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Wednesday, October 21, 2015
An Absolute Massacre: The New Orleans Race Riot of July 30, 1866
In the summer of 1866, racial tensions ran high in Louisiana as a constitutional convention considered disenfranchising former Confederates and enfranchising blacks. On July 30, a procession of black suffrage supporters pushed through an angry throng of hostile whites. Words were exchanged, shots rang out, and within minutes a riot erupted with unrestrained fury. When it was over, at least forty-eight men—an overwhelming majority of them black—lay dead and more than two hundred had been wounded. In An Absolute Massacre, James G. Hollandsworth, Jr., examines the events surrounding the confrontation and offers a compelling look at the racial tinderbox that was the post-Civil War South.
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When the Children Marched. The Birmingham Civil Rights Movement
Referred to as the "most segregated city in America," Birmingham, Alabama, became a hotbed for civil rights activity in the early 1960s. Great African-American leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, helped lead the civil rights movement in the city. In Birmingham, African-American youth marched, sang, and spoke out against segregation. Although they faced police dogs and fire hoses, they offered non-violent resistance and did not back down. WHEN THE CHILDREN MARCHED explores the civil rights leaders who organized the movement and the brave children and teens at the heart of the fight.
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Snow-Storm in August: Washington City, Francis Scott Key, and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1835
In 1835, the city of Washington pulsed with change. As newly freed African Americans from the South poured in, free blacks outnumbered slaves for the first time. Radical notions of abolishing slavery circulated on the city's streets, and white residents were forced to confront new ideas of what the nation's future might look like.
On the night of August 4th, Arthur Bowen, an eighteen-year-old slave, stumbled into the bedroom where his owner, Anna Thornton, slept. He had an ax in the crook of his arm. An alarm was raised, and he ran away. Word of the incident spread rapidly, and within days, Washington's first race riot exploded, as whites fearing a slave rebellion attacked the property of the free blacks. Residents dubbed the event the “Snow-Storm," in reference to the central role of Beverly Snow, a flamboyant former slave turned successful restaurateur, who became the target of the mob's rage.
In the wake of the riot came two sensational criminal trials that gripped the city. Prosecuting both cases was none other than Francis Scott Key, a politically ambitious attorney famous for writing the lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner,” who few now remember served as the city's district attorney for eight years. Key defended slavery until the twilight's last gleaming, and pandered to racial fears by seeking capital punishment for Arthur Bowen. But in a surprise twist his prosecution was thwarted by Arthur's ostensible victim, Anna Thornton, a respected socialite who sought the help of President Andrew Jackson.
Ranging beyond the familiar confines of the White House and the Capitol, Snow-Storm in August delivers readers into an unknown chapter of American history with a textured and absorbing account of the racial secrets and contradictions that coursed beneath the freewheeling capital of a rising world power.
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But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle
Birmingham served as the stage for some of the most dramatic and important moments in the history of the civil rights struggle. In this vivid narrative account, Glenn Eskew traces the evolution of nonviolent protest in the city, focusing particularly on the sometimes problematic intersection of the local and national movements.
Eskew describes the changing face of Birmingham's civil rights campaign, from the politics of accommodation practiced by the city's black bourgeoisie in the 1950s to local pastor Fred L. Shuttlesworth's groundbreaking use of nonviolent direct action to challenge segregation during the late 1950s and early 1960s.
In 1963, the national movement, in the person of Martin Luther King Jr., turned to Birmingham. The national uproar that followed on Police Commissioner Bull Connor's use of dogs and fire hoses against the demonstrators provided the impetus behind passage of the watershed Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Paradoxically, though, the larger victory won in the streets of Birmingham did little for many of the city's black citizens, argues Eskew. The cancellation of protest marches before any clear-cut gains had been made left Shuttlesworth feeling betrayed even as King claimed a personal victory. While African Americans were admitted to the leadership of the city, the way power was exercised--and for whom--remained fundamentally unchanged.
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