North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860 University of Chicago Press
The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot "The Negro in Chicago" is a sociological study published in 1922 by the University of Chicago Press. The study included a substantial review of the background of the Chicago riots of July and August 1919, the riots themselves, and their aftermath, together with original work and investigation into the relations between and perceptions of the black and white communities in Chicago. At this time, the city experienced a substantial increase of Black migration from the South. World War I had brought industrial jobs to cities in the North but many of these jobs were subject to a color bar and only available to whites. The arrival of black people in northern cities led to an increase in rent in underdeveloped neighborhoods and white flight. Expansion of the ghetto caused friction among white residents, which eventually led to riots. Building the Black Arts Movement: Hoyt Fuller and the Cultural Politics of the 1960s (New Black Studies) As both an activist and the dynamic editor of Negro Digest, Hoyt W. Fuller stood at the nexus of the Black Arts Movement and the broader black cultural politics of his time. Jonathan Fenderson uses historical snapshots of Fuller&apos;s life and achievements to rethink the period and establish Fuller&apos;s important role in laying the foundation for the movement. In telling Fuller&apos;s story, Fenderson provides provocative new insights into the movement&apos;s international dimensions, the ways the movement took shape at the local level, the impact of race and other factors, and the challenges--corporate, political, and personal--that Fuller and others faced in trying to build black institutions. An innovative study that approaches the movement from a historical perspective, Building the Black Arts Movement is a much-needed reassessment of the trajectory of African American culture over two explosive decades. The Invention and Reinvention of Big Bill Broonzy Over the course of his long career, legendary bluesman William "Big Bill" Broonzy (1893–1958) helped shape the trajectory of the genre, from its roots in the rural Mississippi River Delta, through its rise as a popular genre in the North, to its eventual international acclaim. Along the way, Broonzy adopted an evolving personal and professional identity, tailoring his self-presentation to the demands of the place and time. His remarkable professional fluidity mirrored the range of expectations from his audiences, whose ideas about race, national belonging, identity, and the blues were refracted through Broonzy as if through a prism. Kevin D. Greene argues that Broonzy&apos;s popular success testifies to his ability to navigate the cultural expectations of his different audiences. However, this constant reinvention came at a personal and professional cost. Using Broonzy&apos;s multifaceted career, Greene situates blues performance at the center of understanding African American self-presentation and racial identity in the first half of the twentieth century. <br /><br />Through Broonzy&apos;s life and times, Greene assesses major themes and events in African American history, including the Great Migration, urbanization, and black expatriate encounters with European culture consumers. Drawing on a range of historical source materials as well as oral histories and personal archives held by Broonzy&apos;s son, Greene perceptively interrogates how notions of race, gender, and audience reception continue to shape concepts of folk culture and musical authenticity.<br /><br /> Lovable Racists, Magical Negroes, and White Messiahs In this incredibly timely book, David Ikard dismantles popular white supremacist tropes, which effectively devalue black life and trivialize black oppression. <i>Lovable Racists, Magical Negroes, and White Messiahs</i> investigates the tenacity and cultural capital of white redemption narratives in literature and popular media from <i>Uncle Tom’s Cabin</i> to <i>The Help</i>.<br /><br><br /><br>In the book, Ikard explodes the fiction of a postracial society while awakening us to the sobering reality that we must continue to fight for racial equality or risk losing the hard-fought gains of the Civil Rights movement. Through his close reading of novels, films, journalism, and political campaigns, he analyzes willful white blindness and attendant master narratives of white redemption—arguing powerfully that he who controls the master narrative controls the perception of reality. The book sounds the alarm about seemingly innocuous tropes of white redemption that abound in our society and generate the notion that blacks are perpetually indebted to whites for liberating, civilizing, and enlightening them. In <i>Lovable Racists, Magical Negroes, and White Messiahs</i>, Ikard expertly and unflinchingly gives us a necessary critical historical intervention. Archibald Motley Jr. and Racial Reinvention: The Old Negro in New Negro Art (New Black Studies) An essential African American artist of his era, Archibald Motley Jr. created paintings of black Chicago that aligned him with the revisionist aims of the New Negro Renaissance. Yet Motley&apos;s approach to constructing a New Negro--a dignified figure both accomplished and worthy of respect--reflected the challenges faced by African American artists working on the project of racial reinvention and uplift.<br><p>Phoebe Wolfskill demonstrates how Motley&apos;s art embodied the tenuous nature of the Black Renaissance and the wide range of ideas that structured it. Focusing on key works in Motley&apos;s oeuvre, Wolfskill reveals the artist&apos;s complexity and the variety of influences that informed his work. Motley’s paintings suggest that the racist, problematic image of the Old Negro was not a relic of the past but an influence that pervaded the Black Renaissance. Exploring Motley in relation to works by notable black and non-black contemporaries, Wolfskill reinterprets Motley&apos;s oeuvre as part of a broad effort to define American cultural identity through race, class, gender, religion, and regional affiliation.</p> Authentic Blackness: The Folk in the New Negro Renaissance (New Americanists) What constitutes “blackness” in American culture? And who gets to define whether or not someone is truly African American? Is a struggling hip-hop artist more “authentic” than a conservative Supreme Court justice? In <i>Authentic Blackness</i> J. Martin Favor looks to the New Negro Movement—also known as the Harlem Renaissance—to explore early challenges to the idea that race is a static category.<br /><i>Authentic Blackness</i> looks at the place of the “folk”—those African Americans “furthest down,” in the words of Alain Locke—and how the representation of the folk and the black middle class both spurred the New Negro Movement and became one of its most serious points of contention. Drawing on vernacular theories of African American literature from such figures as Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Houston Baker as well as theorists Judith Butler and Stuart Hall, Favor looks closely at the work of four Harlem Renaissance fiction writers: James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, George Schuyler, and Jean Toomer. Arguing that each of these writers had, at best, an ambiguous relationship to African American folk culture, Favor demonstrates how they each sought to redress the notion of a fixed black identity. <i>Authentic Blackness</i> illustrates how “race” has functioned as a type of performative discourse, a subjectivity that simultaneously builds and conceals its connections with such factors as class, gender, sexuality, and geography.<br /><p><br /></p> Death Blow to Jim Crow: The National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights (The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture) The University of North Carolina Press Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series That Changed Baseball Flatiron Books The Negro Church in America/The Black Church Since Frazier (Sourcebooks in Negro History) Schocken Black The Negro in Illinois: The WPA Papers (New Black Studies Series) University of Illinois Press Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City University of Chicago Press