Enslaved Labor and Building the Smithsonian: Reading the Stones
...of freedom, in which his white friend and former employer at the post office, Lambert Tree, swore in front of a justice of the peace that Brown had always been...
Still Digging Our Own Graves: Coal Miners and the Struggle over Black Lung Disease
...monthly payments can mean the difference between destitution and modest survival.4This estimate of the number of black lung beneficiaries is extrapolated from data on the number of claims filed each...
The Tulip Quilt [ca 1880]
...the Spartanburg Herald on May 19, 1875, offered "Singer's celebrated sewing machines, the cheapest and the best sewing machine, for sale on easy terms." In the same issue, McK. Johnstone...
Mississippi Delta
...of cheap labor, on which Delta plantations depended. By 1910, tenants operated ninety-two percent of Delta farms, and ninety-five percent of those tenants were African American. New ethnic groups also...
Something True about Louisiana: HBO's True Detective and the Petrochemical America Aesthetic
...season one, Rust and Marty uncover strange genealogies and rigged systems, sometimes reluctantly and always at great cost to their lives and security. They commit awful violence against people, such...
A Real American Horror Story: On Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave
...Epps. Viewers numbed by years of cheap thrills need a film like this to remind them that horror is real and persistent, especially if you try to ignore it. About...
Dancing Around the "Glaring Light of Television": Black Teen Dance Shows in the South
...Rainey in 1924.1Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, vocal performance of "See See Rider Blues" by Ma Rainey and Lena Arant, recorded October 16, 1924, by Paramount, catalogue number 12252, 78 rpm. With "Betty and Dupree,"...
Draining Paradise: A Tour of Salt Creek in St. Petersburg, Florida
...Mexico to the west. Water is everywhere. St. Petersburg has always been two things: a resort town and a product of the segregated South. Known affectionately as the Sunshine City,...
Coop Co-Op: Agrarian Ideals, City Codes, and the Backyard Chicken Movement
...license plate on my car (I sport a Trout Unlimited tag). And I have sought ways to draw my rural roots closer to my city self. Part of staying connected...
The Black Belt
...slaves were most profitable, and consequently they were taken there in the largest numbers. Later, and especially since the war, the term seems to be used wholly in a political...