Authorship in Africana Studies
...borrow the notion of "the thin black line" from the seminal black british visual artists' exhibition curated by Lubaina Himid in 1985. For the purpose of today's reflection, the "thin black line" resonates ideas about...
Negotiating Gender Lines: Women's Movement across Atlanta Mosques
...of a substantial number of prosperous black Atlantans, we might imagine that African American Muslims are more likely to live in Atlanta than in Chicago in the same neighborhoods or...
Sacred Harp, "Poland Style"
...evening, some of whom half-jokingly spoke of the incident as the beginning of a new "local tradition." This process was cemented the next weekend at the Poland Convention when an...
Work
...University. Work You wake up knowing you'll work. You don't worry that circumstances will hurt your chances to choose your labor. It seems your choice is made. Reams of fabric...
Voting Rights, the Supreme Court, and the Persistence of Southern History
...Shelby County, Alabama, a county commissioner arrived, hailing the librarian and me. "Happy Martin Luther Coon Day!" he shouted. Earlier this year, on the last day of February, Shelby County's...
Selma Bridge: Always Under Construction
...Bridge, Selma, Alabama. Earlier that day, upriver in Selma, with the Edmund Pettus Bridge as skeletal backdrop, McCain had spoken to a small, heavily white gathering, announcing that he would...
The Dispossessions of Appalachia: A Review of Ramp Hollow
...modernity, those self-interested promoters of the benefits of wage labor, efficiency, discipline, and "productive" (i.e., profitable for them and their kind) use of the land. Declaring makeshift agricultural practices a...
Social Justice Environmentalism
...are urban matters that would today be regarded as environmental concerns. African American activists were often first to join forces with other people of color facing environmental threats. For example,...
The Makers of the Sacred Harp
...In the case of the “revival spiritual songs” that began to appear in great numbers in 1840s tunebooks, including The Sacred Harp, Steel speculates that some may have had their...
A Real American Horror Story: On Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave
...and forced to dance, bleary-eyed and aching, for their master's pleasure. Every day has the potential to be the day that the mistress will throw a cut glass decanter into...