Agonistic Homegoing: Frederick Douglass, Joseph Lowery, and the Democratic Value of African American Public Mourning

2010 ◽  
Vol 104 (4) ◽  
pp. 681-697 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIMON STOW
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Black Population ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Black Political Thought

What does the furor over the “politicization” of Coretta Scott King's funeral reveal about contemporary black mourning practices? What does it reveal about black political thought, rhetoric, and practice? Identifying two key modes of mourning and their concomitant conceptions of democracy, this article situates the funeral within a tradition of self-consciously political responses to loss that played a significant role in abolitionism and the struggle for civil rights. Tracing the tradition's origins, and employing the speeches of Frederick Douglass as an exemplar, it considers the approach's democratic value and the consequences of its failure. Arguing that the response to the King funeral indicates that the tradition is in decline, the article locates causes of this decline in significant changes among the black population and in the complex consequences of the tradition's previous successes. It concludes by considering the decline's potentially negative impact, both for African Americans and for the broader political community.

Slavery and Class in the American South

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
William L. Andrews
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American South ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Harriet Jacobs ◽  
Slave Narrative ◽  
William Wells Brown ◽  
The American South ◽  
Work Family

In this study of an entire generation of slave narrators, more than sixty mid-nineteenth-century narratives reveal how work, family, skills, and connections made for social and economic differences among the enslaved of the South. Slavery and Class in the American South explains why social and economic distinctions developed and how they functioned among the enslaved. Andrews also reveals how class awareness shaped the views and values of some of the most celebrated African Americans of the nineteenth century. Slave narrators discerned class-based reasons for violence between “impudent,” “gentleman,” and “lady” slaves and their resentful “mean masters.” Status and class played key roles in the lives and liberation of the most celebrated fugitives from US slavery, such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, William Wells Brown, and William and Ellen Craft. By examining the lives of the most- and least-acclaimed heroes and heroines of the African American slave narrative, Andrews shows how the dividing edge of social class cut two ways, sometimes separating upper and lower strata of slaves to their enslavers’ advantage, but at other times fueling convictions among even the most privileged of the enslaved that they deserved nothing less than complete freedom.

From Absence to Flight

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terrence T. Tucker
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Power ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Slave Narratives ◽  
Black Power Movement

This chapter explores radicalization of comic rage in Douglas Turner Ward’s Day of Absence and Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada. Emerging in the middle of the transition from the integrationist period of the civil rights movement to the nationalism of the Black Power movement, both works openly challenge fundamental concepts about race. In addition to targeting fundamental assumptions of Western superiority, these works also question simplistic counter-representations that African Americans present to combat racist stereotypes. Using forms increasingly important in African American literature, like drama and neo-slave narratives, these works enact comic rage as way to depict unique and powerful forms of resistance.

Du Bois and James at Harvard: The Challenges of Fraternal Pairings and Racial Theory

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 352-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saladin Ambar
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
William James ◽  
Double Consciousness ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article seeks to illuminate the relationship between two of the most important figures in American political thought: the pragmatist philosopher William James, and the pioneering civil rights leader and intellectual, W.E.B. Du Bois. As Harvard's first African American PhD, Du Bois was a critical figure in theorizing about race and identity. His innovative take on double consciousness has often been attributed to his contact with James who was one of Du Bois's most critical graduate professors at Harvard. But beyond the view of the two thinkers as intellectual collaborators, is the fraught history of liberal racial fraternal pairing and its role in shaping national identity. This article examines Du Bois and James's relationship in the context of that history, one marked by troubled associations between friendship and race.

The Intimate Civic

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindon Barrett
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Mary Prince ◽  
Private Rights ◽  
Antebellum Period ◽  
History Of

This chapter turns to the personal and in some cases domestic issues facing African Americans in the antebellum period. Turning from Douglass's classic 1845 Narrative to Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)—which receives central consideration in this chapter—Barrett also considers Mary Prince's The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave (1831), Ellen and William Craft's Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom (1860), and James C. Pennington's The Fugitive Blacksmith (1849) as antebellum representations of how African American bodies connect both public and private rights in the struggle for the abolition of slavery and thus are foundational to the subsequent civil rights movement.

Eugene Kinckle Jones

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix L. Armfield
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Social Work ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Migration ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Urban League ◽  
The Great Migration

A leading African American intellectual of the early twentieth century, Eugene Kinckle Jones (1885–1954) was instrumental in professionalizing black social work in America. In his role as executive secretary of the National Urban League, Jones worked closely with social reformers who advocated on behalf of African Americans and against racial discrimination in the United States. Coinciding with the Great Migration of African Americans to northern urban centers, Jones' activities on behalf of the Urban League included campaigning for equal hiring practices, advocating for the inclusion of black workers in labor unions, and promoting the importance of vocational training and social work for members of the black community. Drawing on rich interviews with Jones' colleagues and associates, as well as recently opened family and Urban League papers, the book freshly examines the growth of African American communities and the new roles played by social workers. In calling attention to the need for black social workers in the midst of the Great Migration, Jones and his colleagues sought to address problems stemming from race and class conflicts from within the community. This book blends the biography of a significant black leader with an in-depth discussion of the roles of black institutions and organizations to study the evolution of African American life immediately before the civil rights era.

“Look, Baby, We Got Jesus on Our Flag”

2011 ◽  
Vol 637 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-37
Author(s):  
Edward J. Blum
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Black Politics ◽  
Community Formation ◽  
Cultural Rights ◽  
The Social ◽  
Role Of Religion

Examining debates about the person, place, and meaning of Jesus Christ in African American social development, creative expression, political thought, civil rights activism, international visions, and economic plans, this article suggests that religious discussions have revealed robust democratic cultures. From the age of slavery to the era of Obama, religious discussions and political cultures have been intertwined. Spiritual debates have played a role in community formation; individualism and universalism have worked in tandem; and Jesus Christ—a provincial figure executed thousands of years ago—became essential to international and political visions. This article suggests that Jesus functioned historically in two prominent political ways for African Americans. First, he stood as a counterpoint to American racism that limited the social, legal, political, and cultural rights of African Americans. Second, he functioned as a focus of intraracial and interracial debate, dialogue, and dissension over the role of religion in black politics.

Brownover “Other White”: Mexican Americans' Legal Arguments and Litigation Strategy in School Desegregation Lawsuits

2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven H. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
School Desegregation ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Approaches To Teaching ◽  
Legal Arguments ◽  
Law Professors

The landmark 1954 decisionBrown v. Board of Educationhas shaped trial lawyers' approaches to litigating civil rights claims and law professors' approaches to teaching the law's powers and limitations. The court-ordered desegregation of the nation's schools, moreover, inspired subsequent lawsuits by African Americans aimed variously at ending racial distinctions in housing, employment, and voting rights. Litigation to enforce theBrowndecision and similar mandates brought slow but steady progress and inspired members of various other minorities to appropriate the rhetoric, organizing methods, and legal strategy of the African American civil rights struggle.

Mortality, Incarceration, and African American Disenfranchisement in the Contemporary United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Cottrell ◽  
Michael C. Herron ◽  
Javier M. Rodriguez ◽  
Daniel A. Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
African American Men ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Premature Death ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Right

On account of poor living conditions, African Americans in the United States experience disproportionately high rates of mortality and incarceration compared with Whites. This has profoundly diminished the number of voting-eligible African Americans in the country, costing, as of 2010, approximately 3.9 million African American men and women the right to vote and amounting to a national African American disenfranchisement rate of 13.2%. Although many disenfranchised African Americans have been stripped of voting rights by laws targeting felons and ex-felons, the majority are literally “missing” from their communities due to premature death and incarceration. Leveraging variation in gender ratios across the United States, we show that missing African Americans are concentrated in the country’s Southeast and that African American disenfranchisement rates in some legislative districts lie between 20% and 40%. Despite the many successes of the Voting Rights Act and the civil rights movement, high levels of African American disenfranchisement remain a continuing feature of the American polity.

The Loneliness of the Black Republican

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Wright Rigueur
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
American Conservatism ◽  
Racial Experiences ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Black Republicans ◽  
The New Deal

Covering more than four decades of American social and political history, this book examines the ideas and actions of black Republican activists, officials, and politicians, from the era of the New Deal to Ronald Reagan's presidential ascent in 1980. Their unique stories reveal African Americans fighting for an alternative economic and civil rights movement—even as the Republican Party appeared increasingly hostile to that very idea. Black party members attempted to influence the direction of conservatism—not to destroy it, but rather to expand the ideology to include black needs and interests. As racial minorities in their political party and as political minorities within their community, black Republicans occupied an irreconcilable position—they were shunned by African American communities and subordinated by the Grand Old Party (GOP). In response, black Republicans vocally, and at times viciously, critiqued members of their race and party, in an effort to shape the attitudes and public images of black citizens and the GOP. Moving beyond traditional liberalism and conservatism, black Republicans sought to address African American racial experiences in a distinctly Republican way. This book provides a new understanding of the interaction between African Americans and the Republican Party, and the seemingly incongruous intersection of civil rights and American conservatism.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document