“From Slave to Citizen”

2019 ◽  
pp. 71-94
Author(s):  
Martin Summers
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Families ◽  
New Era ◽  
Important Resource ◽  
Reconstruction Era ◽  
Medical Professions ◽  
Psychiatric Profession

This chapter covers Saint Elizabeths during the post-Reconstruction era and examines the medical professions’ changing ideas about black mental illness and black Washingtonians’ interactions with the hospital in a new era of limited citizenship. A postemancipation discourse emerged among physicians in the 1880s and 1890s that fundamentally differed from the antebellum medical consensus that insanity was rare among black people. Instead physicians began to attribute a perceived increase of black insanity to freedom itself. What the psychiatric profession—which now included individuals trained in neurology—could not agree upon was whether blacks’ new susceptibility to madness was a result of their cultural or biological underdevelopment. Despite this new consensus that associated black mental illness with freedom, this chapter argues that the increased admissions of African Americans to Saint Elizabeths in the 1890s was more the result of black families assertively using the federal institution as an important resource.

A Black Sherlock Holmes (1918): A Case Study in Racebending

Adaptation ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann McClellan
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Black People ◽  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
Racial Change ◽  
Blackface Minstrelsy ◽  
Reconstruction Era ◽  
Dime Novel

Abstract With hundreds of Sherlock Holmes screen adaptations, the silent all-Black-cast A Black Sherlock Holmes (1918) remains an under-researched anomaly. The essay provides an overview of colourblind and colour conscious casting practices, ultimately advocating for adopting fan studies approaches to ‘racebending’. Racebending involves alternately ‘racing’ canonical characters from white to Black Minority Ethnic. After briefly reviewing representations of African Americans in blackface minstrelsy and early twentieth-century race films, the essay argues that A Black Sherlock Holmes highlights the ways in which race filmmakers were trying to reimagine new ways for African Americans to become part of dominant literary culture. In reimagining Sherlock Holmes as an African American, the film (re)inscribes Black people into prominent literary and cultural history. Because Knick Garter is doubly descended from two notable fictional detectives, America’s Nick Carter of dime novel fame as well as Britain’s legendary Sherlock Holmes, his very existence posits a new world where famous Black characters are as much a part of the American literary landscape as canonical characters from Hawthorne, Poe, and Twain. Viewing A Black Sherlock Holmes in light of the possibilities the film offers, rather than its limitations, allows viewers today to see the ways literary history, film, and race coalesced to highlight the possibilities of radical racial change in the post-Reconstruction era at the beginning of the twentieth century.

African Americans and the Crisis of Modernity

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 53-60
Author(s):  
Eric S. King
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Family ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Economic Problems ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Crisis Of Modernity

This article examines Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun by exploring the conflict between a traditionally Southern, Afro-Christian, communitarian worldview and certain more destabilizing elements of the worldview of modernity. In addition to examining the socio-economic problems confronted by some African Americans in the play, this article investigates the worldviews by which these Black people frame their problems as well as the dynamics within the relationships of a Black family that lives at the intersection of racial, class, and gender inequality in Chicago during the latter 1950s.

scholarly journals African Americans and Recovery from Severe Mental Illness

2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 602-622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilyn Peterson Armour ◽  
William Bradshaw ◽  
David Roseborough
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Severe Mental Illness

scholarly journals Using Peer Navigators to Address the Integrated Health Care Needs of Homeless African Americans With Serious Mental Illness

2017 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 264-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick W. Corrigan ◽  
Dana J. Kraus ◽  
Susan A. Pickett ◽  
Annie Schmidt ◽  
Ed Stellon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Serious Mental Illness ◽  
Integrated Health Care ◽  
Health Care Needs ◽  
Care Needs ◽  
Integrated Health

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly M. Welch
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
South African ◽  
Black People ◽  
White People ◽  
Trial Court ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Legal Proceedings ◽  
History Of ◽  
Debt Recovery ◽  
Racial Hierarchies

Black plaintiffs in civil suits remain a little known aspect of the legal history of the slave South. African Americans were not only observers of trials, informal participants, defendants, or objects of regulation: trial court records reveal them to be prolific litigators as well. They were parties to civil suits in their own interests and directly active in legal proceedings. They sued other black people, certainly, but they also sued white people. What is more, they often won. This is a phenomenon that has largely been overlooked by historians. But it ought not to be, because it speaks to the heart of the ways we understand the operation of power, of law, and of racial hierarchies in the slave South. The black legal experience in America cannot be reduced to white regulation and black criminality. Examining African Americans’ involvement in private law reveals a different picture. Black people appealed to the courts to protect their interests. They exploited the language of rights and property, thus including themselves within an American narrative of citizenship and privilege in advance of formal emancipation. When black litigants made such claims at law, they expected the courts to validate and execute those claims. Indeed, they sought accountability. Thus, seemingly mundane civil actions like debt recovery suits complicate our notions about the sources of rights and their relationship to civic inclusion.

The Optics of Liberian Emigration

2020 ◽  
pp. 145-167
Author(s):  
Aston Gonzalez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Colonization Society ◽  
Fugitive Slave

This chapter explores the life and work of Augustus Washington, the free African American photographer, who envisioned more rights and freedoms than those available in the United States. Anticipating a future in the United States bound by racial restraints, he packed up his successful photography studio in Hartford, Connecticut, and emigrated to Monrovia, Liberia. Washington worked closely with the American Colonization Society to convince black Americans to leave their homeland for Liberia and attempted to provoke viewers of his images to envision the potential of black rights in the United States that he enjoyed in Liberia. Washington’s images promulgating black Liberian political leadership and economic promise abroad offered a vision of freedom that belied a hierarchical, and often oppressive, Liberian society. In the wake of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, his images brought into focus the debates among African Americans about the uncertain, and perhaps imperiled, future of black people in the United States.

Black People and Mental Illness

2017 ◽  
pp. 151-167
Author(s):  
Ntombenhle Protasia Khoti Torkington
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Black People

Predatory Inclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 253-262
Author(s):  
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Real Estate ◽  
Housing Market ◽  
Black People ◽  
Home Ownership ◽  
Rental Market ◽  
American Society ◽  
The U.S

Homeownership in the U.S. is often touted as a means to escape poverty, build wealth, and fully participate in American society. However, racism in the broader American society ultimately resulted in a racist housing market that excludes Black people from homeownership and depresses the value of property inhabited by African Americans. The perception that Black buyers are risky has continued to fuel predatory practices in real estate. The author notes that African Americans should not be limited to the rental market because of inequality in the housing market. Instead, she suggests people should question American society, a society in which full citizenship is reliant upon home ownership.

scholarly journals 163 Appreciating Historical Racial and Ethnic Nuance in Developing Novel Approaches to Effective Communication of Mental Illness in the Black Community

CNS Spectrums ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 304-304
Author(s):  
Napoleon B. Higgins
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mental Health Care ◽  
Black Community ◽  
Mental Health Professionals ◽  
Black People ◽  
Effective Communication ◽  
Poor Mental Health ◽  
Access To Treatment

Abstract:There are many barriers to mental health care in the Black Community. These barriers lead to racial disparities in access to treatment and quality of life, along with inappropriate treatment and misdiagnosis in mental and physical health. These disparities directly lead to increased morbidity, mortality and poor mental health in the our communities. Many would question if Black people are not interested in mental health and don’t see it as a needed concern. This talk will address that all cultures are not the same and that there is a fundamental need to address communities on their terms and not make them conform into a "majority culture" approach and perception of mental health care, but rather focus on the individual patient and community needs for mental health care. Often psychiatrists and other mental health professionals are trained in a very academic scientific approach to identification and treatment of mental illness. Too often this model does not fit the needs of all patients due to it not taking into account ethnic differences in communication of mental health and desired outcomes of the patient. This often leads to a lack of understanding on with both sides, the mental health professional and the patient. Too often a patient may see the physician, be given a diagnosis, starts taking a prescription, but then not be able to explain what is their diagnosis, the name of the medication, what it is for, nor what is the medication supposed to do for them. This could lead to unexpected poor outcomes due to the lack of effective communication. This talk will attempt to explain the barriers of communication to the Black community while appreciating and supporting cultural nuance and effective communication. This is needed to help bring mental health to the community in a digestible way and to meet the communities needs on their level. To do this, psychiatry needs to shift it’s focus to understanding cultural characteristics, such as how Black patients may have different cultural needs and may benefit from a unique, customized approach to their mental health. There is a need for psychiatry to take into consideration the spiritual aspects of patients and how many focus not only on needing to improve themselves, but also on how their mental health and behavior are impacting their family and the community as a whole. The traditional model of interview, diagnosis with medication, and follow up for medication adjustment is not fitting all communities leading to the detriment of their mental health.

scholarly journals Survey Essay 1. Periodizing and Historicizing German Afro-Americanophilia: From Antebellum to Postwar (1850-1965)

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Moritz Ege ◽  
Andrew Wright Hurley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Black People ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
German Culture ◽  
Black Germans ◽  
Power Differentials ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War

In this first essay, we delve into significant moments in the history (and pre-history) of twentieth century Afro-Americanophilia in Germany. We establish a periodisation stretching from the nineteenth century until the mid-1960s (from which point our second essay will continue), and take in the pre-colonial, the colonial, the Weimar, the Nazi; and the post-war eras.  We draw out some of the particularly significant moments, ruptures, and continuities within that time frame. We also identify some of the salient ways scholars have interpreted ‘Afro-Americanophilia’ during the period.  Focusing on a variety of practices of appropriation, communicative media, actors and forms of agency, power differentials, and sociocultural contexts, we discuss positive images of and affirmative approaches to black people in German culture and in its imaginaries. We attend to who was active in Afro-Americanophilia, in what ways, and what the effects of that agency were. Our main focus is on white German Afro-Americanophiles, but—without attempting to write a history of African Americans, black people in Germany, or Black Germans— we also inquire into the ways that the latter reacted to, suffered under the expectations levied upon them, or were able to engage with the demand for ‘black cultural traffic.’  

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