The hidden history of Benjamin Montgomery: Slave, manager, and accountant

2021 ◽  
pp. 103237322110581
Author(s):  
Sandra Gates ◽  
Megan Burke ◽  
John Humphreys
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Accounting Profession ◽  
Accounting Practice ◽  
Accounting History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Narrative Process ◽  
Race Ethnicity

Little is known about the contributions of African-American slaves in the histories of various business domains, including accounting. Some authors attribute this scholarly silence to ideological motives due to race-ethnicity and bigotry. Others note that this paucity reflects not only a lack of data but also an inability to adequately approach the contributions of minorities to the accounting profession. Consequently, there are hidden voices in accounting history that should be explored. One of those voices belongs to Benjamin Thornton Montgomery, a Southern slave who became a plantation manager and owner. Observing Montgomery’s practices through the unique historical lens of the ante-bellum period of the United States, we argue that he should also be acknowledged for his responsibilities as an accountant. Accordingly, we use an analytically structured narrative process to examine the compelling case of Ben Montgomery to inform a more accurate and balanced historical foundation of accounting practice in America.

Religion, Race, and Humanism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony B. Pinn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Richard Wright ◽  
Institutional Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Unitarian Universalist ◽  
Racial Injustice ◽  
History Of ◽  
Lorraine Hansberry

This chapter explores the history of humanism within African American communities. It positions humanist thinking and humanism-inspired activism as a significant way in which people of African descent in the United States have addressed issues of racial injustice. Beginning with critiques of theism found within the blues, moving through developments such as the literature produced by Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, and others, to political activists such as W. E. B. DuBois and A. Philip Randolph, to organized humanism in the form of African American involvement in the Unitarian Universalist Association, African Americans for Humanism, and so on, this chapter presents the historical and institutional development of African American humanism.

scholarly journals Book Review: History of African Americans: Exploring Diverse Roots

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 265
Author(s):  
Trent Shotwell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American History ◽  
Social Life ◽  
African American History ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich

History of African Americans: Exploring Diverse Roots by Thomas J. Davis chronicles the remarkable past of African Americans from the earliest arrival of their ancestors to the election of President Barack Obama. This work was produced to recognize every triumph and tragedy that separates African Americans as a group from others in America. By distinguishing the rich and unique history of African Americans, History of African Americans: Exploring Diverse Roots provides an account of inspiration, courage, and progress. Each chapter details a significant piece of African American history, and the book includes numerous concise portraits of prominent African Americans and their contributions to progressing social life in the United States.

From Mammies to Mommy Machines

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Harrison
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Racial Difference ◽  
The United States ◽  
Recent Case ◽  
Legal Cases ◽  
Reproductive Labor ◽  
Parental Fitness ◽  
History Of ◽  
Gestational Surrogacy

This chapter examines how discourses of race are influenced by the economic and reproductive imperatives of society at different historical moments. The author compares historical examples of racialized reproduction to contemporary examples with an analysis of two legal cases involving cross-racial gestational surrogacy in the United States: Johnson v. Calvert and, more recently, Marion County Division of Children’s Services v. Melinger. The specifics of these two cases vary dramatically; most notably, African American surrogate Anna Johnson went to court for custody of the child she bore, while the more recent case focused on the parental fitness of the white intended father. However, in both instances racial difference between the surrogate and intended parents served the interests of the racially and economically privileged parties. Like cross-racial wet nursing, cross-racial gestational surrogacy is part of a complicated history of racialized reproductive labor in the United States.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 3-10
Author(s):  
Elaine Allen Lechtreck
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Gospel ◽  
Southern States ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Martin Luther King

The introduction includes Bible verses cited by ministers to defend segregation and verses to oppose segregation. There are slices of the history of the United States, the Civil Rights Movement, and African American history. The southern states, where white ministers confronted segregation, are identified. The term “minister” is explained as well as the variety of labels given these ministers ranging from “Liberal,” Progressive,” “Neo-Orthodox,” “Evangelical Liberal,” “open conservative,” ‘Last Hurrah of the Social Gospel Movement” to “Trouble Maker,” “Traitor, “ “Atheist,” “Communist,” “N_____ Lover.” Rachel Henderlite, the only woman minister mentioned in the book, is identified. Synopses of the book’s seven chapters are included. Comments by historians David Chappell, Charles Reagan Wilson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ernest Campbell, and Thomas Pettigrew are cited.

Buddhism and Race

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adeana McNicholl
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious History ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
Buddhist Studies ◽  
Race And Racialization ◽  
History Of ◽  
Race Ethnicity

This chapter takes a step toward the theorization of discourses of race and racialization within the American Buddhist context. Far from being neutral observers, Buddhist Studies scholars have participated in the racialization of particular American Buddhisms. After mapping the landscape of key works on race, ethnicity, and American Buddhism, this chapter takes as a case study a collection of black Buddhist publications that reflect on race and ethnicity. Thus far, scholarship has ignored black Buddhists, yet black Buddhist reflections on race challenge dominant paradigms for the interpretation of the history of Buddhism and Buddhist teachings in the United States. This chapter concludes with suggestions for future avenues for research, including ways that we may connect the work of black Buddhists to the wider context of American religious history and American engagements with Asia.

Beyond the Confederacy

2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 160-167
Author(s):  
Kathleen James-Chakraborty
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Family Members ◽  
The United States ◽  
German Reunification ◽  
Public Intellectuals ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
Inclusive Approach ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Abstract Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, contains the United States’ most comprehensive and controversial set of memorials commemorating the Confederacy. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women as well as men from families that had formerly owned slaves enjoyed roles as public figures by working to keep the memory of the Confederacy alive, including by championing the erection of statues like these. This activism helped enable subsequent female family members to become public intellectuals and scholars. Scholarship on the origins of the approach enshrined in a celebrated series of memorials erected in Berlin following German reunification by one such woman suggests that Richmond’s series of monuments might be reconfigured to foster a more inclusive approach to the history of the Civil War by sharply contrasting fragments of the current memorials with new content that addresses African American and other Unionist perspectives on the conflict.

Race, Space, Time

Peyote Effect ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 169-176
Author(s):  
Alexander S. Dawson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
African American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Short History ◽  
Spanish Inquisition ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Over Time

We begin the book’s conclusion with the juxtaposition of two different stories of peyotism: the creation of an ecotourism business featuring Wixárika peyotism in Potrero de la Palmita, Nayarit, in 2010 and the short history of an African American peyotist church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the 1920s. The former is licit, enjoying support by a state committed to economic development, while the latter faced constant threats from the police before collapsing, in part due to its members’ fear of arrest. These two stories remind us of the central roles that place and time play in the history of peyotism across the U.S.-Mexican border, but they also force us to consider the ways that ideas about race have informed the battles over peyote in Mexico and the United States. Particularly striking is the fact that the racial prohibitions enacted by the Spanish Inquisition resonate with current law. Also notable is the fact that Mexicans and Americans have deployed similar ideas about race over time in their battles over peyote. This speaks to the underlying anxieties that indigeneity evokes in both societies, as well as the role that indigenous subjects have played in the creation of whiteness in both the United States and Mexico.

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