scholarly journals Kneading, Needing, and Eating Black Bodies

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2/3) ◽  
pp. 217-240
Author(s):  
Fabienne Snowden ◽  
Willie Tolliver ◽  
Amanda McPherson
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black People ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Historical Review ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
History Of

Social workers have been on the frontlines alongside marginalized communities since the profession’s emergence. This stance continues with supporting the Black Lives Matter Movement and centering the structural inequities that the COVID-19 pandemic highlights. A narrative that centers the history of social work’s concern for Black citizenship in the profession’s formation is neglected in the literature. This historical review traces the genesis of the profession’s work to expand access to the entitlements of citizenship among Black communities. Thematic analysis of secondary sources is used to investigate the formation of the profession and its work to ensure access to resources among Blacks communities. Study findings identify that the profession emerged from the bonds between the Abolitionist Movement and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, then moved away from working with Black people during the Settlement Movement and did not return to addressing the needs of these communities until the 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement. Black social workers answered the call to support Black and non-Black communities in the absence of the profession’s national organization’s presence. Social work needs, kneads, and eats Black bodies by being in complicity with systems of oppression. The history of social work and its concern and lack of concern for Black citizenship is a pedagogical innovation that addresses the historical amnesia that White domination fosters. The findings of this analysis call social workers to task to disrupt White dominant epistemologies of ignorance by incorporating this historical context into their social work pedagogy.

scholarly journals The Impact of the 1970s on Black Identity Development: An Analysis of Psychosocial and Black Existential Perspectives

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jackie Sewell
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Identity Development ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Identity ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Black Consciousness ◽  
Existential Approach ◽  
The Impact

With the killing of George Floyd in 2020 and the subsequent focus on black existence, itis perhaps timely to revisit a previous historical period – the 1970s which saw theemergence of the civil rights movement and the transformation of black consciousness and identity.Both psychosocial and existential theories highlight the relationship between context and the development of identity. Drawing on the work of Erikson, Cross describes stages of identity development from negro to black which he originally related to the historical context of the black consciousness period of the 1970s but later, developed into a tool to measure black identity. This model depicts identity as developing in fixed stages with objective and measurable characteristics. The black existential approach focuses on the construction of identity within a context shaped by an individual’s experiences. Black existential philosophy aims to explore how different black experiences shape different manifestations of black identity construction. This articlereviews these two perspectives. I conclude that the black existential perspective produces richer knowledge about the existence of black people. Using the example ofhow second generation British born black Jamaicans constructed their identity during the 1970s, it is possible to see how this construction was shaped by their lived experiences in Britain at this time.

Social Justice

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet L. Finn ◽  
Maxine Jacobson
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
21St Century ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Work History ◽  
Core Value ◽  
Social Work History

This entry examines the concept of social justice and its significance as a core value of social work. Diverse conceptualizations of social justice and their historical and philosophical underpinnings are examined. The influence of John Rawls' perspectives on social justice is addressed as are alternative conceptualizations, such as the capabilities perspective. The roots of social justice are traced through social work history, from the Settlement House Movement to the Rank and Film Movement, Civil Rights Movement, and contemporary struggles in the context of globalization. Challenges for social justice-oriented practice in the 21st century are address. The discussion concludes with concrete example of ways in which social workers are translating principles of social justice into concrete practices.

scholarly journals Another Cinema

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-114
Author(s):  
Hayley O’Malley
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Independent Film ◽  
Revisionist History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Sites ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
History Of Race

James Baldwin was a vocal critic of Hollywood, but he was also a cinephile, and his critique of film was not so much of the medium itself, but of the uses to which it was put. Baldwin saw in film the chance to transform both politics and art—if only film could be transformed itself. This essay blends readings of archival materials, literature, film, and print culture to examine three distinct modes in Baldwin’s ongoing quest to revolutionize film. First, I argue, literature served as a key site to practice being a filmmaker, as Baldwin adapted cinematic grammars in his fiction and frequently penned scenes of filmgoing in which he could, in effect, direct his own movies. Secondly, I show that starting in the 1960s, Baldwin took a more direct route to making movies, as he composed screenplays, formed several production companies, and attempted to work in both Hollywood and the independent film scene in Europe. Finally, I explore how Baldwin sought to change cinema as a performer himself, in particular during his collaboration on Dick Fontaine and Pat Hartley’s documentary I Heard It Through the Grapevine (1982). This little-known film follows Baldwin as he revisits key sites from the civil rights movement and reconnects with activist friends as he endeavors to construct a revisionist history of race in America and to develop a media practice capable of honoring Black communities.

scholarly journals Political Advocacy Without a Choice

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2/3) ◽  
pp. 241-258
Author(s):  
Donisha Shepherd ◽  
Suzanne Pritzker
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Black Migration ◽  
Political Empowerment ◽  
Jim Crow Era

From social work’s early days, African American social workers were engaged in what today is termed as political social work, yet their work is often overlooked in both social work education and the broader retelling of our profession’s history. This article examines the early history of African American political social work, using Lane and Pritzker’s (2018) five domains of political social work. We outline ways in which African American social workers’ lived experiences led them to engage in political social work to support community survival and to challenge injustice during the Black Migration period post-slavery, the Jim Crow Era, and the Civil Rights Movement. Even as broader structural dynamics sought to exclude African Americans from the political arena, dynamic and influential African American social workers laid the groundwork for modern political social work. They politically engaged their communities, lobbied for legislation, worked in the highest levels of government, supported campaigns, and ran and held elective office to ensure that civil rights were given and maintained. This manuscript calls for a shift from social work’s white-dominant historical narrative and curricula (Bell, 2014; DeLoach McCutcheon, 2019) to assertive discussion of the historic roles African American political social work pioneers played in furthering political empowerment and challenging social injustice.

Not as It Is Written

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-100
Author(s):  
Benjamin Houston
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
International Exhibition ◽  
Black Experience ◽  
American Perspective ◽  
History Of ◽  
Black Life ◽  
Made In

This article discusses an international exhibition that detailed the recent history of African Americans in Pittsburgh. Methodologically, the exhibition paired oral history excerpts with selected historic photographs to evoke a sense of Black life during the twentieth century. Thematically, showcasing the Black experience in Pittsburgh provided a chance to provoke among a wider public more nuanced understandings of the civil rights movement, an era particularly prone to problematic and superficial misreadings, but also to interject an African American perspective into the scholarship on deindustrializing cities, a literature which treats racism mostly in white-centric terms. This essay focuses on the choices made in reconciling these thematic and methodological dimensions when designing this exhibition.

West of Jim Crow

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn M. Hudson
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Freedom Fighters ◽  
White Schools ◽  
Black Bodies

This book follows California’s history of segregation from statehood to the beginning of the long civil rights movement, arguing that the state innovated methods to control and contain African Americans and other people of color. While celebrated in popular discourse for its forward-thinking culture, politics, and science, California also pioneered new ways to keep citizenship white. Schools, streetcars, restaurants, theaters, parks, beaches, and pools were places of contestation where the presence of black bodies elicited forceful responses from segregationists. Black Californians employed innovative measures to dismantle segregation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; they borrowed some tactics from race rebels in the South, others they improvised. West of Jim Crow uses California to highlight the significance of African American resistance to racial restrictions in places often deemed marginal to mainstream civil rights histories. Examining segregation in the state sheds light on the primacy of gender and sexuality in the minds of segregationists and the significance of black women, black bodies, and racial science, in the years preceding the modern civil rights struggle. California has much to teach us about the lives of African Americans who crossed the color line and the variety of tactics and strategies employed by freedom fighters across the United States.

Visualizing a Black Future: Emory Douglas and the Black Panther Party

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-311
Author(s):  
Colette Gaiter
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Panther Party ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Gun Carrying ◽  
The Us ◽  
Hero Archetype ◽  
Gun Culture ◽  
Black Panther

In the post-Civil Rights late 1960s, the Black Panther Party (BPP) artist Emory Douglas created visual messages mirroring the US Western genre and gun culture of the time. For black people still struggling against severe oppression, Douglas’s work metaphorically armed them to defend against daily injustices. The BPP’s intrepid and carefully constructed images were compelling, but conversely, they motivated lawmakers and law enforcement officers to disrupt the organization aggressively. Decades after mainstream media vilified Douglas’s work, new generations celebrate its prescient activism and bold aesthetics. Using empathetic strategies of reflecting black communities back to themselves, Douglas visualized everyday superheroes. The gun-carrying avenger/cowboy hero archetype prevalent in Westerns did not transcend deeply embedded US racial stereotypes branding black people as inherently dangerous. Douglas helped the Panthers create visual mythology that merged fluidly with the ideas of Afrofuturism, which would develop years later as an expression of imagined liberated black futures.

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