Creative Conflict in African American Thought: Frederick Douglass, Alexander Crummell, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Marcus Garvey

2005 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 921
Author(s):  
Mia E. Bay ◽  
Wilson Jeremiah Moses
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Marcus Garvey ◽  
American Thought

scholarly journals Fear of a Black planet: Climate apocalypse, Anthropocene futures and Black social thought

2021 ◽  
pp. 136843102110679
Author(s):  
Joe P. L. Davidson ◽  
Filipe Carreira da Silva
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Octavia Butler ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World

In recent years, images of climate catastrophe have become commonplace. However, Black visions of the confluence of the Anthropocene and the apocalypse have been largely ignored. As we argue in this article, Black social thought offers crucial resources for drawing out the implicit exclusions of dominant representations of climate breakdown and developing an alternative account of the planet’s future. By reading a range of critical race theorists, from Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du Bois to Octavia Butler and Ta-Nehisi Coates, we propose a rethinking of the climate apocalypse. The African American theoretical and cultural tradition elaborates an image of the end of the world that emphasises the non-revelatory nature of climate catastrophe, warns against associating collapse with rebirth, and articulates a mode of maroon survivalism in which the apocalypse is an event to be endured and escaped rather than fatalistically expected or infinitely delayed.

On Freedom and the Will to Adorn

2019 ◽  
pp. 10-35
Author(s):  
Cheryl A. Wall
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Racial Identity ◽  
Zora Neale Hurston ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
African American Authors ◽  
The Will ◽  
Artistic Interventions ◽  
American Authors

This chapter discusses how black essayists worked through and around ideas of freedom to produce new variations of the genre of the essay. The author shows how the African American essay serves as the medium through which authors make crucial political, social, and artistic interventions. At the same time the author is attentive to formal changes in the essay. Through a series of representative examples from authors such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, and Zora Neale Hurston, this chapter charts the way the essay at its best expresses both a determination to be free and the “will to adorn.” Although the emphasis changes, black essayists use three rhetorical strategies to make these crucial interventions: democratic eloquence, troubled eloquence and vernacular process. Frederick Douglass utilizes democratic eloquence to make crucial interventions in anti-slavery discourse. W.E.B. Du Bois’ troubled eloquence marks a historical shift in which freedom becomes aligned as much with individual identity as with a people’s collective freedom. Zora Neale Hurston uses a “vernacular process” to fuse high and low styles in her meditation on freedom and racial identity. It is through the use of these strategies that African American authors make a mark on the genre itself.

Negro Sinn Féiners and Black Fenians

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Nelson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Nationalism ◽  
Irish Immigrants ◽  
Claude Mckay ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Strong Attraction ◽  
Marcus Garvey ◽  
Human Capacity

This chapter focuses on the strong attraction that Ireland held for Afro-Caribbean and African American intellectuals and activists such as Marcus Garvey, Cyril Briggs, Claude McKay, Hubert Harrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and A. Philip Randolph. The Afro-Caribbean activists, in particular, took inspiration from the “Irish Revolution.” References to the Irish Parliamentary Party, Sinn Féin, and the Irish Republican Brotherhood dotted their newspapers and broadsides, as did the names of Irish revolutionary heroes such as Terence MacSwiney and Eamon de Valera. Insofar as they embraced black nationalism, they pointed to the Irish preoccupation with “Ourselves,” which they translated as “Race First.” Some African American intellectuals, above all Du Bois, were more circumspect about the Irish. They were keenly aware of the antagonism that for generations had marked the relationships between blacks and Irish immigrants in the United States. And yet even for Du Bois “Bleeding Ireland” became an irresistible symbol of the human capacity for suffering and regeneration.

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.

Classical American pragmatism: Practicing philosophy as experiencing life

Human Affairs ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacquelyn Kegley
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Problem Solving ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Religious Development ◽  
American Pragmatism ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Problems In Living ◽  
Applied Philosophy ◽  
Democratic Life

AbstractI argue that Classical American Pragmatists—Royce, James, Dewey, Perice, Addams, Du Bois, and Locke subscribed to this view and practiced philosophy by focusing on experience and directing a critical eye to major problems in living. Thus Royce and Dewey explored the nature of genuine community and its role in developing a flourishing individual life but also a public, democratic life. Royce and James engaged in a phenomenological analysis of human experience including religious experience developing a rich understanding of human psychological, social, and religious development. Dewey, Royce and Perice applied the lessons of the scientific communal experience to problem solving in everyday life. Dewey explored life’s aesthetic dimensions. Addams, Du Bois and Locke applied philosophy to problems of living with discrimination as an immigrant or an African American.

“An Inside Thing to Live by”: Refusal, Conjure, and Black Feminist Imaginaries among Granny Midwives

Hypatia ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Lindsey Stewart
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Politics Of Recognition ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Black Feminists ◽  
Conjure Woman ◽  
Birthing Practices ◽  
American Thought

Abstract “Granny midwives” often based their authority to practice midwifery on the spiritual traditions of rootwork or conjure passed down by the foremothers who trained them. However, granny midwives were compelled to give up their conjure-infused methods of birthing if they wanted to become licensed (that is, to get a “permit”) or be authorized by the state to continue their practice of midwifery. In response, some granny midwives refused to recognize the authority of the state in the birthing realm, willfully retaining rootwork in their birthing practices. In this article, I contrast the response of granny midwives, a politics of refusal, with another major tradition in African American thought, a politics of recognition, such as gaining citizenship and rights, permits, and licenses from the state. Due to the political stakes of the granny midwife's conflict with the state, I argue that black feminists often endow the figure of the granny midwife (or more broadly, the conjure woman) with the political significance of refusal in our emancipatory imaginaries. To demonstrate this, I will analyze the interventions in black liberation politics that two black feminist writers make through their invocation of granny midwives: Zora Neale Hurston's essay, “High John de Conquer,” and Toni Morrison's novel, Paradise.

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