scholarly journals The Cult of Quality: White Eugenics and Black Responses in the United States, 1900-1934

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Aron Ginther
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black Community ◽  
The United States ◽  
Biological Determinism ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Genetic Heritability ◽  
Black Intellectual

This paper focuses on the theory of eugenics and how it was adopted and subverted by black intellectual figures when institutionalized sterilizations were based upon class. The cornerstone of the eugenics theory was based in biological determinism and assumptions of genetic heritability. For black leaders, W.E.B. Du Bois in particular, the early plight for racial legitimacy rested on eugenics and, while morally questionable, strengthening the black community was an attempt to counteract white assumptions. Thus,‘black eugenics’ should not immediately be condemned as an outright failure but should be regarded as an earnest attempt for civil rights. As such, it should not be forgotten and should be recognized as part of the broader framework for African American liberation.

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.

Creating LDF South

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Rosen ◽  
Joseph Mosnier
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North Carolina ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Firm ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
To Come ◽  
Washington University

This chapter describes Chambers's creation of a black-led and racially integrated law firm, for all intents the first such institution in the United States. In 1967, Chambers recruited two junior attorneys to his office: Adam Stein, a white George Washington University Law School graduate who had interned with Chambers in the summer of 1965, and James Ferguson, an African American from Asheville, North Carolina, who had just graduated from Columbia Law School. The three would form the nucleus of a powerful civil rights law practice for years to come. In 1968, after recruiting a young white Legal Aid attorney, James Lanning, Chambers formally created Chambers, Stein, Ferguson & Lanning. In 1969, African American attorney Robert Belton, a North Carolina native who was LDF's leading Title VII litigator, also joined the firm. So highly reputed was Chambers as a civil rights litigator, and so central was his firm to the wider LDF campaign in these years, that the firm was informally acknowledged as "LDF South."

American Opposition to South African Apartheid

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David L. Hostetter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
South African ◽  
Economic Sanctions ◽  
The United States ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
Apartheid Regime

American activists who challenged South African apartheid during the Cold War era extended their opposition to racial discrimination in the United States into world politics. US antiapartheid organizations worked in solidarity with forces struggling against the racist regime in South Africa and played a significant role in the global antiapartheid movement. More than four decades of organizing preceded the legislative showdown of 1986, when a bipartisan coalition in Congress overrode President Ronald Reagan’s veto, to enact economic sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Adoption of sanctions by the United States, along with transnational solidarity with the resistance to apartheid by South Africans, helped prompt the apartheid regime to relinquish power and allow the democratic elections that brought Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress to power in 1994. Drawing on the tactics, strategies and moral authority of the civil rights movement, antiapartheid campaigners mobilized public opinion while increasing African American influence in the formulation of US foreign policy. Long-lasting organizations such as the American Committee on Africa and TransAfrica called for boycotts and divestment while lobbying for economic sanctions. Utilizing tactics such as rallies, demonstrations, and nonviolent civil disobedience actions, antiapartheid activists made their voices heard on college campuses, corporate boardrooms, municipal and state governments, as well as the halls of Congress. Cultural expressions of criticism and resistance served to reinforce public sentiment against apartheid. Novels, plays, movies, and music provided a way for Americans to connect to the struggles of those suffering under apartheid. By extending the moral logic of the movement for African American civil rights, American anti-apartheid activists created a multicultural coalition that brought about institutional and governmental divestment from apartheid, prompted Congress to impose economic sanctions on South Africa, and increased the influence of African Americans regarding issues of race and American foreign policy.

Robert Johnson e o racismo em Mississipi nas décadas de 1910-1930 no documentário "O Diabo na Encruzilhada"

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Letícia Ferreira Aguiar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Black Community ◽  
American History ◽  
African American History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Symbolic Racism ◽  
Untimely Death ◽  
Social Tension ◽  
The Devil

Neste estudo busca-se analisar a trajetória do músico Robert Johnson em razão da sua vivência como homem negro no Mississipi entre as décadas de 1910 e 1930, período de tensões sociais extremas para a comunidade negra nas condições existentes no estado e no país em si. Para realizar este objetivo, a investigação toma como ponto de partida o documentário “O diabo na encruzilhada”, do diretor Brian Oakes, que aborda a vida de Johnson desde suas origens, destacando os conflitos de classe e raça entre membros de sua família e o Klu Klux Klan, até sua morte, aos 27 anos. Sua vida conturbada é marcada tanto pelo racismo institucional como simbólico. Desmistifica-se Johnson, documentando os aspectos sociopolíticos da época, de forma a explicar seu legado deturpado pela mentalidade racista.Palavras-chave: Blues. História Afroamericana. Racismo.AbstractThis study intends to analyze the trajectory of Robert Johnson, an established african-american musician, about his experiences with racism during the decades of 1910 to 1930. This period was a time of extreme social tension for the black community, especially in the existing conditions of Mississippi, and the entirety of the United States at the time. "The Devil at the Crossroads," a documentary directed by Brian Oakes, approaches Johnson's life focusing from the conflicts of class between Johnson's family and members of the Klu Klux Klan to details of Johnson's life up until his untimely death at 27. Johnson's life was turbulent, stained by institucional and symbolic racism. By demythologizing Johnson, documenting the sociopolitical aspects of the period, Oakes explains how Johnson's legacy was perverted by the racist mentality.Keywords: Blues. African-American History. Racism.

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.

An Africana Philosophical Reading of Du Bois’s Political Thought

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis R. Gordon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
New England ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Black People ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
The Status ◽  
Global Influence

Lewis R. Gordon’s essay focuses on Du Bois’s shift from New England liberalism to international radicalism and his global influence in Africana thought, despite his focus on African American politics. Though Du Bois’s expectation of equality for black people in the United States was a supremely radical idea on its own, it was his association with the black tradition of addressing social contradictions and imagining a future of grappling with them that led to the development of his radical philosophical anthropology. Du Bois, like many other Africana scholars, used his theories to express why black people could no longer wait to challenge the status quo. Therefore, Africana political theorists must assert the humanity of people of African descent, which necessitates an explanation of why they are human and how they have historically been excluded from definitions of humanity.

Principled Disobedience

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Candice Delmas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
The United States ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
The Status

Chapter 1 surveys the literature on civil disobedience and places the author’s own approach to resistance and principled disobedience within this context. Public understanding of civil disobedience is the product of two different strands: the broadly Rawlsian philosophical conception of civil disobedience and the official narrative of the civil rights movement in the United States. This chapter calls upon history to show how the standard, broadly Rawlsian conception of civil disobedience (though not necessarily Rawls’s own) rests on an unrealistic and objectionable reading of the African American civil rights struggle. It also argues that the official reading of the civil rights movement functions as a counter-resistance ideology, deterring any form of protest against the status quo. It then examines and critiques recent “inclusive” accounts of civil disobedience, proposing instead a broad matrix of resistance that includes lawful acts of resistance and principled—civil and uncivil—disobedience.

Chick-a-ma-feeno

Jockomo ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 75-108
Author(s):  
Shane Lief ◽  
John McCusker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Black Community ◽  
The United States ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Social Equality ◽  
Mardi Gras ◽  
Personal Histories

This chapter lays out several different narratives about the origins of Mardi Gras Indians. Some are based on oral histories shared among Mardi Gras Indians themselves, while others are based on various archives and newspaper accounts. The emergence of the Mardi Gras Indian tradition is set against the backdrop of the evolution of Mardi Gras as celebrated during the colonial period and beyond, after Louisiana had become part of the United States. The struggle for African American political power and social equality is another parallel thread for this narrative, especially as Mardi Gras Indian practices overlapped with other masking traditions and institutions in the Black community. The earliest known account of Mardi Gras Indians, identified as such, is analysed and the personal histories of the first known Mardi Gras Indians reveal connections to Black participation in the Civil War and continuing struggles during Reconstruction and through the early twentieth century.

Euro-Americans Favoring People of Color: Covert Racism and Economies of White Colorism

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (14) ◽  
pp. 2087-2100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Komal K. Dhillon-Jamerson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Black Community ◽  
Skin Color ◽  
The United States ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
European American ◽  
Covert Racism ◽  
Education And Employment ◽  
Prejudice And Discrimination

African American colorism in the United States is often viewed as an intraracial problem in which prejudice and discrimination are relegated to the scope of internal issues. What is often lacking in the discourse on colorism is the interracial component of intraracial hierarchies—referred to as White colorism. Colorism is not a phenomenon that originated within the Black community. Rather, it is a result of European American practices that further divided Blacks according to skin color. The historical underpinnings of colorism include colonialism and slavery, yet these ideologies continue to inform racism today. This article explores how colorism was established and is now sustained by Whites in various capacities, including social and economic spheres. Additionally, racialized dichotomies, borders of Whiteness, and Black consciousness are considered to demonstrate the intersection of historical racism and current racial rhetoric. Last, the effects of White colorism on Black achievement status, including education and employment, is elucidated through an analysis of data and literature.

“Nothing Special to Offer the Negro”: Revisiting the “‘Debsian View’ of the Negro Question”

2008 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 212-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
William P. Jones
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
The United States ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
History Of ◽  
Over Time

AbstractSince the early twentieth century Eugene V. Debs and his essay “The Negro in the Class Struggle” have been cited repeatedly as examples of an alleged indifference among white radicals to African Americans and the historical significance of racism in the United States. A close reading of the essay reveals just the opposite. Not only did Debs support African Americans' struggle for equality, he believed that it was critical to the realization of America's democratic promise. That position alienated him from other white Socialists, but it won the admiration of African American radicals including W.E.B. Du Bois and A. Philip Randolph. This essay examines how Debs's essay came to be interpreted as a capitulation to racism and, over time, alleged indifference to African Americans and the significance of racism in the history of the United States.

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