We Can! We Will! We Must!

2019 ◽  
pp. 161-199
Author(s):  
Jelani M. Favors
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
College Presidents ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Black College ◽  
Deep South ◽  
Student Body ◽  
Student Protests ◽  
History Of ◽  
Southern University

The chapter discusses the explosive history of Southern University in the years leading up to the Black Power Movement. Baton Rouge, Louisiana was the setting for one of the largest student protests in the country as thousands of students flocked to the streets in protests against Jim Crow policies. Prior to this emergence, students were nurtured for years in a space cultivated by Joseph Samuel Clark, who served as the school’s first president and was succeeded by his son, Felton Grandison Clark. Like many black college presidents, Clark enjoyed the reputation of a fervent race man who embraced the tenets of the second curriculum. Yet as the modern civil rights movement approached, Clark succumbed to the pressures of the state and transformed into one of the most notorious HBCU presidents during the era – expelling students, firing faculty, and running the campus with a vise-like grip. Nevertheless, the Southern student body powered through these obstacles and created one of the most radical spaces for black youth in the deep south.

Monumental Constructions: Statues, Identity, and Gabrielle Roy’s “L’arbre”

2021 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-117
Author(s):  
Holly Collins
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
American South ◽  
Live Oak ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Significant Attention

Mitch Landrieu, former mayor of New Orleans garnered significant attention for his book In the Shadow of Statues (2018), observing that many Confederate monuments were erected to buttress Jim Crow laws and serve as a warning to those who supported the civil rights movement. Likewise, there are a number of monuments in Québec that serve a particular political or religious purpose, seeking to reinforce a pure laine ideology. In this article, I explore the parallels between the literal and figurative construction and deconstruction of monuments that have fortified invented ideas on identity in francophone North America. Further, Gabrielle Roy’s short story “L’arbre,” which describes a “living monument,” tells the story of a racialized past in North America and unveils the falsities that have been preserved through the construction of statues that perpetuate racial myth. “L’arbre” examines the natural, unconstructed monument of the Live Oak: a tree that witnessed and holds the visible scars of the many terrible realities that took place in its shadows. I use Roy’s short story to show how she sought to deconstruct a whitewashed history of the post-Civil War American South and suggest that her broader corpus rejects determinism wholesale.

Trouble in My Way

2019 ◽  
pp. 133-160
Author(s):  
Jelani M. Favors
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
University President ◽  
State University ◽  
Campus Environment ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Jackson State University ◽  
History Of

This chapter examines the strained history of Jackson State University during the aftermath of World War II and leading up to the modern civil rights movement. Located in the heart of Mississippi, Jackson State students carved out space to express their militancy as the war came to a close. However, they quickly felt that space collapse around them as segregationists tightened their grip on the Magnolia State as the burgeoning movement for black liberation challenged the oppressive traditions of the most socially and politically closed state in the country. Administrators such as Jackson State University president Jacob Reddix quickly fell in line with the expectations of his immediate supervisors and squared off against outspoken scholar-activists such as famed poet and novelist Margaret Walker. The standoff resulted in a campus environment fraught with tension yet still producing students and faculty determined to undermine Jim Crow.

Race Women

2019 ◽  
pp. 70-100
Author(s):  
Jelani M. Favors
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
New Negro ◽  
American Women ◽  
Single Sex ◽  
History Of

This chapter examines the fascinating history of Bennett College – one of only two single sex colleges dedicated to educating African American women. Although Bennett would not make that transition until 1926, the institution played a vital role in educating African American women in Greensboro, North Carolina from the betrayal of the Nadir to the promises of a New Negro Era. The latter period witnessed Bennett, under the leadership of David Dallas Jones, mold scores of young girls into politically conscious race women who were encouraged to resist Jim Crow policies and reject the false principals of white supremacy. Their politicization led to a massive boycott of a theatre in downtown Greensboro and helped to set the tone for Greensboro’s evolution into a critical launching point for the modern civil rights movement.

Blood, Sweat, and Tears

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derrick E. White
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
College Football ◽  
Black College ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Central Character ◽  
Predominately White Institutions ◽  
Predominately White ◽  
Football Programs

Black college football began during the nadir of African American life after the Civil War. The first game occurred in 1892, a little less than four years before the Supreme Court ruled segregation legal in Plessy v. Ferguson. In spite of Jim Crow segregation, Black colleges produced some of the best football programs in the country. They mentored young men who became teachers, preachers, lawyers, and doctors--not to mention many other professions--and transformed Black communities. But when higher education was integrated, the programs faced existential challenges as predominately white institutions steadily set about recruiting their student athletes and hiring their coaches. Blood, Sweat, and Tears explores the legacy of Black college football, with Florida A&M’s Jake Gaither as its central character, one of the most successful coaches in its history. A paradoxical figure, Gaither led one of the most respected Black college football programs, yet many questioned his loyalties during the height of the civil rights movement. Among the first broad-based histories of Black college athletics, Derrick E. White’s sweeping story complicates the heroic narrative of integration and grapples with the complexities and contradictions of one of the most important sources of Black pride in the twentieth century.

An Earned Insurgency: Quality Education as a Constitutional Right

2009 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 370-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Moses
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The United States ◽  
Quality Education ◽  
Educational Equality ◽  
Justice Department ◽  
History Of ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
Lasting Change

In the following pages, Robert Moses tells the history of the early civil rights movement in Mississippi, focusing on the individuals, alliances, and strategies that brought about fundamental change in the United States and ultimately made possible the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. Moses describes how the efforts of Justice Department officials working from the "top" of society combined with the day-to-day work of sharecroppers and organizers at the "bottom" to challenge Jim Crow. His story takes us from the front lines of the movement in Mississippi to his contemporary efforts to ensure that all children in this country receive a quality education. While working from the bottom of today's movement for educational equality, he calls on Obama to provide the leadership needed at the top to ensure lasting change. In this"illuminated story" he infuses his narration (in sans serif) with his own reflections and insights about the lessons this story offers.

American Social Science and the Invention of Affirmative Action, 1920s–1970s

Prospects ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 361-389
Author(s):  
Hamilton Cravens
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
Black College ◽  
Howard University ◽  
Great Passion ◽  
Middle West

On June 4, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson gave the commencement address at Howard University, the federally sponsored historic black college. In the last decade, Americans had become increasingly aware of the civil rights movement in American politics and society, and of the injection of the issues revolving around civil rights for black Americans into the national public discourse. President Johnson took a new angle of attack to the problem of discimination against black Americans. Instead of focusing on the political and legal aspects of Jim Crow legislation, or the constitutional struggles for civil rights in education and voting, or the plight of black Americans in the South, he spoke – with great passion – about the social and economic circumstances of African Americans throughout the nation, including those trapped in the large urban ghettos in the Northeast, the Middle West, and the West. “In far too many ways American Negroes have been another nation: deprived of freedom, crippled by hatred, the doors of opportunity closed to hope,” he argued.

scholarly journals The Silence of Our Friends by M. Long & J. Demonakos

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela Wenger
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
New York ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black College ◽  
Black College Students ◽  
White Family ◽  
Reluctant Readers ◽  
The City ◽  
Southern University

Long, Mark & Jim Demonakos. The Silence of Our Friends. New York: First Second, 2012.  Print. This story is told from the perspective of a boy whose father was a reporter in the city of Houston, Texas. In the year 1967, in the midst of the Civil Rights movement many families struggled to find freedom in their racist communities.  During a police riot that had been started after banning an organizational committee from Texas Southern University, an undercover officer was shot.  Out of the 489 students that were attested, all but 5 students were released the next day.  Those five black college students were accused of killing a policeman. Set in a time of racism and segregation, two families struggle with the events of the riot. With the support of these understanding neighbours, a white family took a risk in trying to win back the freedom of the accused students. The artwork by Nate Powell has created powerful imagery that allows readers to place themselves within the setting and events of that period in history. The combination of historical story elements and graphic images may hook reluctant readers.  The graphic nature of the story is engaging and will educate students of a period in history often presented in more traditional formats. Recommended: 3 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Pamela Wenger Pamela Wenger is a 4th year teacher-librarian working between two schools in Regina.  She is planning to complete a Masters of Education in Teacher-Librarianship in April 2013.

Our Aims Are High and Our Determinations Deep

2019 ◽  
pp. 101-132
Author(s):  
Jelani M. Favors
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Student Activism ◽  
College President ◽  
Deep South ◽  
State University ◽  
New Negro ◽  
Montgomery Bus Boycott ◽  
Bus Boycott

This chapter discusses the history of Alabama State University during the crucial period between the New Negro Era and the rise of the modern civil rights movement. It was during this period that Montgomery, Alabama became a launching point for one of the most important protests in American history – the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Yet few understand the crucial role that Alabama State University played in sowing the seeds of that movement by training the leadership that helped to carry it out, and generating a spirit of resistance long before the boycotts took place. It was the members of the Women’s Political Council, a group of educators teaching at ASU, that designed the ideas for a massive boycott, and it was their leadership on campus, alongside the college president Harper Councill Trenholm, that transformed that campus into one of the most militant centers for student activism in the deep south. The campus soon came under the watchful eye of Jim Crow legislatures who controlled the purse strings and held the keys to the institution, but not before the communitas of ASU summoned the vision and the will to carry out their own sit-in protests in downtown Montgomery.

A Seedbed of Activism

2019 ◽  
pp. 18-48
Author(s):  
Jelani M. Favors
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Black College ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
State University ◽  
Abolitionist Movement ◽  
Key Players ◽  
History Of

This chapter discusses the history of the first black college established – The Institute for Colored Youth (ICY). The ICY would later be renamed Cheyney State University. Founded in 1837, the ICY became a critical staging ground for both the abolitionist movement and the early civil rights movement. With key players such as Ebenezer Bassett, Octavius Catto, and Fanny Jackson Coppin leading the school, the ICY set the template for how black educational institutions would create a pedagogy and praxis that encouraged and radicalized generations of youth to serve their communities as agents for change. Tragically, the most pivotal event of the school’s early years was the assassination of its beloved teacher and alum Octavius Catto in 1871 who was murdered in the streets of Philadelphia after playing a critical role in organizing support for the 15th amendment.

The Lumbee Indians

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malinda Maynor Lowery
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Origin Stories ◽  
History Of

Jamestown, the Lost Colony of Roanoke, and Plymouth Rock are central to America's mythic origin stories. Then, we are told, the main characters--the "friendly" Native Americans who met the settlers--disappeared. But the history of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina demands that we tell a different story. As the largest tribe east of the Mississippi and one of the largest in the country, the Lumbees have survived in their original homelands, maintaining a distinct identity as Indians in a biracial South. In this passionately written, sweeping work of history, Malinda Maynor Lowery narrates the Lumbees' extraordinary story as never before. The Lumbees' journey as a people sheds new light on America's defining moments, from the first encounters with Europeans to the present day. How and why did the Lumbees both fight to establish the United States and resist the encroachments of its government? How have they not just survived, but thrived, through Civil War, Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, and the war on drugs, to ultimately establish their own constitutional government in the twenty-first century? Their fight for full federal acknowledgment continues to this day, while the Lumbee people's struggle for justice and self-determination continues to transform our view of the American experience. Readers of this book will never see Native American history the same way.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document