Ora Dell Graham

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Wade
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Library Of Congress ◽  
Black Girl ◽  
The People ◽  
Tangible Evidence ◽  
Entire Nation

This chapter describes the recordings of Ora Dell Graham. In the fall of 1940, the year she turned twelve, Ora Dell stood before her classmates in her school auditorium. As John A. Lomax operated a disc recorder, she performed a handful of songs that she animated with dance steps, hand clapping, and vocal effects. Three of these numbers, along with the earliest published recordings of Muddy Waters, subsequently appeared on an album of African American blues and game songs issued by the Library of Congress. This news came as a surprise to her nephew, Sonny Milton. He then asked why anyone would care about a little black girl from Mississippi. The reason is that in November 1940, just three weeks after Ora Dell made her recordings, Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish summarized the Library's acquisition policy in the “Canons of Selection,”: “The Library of Congress should possess all books and other materials ... which express and record the life and achievements of the people of the United States.” The Library's canon embraced the entire nation, welcoming not only the papers of a president but the poetry of a schoolyard child. The recordings she made gave tangible evidence of this policy of inclusion.

James McCune Smith Predicted African American Preeminence in U.S. Art and Culture

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy M. Cools
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
African Descent ◽  
The United States ◽  
Caste System ◽  
Community Leader ◽  
Intellectual Community ◽  
The People ◽  
Art And Culture ◽  
American Physician

James McCune Smith (1813–1865) was an African American physician, author, intellectual, community leader, and antislavery activist. He believed that the racial caste system of the United States was perpetuated not only by the slave system but by widely entrenched negative attitudes towards people of African descent, both outside and within the African American community. To counteract popular prejudice and to promote African American confidence and unity, he wrote widely on the abilities, accomplishments, and contributions of people of African descent, both historical and contemporary. This article examines McCune Smith’s theory that African Americans would play a formative and outsize role in the development of United States artistic and intellectual culture. From his time to ours, McCune Smith’s striking prediction was fulfilled to a degree that even he, inspired with the confidence his 1841 lecture “The Destiny of the People of Color” (published 1843) reveals, might marvel at.

Populism and Liberal Democracy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Takis S. Pappas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Comprehensive Theory ◽  
The People ◽  
Original Definition ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Great Relevance ◽  
Definition Of

Based on an original definition of modern populism as “democratic illiberalism” and many years of meticulous research, Takis Pappas marshals extraordinary empirical evidence from Argentina, Greece, Peru, Italy, Venezuela, Ecuador, Hungary, the United States, Spain, and Brazil to develop a comprehensive theory about populism. He addresses all key issues in the debate about populism and answers significant questions of great relevance for today’s liberal democracy, including: • What is modern populism and how can it be differentiated from comparable phenomena like nativism and autocracy? • Where in Latin America has populism become most successful? Where in Europe did it emerge first? Why did its rise to power in the United States come so late? • Is Trump a populist and, if so, could he be compared best with Venezuela’s Chávez, France’s Le Pens, or Turkey’s Erdoğan? • Why has populism thrived in post-authoritarian Greece but not in Spain? And why in Argentina and not in Brazil? • Can populism ever succeed without a charismatic leader? If not, what does leadership tell us about how to challenge populism? • Who are “the people” who vote for populist parties, how are these “made” into a group, and what is in their minds? • Is there a “populist blueprint” that all populists use when in power? And what are the long-term consequences of populist rule? • What does the expansion, and possibly solidification, of populism mean for the very nature and future of contemporary democracy? Populism and Liberal Democracy will change the ways the reader understands populism and imagines the prospects of liberal democracy.

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.

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