Leith mullings biography of abraham lincoln
A month full of milestones in Black History
This year marks the 77th anniversary of America's Black History celebration, a memorial that began in 1926 as Black History Week and has since expanded into a month-long tribute to African-American culture and heritage. The idea for this time of remembrance originated with Carter G. Woodson, a black scholar and Harvard graduate who chose February as a time for commemoration because two important figures in African-American history, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, celebrated birthdays during that month. The creation of the NAACP and the death of Malcolm X also occurred in February, making the time an especially appropriate one. Woodson would be pleased with the variety of titles published this year in honor of the celebration he initiated.
This Far By Faith: Stories From the African American Religious Experience, the companion volume to the PBS television series airing in June, explores the role of religion in black culture. Written by Emmy Award-winner Juan Williams, author of Eyes on the Prize, and Quinton Dixie, the book blends research, interviews and input from noted contemporary religious figures with unforgettable photographs and archival material. The book contains fascinating tales of people on fire with faith, like Sojourner Truth, whose absolute trust in God allowed her to walk away from an unjust owner and campaign for the rights of women and African Americans. We read of the establishment of the storefront church as blacks migrated north, the indispensability of the largely Protestant church in the Civil Rights movement and the rise of the controversial Nation of Islam. This Far By Faith is a wonderfully comprehensive evaluation of the ways in which African Americans have worshiped, as well as a moving tribute to the life of the spirit.
The path to freedom
As Ann Hagedorn's novelistic Beyond the River: The Untold Story of the Heroes of the Underground Railroad demonstrates, H Thirty years after A. PhilipRandolph first proposed a march on Washington, and one hundred years after Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation, on August 28, 1963, over 200,000 Americans marched in the nation’s capital and then stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial to hear the speeches. The keynote address of the March on Washington for Civil Rights was delivered by Martin Luther King Jr., already the nation’s most charismatic and respected leader of the civil rights movement. In words that have become immortal, King declared his hope for America. “Go back to Mississippi; go back to Alabama; go back to South Carolina; go back to Georgia; go back to Louisiana; go back to the slums and ghettos of the northern cities,” King told the marchers, “knowing that somehow this situation can, and will be changed.… Let us not wallow in the valley of despair,” he said. Hope was coming. So I say to you, my friends, that even though we must face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed—we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF. Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988. Google Scholar Brinkely, Douglas. Rosa Parks. New York: Penguin Putnam, 2000. Google Scholar Brown, Cynthia Stokes. Ready from Within: Septima Clark and the Civil Rights Movement. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1990. Google Scholar Carson, Clayborne, David J. Garrow, Gerald Gill, Vincent Harding, and Darelen Clark Hine. The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader. New York: Penguin Books, 1991. Google Scholar Franklin, John Hope, and Alfred A. Moss Jr. From Slavery to Freedom: A History o The rich repertoire of songs and music that African-Americans have produced over the last century has to a large extent been recorded. Its value is recognized all over the world. The same cannot be said for black oratory, which shared the same roots and reflected similar emotions: slavery, segregation and imprisonment produced resistance, anger, bitterness and, often, resignation. Very few speeches were written, leave alone recorded, until the mid-20th century; and yet they had a huge cultural and historical impact. W. E. B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey were amongst the greatest orators during the early twentieth century. A generation later, Adam Clayton Powell, the independent Congressman elected from Harlem, could electrify an audience. This is the tradition within which the 1960s activist Malcolm X should be situated. It was his ability to articulate political ideas instinctively that won him an audience far beyond the ranks of the converted. First and foremost, he was one of the greatest orators that North America has ever produced. Malcolm X embodied all the strengths and many of the contradictions of the black political condition in mid 20th-century America. Towards the end of his tragically short life he understood, better than most, that it was structural and systemic barriers that had kept the majority of African-Americans below the poverty line and denied them political and racial equality, a hundred years after a civil war supposedly fought to liberate their ancestors from slavery. In a speech of April 1964, he pointed out that if Lincoln—sardonically: ‘that great shining liberal’—had freed the Afro-American, ‘we wouldn’t need civil-rights legislation today’. Malcolm X’s political philosophy and approach, as well as his religious beliefs, were in transition over the last five years of a life cut short, in February 1965, by assassins from the Nation of Islam. They had acted on the orders of their Prophet and the National Secretary who was, What constitutes black studies and where does this discipline stand at the end of the twentieth century? In this wide-ranging and original volume, Manning Marable—one of the leading scholars of African American history—gathers key materials from contemporary thinkers who interrogate the richly diverse content and multiple meanings of the collective experiences of black folk. Introduction: The Civil Rights Movement
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Here are numerous voices expressing very different political, cultural, and historical views, from black conservatives, to black separatists, to blacks who advocate radical democratic transformation. Here are topics ranging from race and revolution in Cuba, to the crack epidemic in Harlem, to Afrocentrism and its critics. All of these voices, however, are engaged in some aspect of what Marable sees as the essential triad of the black intellectual tradition: describing the reality of black life and experiences, critiquing racism and stereotypes, or proposing positive steps for the empowerment of black people.
Highlights from Dispatches from the Ebony Tower:
Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Manning Marable debate the role of activism in black studies.
John Hope Franklin reflects on his role as chair of the President's race initiative.
Cornel West discusses topics that range from the future of the NAACP through the controversies surrounding Louis Farrakhan and black nationalism to the very question of what "race" means.
Amiri Baraka lays out strategies for a radical new curriculum in our schools and universities.
Marable's introduction provides a thorough overview of the history and current state of black studies in America. Marable has brought together incisive minds who display a willingness to be forhtright in their criticisms, yet who are clearly deeply invested in the future of African American Studies.... An essential read for those committed to maintaining a black racial presence on campuses in the US as well as elsewhere. Ethnic and Racial Studies