Book Description
Half a century after brave Americans took to the streets to raise the bar of opportunity for all races, Juan Williams writes that too many black Americans are in crisis—caught in a twisted hip-hop culture, dropping out of school, ending up in jail, having babies when they are not ready to be parents, and falling to the bottom in twenty-first-century global economic competition.
In Enough, Juan Williams issues a lucid, impassioned clarion call to do the right thing now, before we travel so far off the glorious path set by generations of civil rights heroes that there can be no more reaching back to offer a hand and rescue those being left behind.
Inspired by Bill Cosby’s now famous speech at the NAACP gala celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Brown decision integrating schools, Williams makes the case that while there is still racism, it is way past time for black Americans to open their eyes to the “culture of failure” that exists within their community. He raises the banner of proud black traditional values—self-help, strong families, and belief in God—that sustained black people through generations of oppression and flowered in the exhilarating promise of the modern civil rights movement. Williams asks what happened to keeping our eyes on the prize by proving the case for equality with black excellence and achievement.
He takes particular aim at prominent black leaders—from Al Sharpton to Jesse Jackson to Marion Barry. Williams exposes the call for reparations as an act of futility, a detour into self-pity; he condemns the “Stop Snitching” campaign as nothing more than a surrender to criminals; and he decries the glorification of materialism, misogyny, and murder as a corruption of a rich black culture, a tragic turn into pornographic excess that is hurting young black minds, especially among the poor.
Reinforcing his incisive observations with solid research and alarming statistical data, Williams offers a concrete plan for overcoming the obstacles that now stand in the way of African Americans’ full participation in the nation’s freedom and prosperity. Certain to be widely discussed and vehemently debated, Enough is a bold, perceptive, solution-based look at African American life, culture, and politics today.
Customer Reviews:
Is more than i was expected.......2007-10-17
Hay! Is more than i was expected. Thank you amazon and sender.
Take care
A Thought-Provoking Critical Analysis Of Black Culture.......2007-10-13
Juan Williams has eloquently and courageously put to words thoughts that I've had for many years. I find it interesting that it took a speech from famed comedian / actor Bill Cosby to spur Mr. Williams to take center stage in the culture battle within the black community.
Nevertheless, this book exposes to the world the mindless rhetoric and failed strategies of many of the so-called civil rights leaders that are just as much a drag on the ability of American blacks to successfully pursue the American dream as slavery and racism ever was. I would even go so far as to assert that self-appointed civil rights leaders practice an entirely new brand of slavery, economic slavery, designed to keep a noble and proud culture chained to the failing polices of past radicalism and confrontation that had their place in the 60s but are woefully inadequate today; and which only presently exits to serve the self-interests of those who promote them. While Mr. Williams hints at such, a bolder, more clearly articulated statement would have been a welcomed addition to his work. My only other disappointment with Enough was the lack of footnotes and source citations for many of its claims.
Minor criticisms aside, this is a well written book. Mr. Williams presents his ideas in a smoothly organized fashion that rivets the readers' attention in a vice grip of paradigm shifts, provocative ideas, and conservative thought that the black community would do well to consider. Its been said as a political force the black vote is taken for granted by the Democrat Party and written off by the Republican Party. Many of the reasons are revealed in this book. How can either party consider blacks to be politically relevant when the emerging leadership in politics and pop culture debase and disrespect their own people and the rule of law?
As so well stated by Mr. Williams, the key to ending black poverty and lack of social progress lies within the black community itself. Government can throw billions more dollars at the problem with equally meager results as seen these past 30 years, or blacks can rise above the crass, degrading, demeaning, and enslaving icons of rap artists, self-serving civil rights leaders, tolerance of neighborhood crime, and lack of moral courage to propel the race to unimagined prosperity. Enough is certainly a step in the right direction.
Speaking For Us!.......2007-10-06
It took one speech by one man at one moment frozen in time to set off a barrage of discussions on the Black community's progress post-civil Rights era.
Bill Cosby, famed doctor of the Cosby show, stood in front of the crowd as if he was a preacher standing at a pulpit speaking truths from the Bible instead of having a congregation of the willing eagerly anticipating his every word the crowd was members of the NAACP who expected a simple congratulatory speech from the non-controversial celebrity. The event that Mr. Cosby made his infamous speech was deemed, by him, to be appropriate--it was the commemorating the 15th anniversary of the Brown vs. the Board of Education Supreme Court ruling (this ruling prompted the eventual integration of public schools across America--making the "separate but equal" policy unconstitutional). Irregardless of how you felt about Cosby's speech, you have to admit that it took immense courage on his part to risk his reputation and long-standing alliances (both political and social) to draw from his wisdom that he has gained over the years as an actor, activist and as a black man.
The author, Juan Williams, of "Enough....", is an accomplished commentator (known from his correspondent work on NPR and Fox News) exceptionally delved into Mr. Cosby's argument about the downturn and complacency of the Black community after the Civil Rights Movement. He took each hard-hitting point of Bill Cosby's speech such as the lack of importance on education leading to increased drop-out rates, social failures as result of deteriorating family cohesion, the long-term effects of criminal elements within neighborhood of all economies--especially poorer areas, lack of credible leadership to further carry-on the torch of the movement, cyclical poverty effecting the economic wealth of the community, and the ill-conceived plea to seek reparations from the federal government for the crimes against our ancestors.
Mr. William's approach to analyzing Bill Cosby's argument for change was reminiscent of a college professor that taught one of my "art of argument logic" courses--he presented a theory, dissected it, built it back up, presented opposing views and brought it all full circle!
As I read this book, I realized that it was justified for Cosby (or anyone else) to point out the shortcomings within the black community to invoke change. Why should we continue to go on with our lives being disillusioned? Everything is not okay! Cosby's speech is simply a rally call to everyone, in particular, those that will take heed to his battle cry. We are not at war with this mystical force out there to get black folks (aka "the man"), we are at war with "crabs in the bucket" weighing down on the community making it appear to the world that we are a community who continues to fail whether in education, economic advancement and social imagery. I know that Cosby wasn't speaking to everyone--not all blacks are dropping out of school! Not all blacks are unaware of the sacrifices that our ancestors went through so that we can enjoy the freedoms that we have today! Not all blacks are accepting of the negative images and buffoonery that is in the media! Not all blacks are accepting of anything that sets us back to a period prior to the civil rights movement!
People within the Black community should not dismiss Bill Cosby as just some old, rich man with nothing better to do than to nitpick at the "wrongs of the young generation". His speech had validity and needed to be heard and what better venue than at event celebrating a freedom that some black people take for granted--the right to an equal opportunity to a quality education under the eyes of the law.
Enough by Juan Williams.......2007-10-05
This was an awesome book that should be mandatory reading for Liberal Arts majors and just the general public. The author describes a realistic pathway for both blacks and whites in the search for racial harmony.
Juan Williams -- The Black Radical.......2007-09-28
I used to think that people like Mr. Williams were sellouts. Now, I know better. When you look at what he is saying...he is saying the same thing as Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. (Farrakhan just has a slicker approach.)
That is, the Nation draws you in with their "hate whitey" message, but when you join they slowly flip the script. When you attend the meetings, buy the tapes, and read the there books, the message is the same:
1. Eat good foods (How to eat to live).
2. Take care of your responsibilities. "Every brother needs a job. If he doesn't have a job, then the brothers need to get together and create him one." -- Farrakhan
3. Don't buy things (cars and homes) you can't afford. - F.O.I. meetings
4. Educate your own children. - If they won't treat you right, they won't teach you right. N.O.I slogan
What more needs to be said? Juan Williams is as pro-black as you can get!
Customer Reviews:
talks about little known portions of US history.......2006-02-05
Kelley highlights an underappreciated portion of twentieth century American history - the intersection of the Negro working class with the simultaneous aspects of race and class. His book delves into the interwar period, and brings back almost forgotten archives and memories.
The influence of Marxist thought on some Negro activists is shown. To the extent that the American Communist Party received significant membership from Negroes. At the time, it was one of the few relatively colour-blind organisations. Of course, this very fact was used against the Communists and Negro activists by segregationists.
The book has numerous nuggets of history that might have often been omitted from other texts. Thus, you may well have heard of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which fought for the Spanish Republic during its civil war. But did you know that in that brigade were over 70 Negroes? Who saw the war as an extension of a war on racism and poverty, in Africa and the US. Kelley shows gives us their motivations and how they fared.
Cutting edge history at its best........1999-03-15
Race Rebels forces readers to re-think their definitions of politics, resistance, and the relationship between social movements and everyday life. It is certainly the most sophisticated history book I've ever read. The author does a great job dissecting the struggles of African Americans in the 20th century and helps us understand why these struggles are so fundamental to american history.
Customer Reviews:
(RAW Rating: 4.5) - What is happening to black men?.......2007-08-04
Demico Boothe has explored the reasons so many black men are indeed in prison in, WHY ARE SO MANY BLACK MEN IN PRISON? He begins with his own story of a shaky upbringing and his subsequent dabbling in drug dealing. He was caught with a few grams of crack cocaine but because it was the dreaded crack, he was given 10 years in prison. When he left prison after serving his time, he was actually railroaded back into prison by a crooked justice system. He delves deeply into our justice system and the motives behind all the new prisons that are being built. He gives succinct and reasonable views of exactly what is happening now in the United States and how the past has played a role in the present. He uses persuasive statistics regarding the number of black men in prison as compared to the number of white men who are incarcerated.
Demico Boothe has done an excellent job of researching his subject and it is a plus, if unfortunate for him, that he has actually experienced first hand what he's talking about. I knew I was hearing the real story rather than just statistics from an intellectual who had no real idea of what the prison system is really like. I would have liked for Boothe to search a little deeper into the Haiti, Aristide and USA question, maybe even reading Randall Robinson's take on the situation, and then he might see it a bit differently. Otherwise, it is a good book and one every one in America should read. We indeed, have a crisis going on.
Reviewed by Alice Holman
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers
Why Are So Many Black Men In Prison? A Comprehensive Account Of How And Why The Prison Industry Has Become A Predatory Entity In.......2007-06-09
The book was very interesting. I learned soooo much about the government and the prison industry. I did some searching independantly to check on the things reported in the book and they are very true. Great Read!! Buy the book.
A Must Read.......2007-05-25
Mr. Demico's book is a must-read for anyone concerned about young African American men. Although I did not agree with every conclusion he reached, Demico's main premises are convincing. As a white woman who teaches mainly students of color, I am always impressed, and often in awe, of those young men who reach college with so much going against them. Demico's books lays bare not only the horrible inequalities of our society, but also the racist attitudes of our political system - - Democrats, Republicans, and most everyone in between.
Why are so many Black Men in Prison?.......2007-05-13
I is a well put together book. He really goes into a lot of detail of how our society is really set up.
Why are so many blacks in prison?.......2007-05-12
I found this book very interesting. As a white devil myself, I had no idea that I was responsible for forcing blacks into committing crimes and then subsequently clogging up the whole "Prison Industrial Complex"(tm). I will try to stop causing this, as I am sure it is creating a LOT of trouble for everyone! Sorry!
It is probably also my fault that young black men dressed in XXXXL clothes overtly threaten me and my family members routinely. Can anyone tell me what I should do to make this not happen?
I imagine it's also my fault that black on white violent crime is WAY higher than white on black violent crime, even though blacks constitute about 12.5% of the population, and whites are about 70%. But since it is impossible for a black to commit a hate crime according to our criminal justice system (since blacks are not under any circumstances racist), statistically, there are more white on black hate crimes. Boothe notes a statistic regarding hate crimes, but he skips the one about interracial violence in general.
In sum, Boothe notes that just about everything blacks do is actually MY fault, because my skin is white. Boothe, I've got a word for you.
Introspection.
Average customer rating:
- More pieces of the puzszle
- Phenomenal book about a phenomenal woman
- a decisive American life--and a first rate biography
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Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Gender and American Culture)
Barbara Ransby
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
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Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power
ASIN: 0807856169
Release Date: 2005-01-19 |
Book Description
One of the most important African American leaders of the twentieth century and perhaps the most influential woman in the civil rights movement, Ella Baker (1903-1986) was an activist whose remarkable career spanned fifty years and touched thousands of lives.
A gifted grassroots organizer, Baker shunned the spotlight in favor of vital behind-the-scenes work that helped power the black freedom struggle. She was a national officer and key figure in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and a prime mover in the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Baker made a place for herself in predominantly male political circles that included W. E. B. DuBois, Thurgood Marshall, and Martin Luther King Jr., all the while maintaining relationships with a vibrant group of women, students, and activists both black and white.
In this deeply researched biography, Barbara Ransby chronicles Baker's long and rich political career as an organizer, an intellectual, and a teacher, from her early experiences in depression-era Harlem to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Ransby shows Baker to be a complex figure whose radical, democratic worldview, commitment to empowering the black poor, and emphasis on group-centered, grassroots leadership set her apart from most of her political contemporaries. Beyond documenting an extraordinary life, the book paints a vivid picture of the African American fight for justice and its intersections with other progressive struggles worldwide across the twentieth century.
Customer Reviews:
More pieces of the puzszle.......2006-06-07
This was a great book. Ella Baker was ahead of het time.This is a great read if you like the history of the civil right movement.Ms. Baker I hope to meet you in heaven.
Phenomenal book about a phenomenal woman.......2005-12-09
Dr. Ransby provides a well-structured and insightful biography of one of the most important, yet least well-known, leaders of the civil rights movement in the United States. This book is strongly recommended for any student of modern U.S. history.
a decisive American life--and a first rate biography.......2003-05-29
Ella Baker must be the most underrated figure in U.S. history. There are plenty of Presidents who have done less to shape their own times than Ella Baker. She decisively shaped two of the most important national civil rights organizations--the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference--and was the single most decisive figure in a third--the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Only Martin Luther King Jr. can be considered a rival in importance to the African American freedom movement, and yet most Americans have never even heard of Ella Baker. This exhaustively researched and well written biography should go a long way toward filling that gap.
This is a thoughful, analytical, and well-told story about a uniquely important American political life. It is a work of central importance in United States history and especially the history of the African American freedom movement. It is a cutting edge work of black women's history, too. I plan to buy a stack of them for Christmas presents, and to assign this book to my students for many years to come.
Book Description
Avoiding the easy definitions and caricatures that tend to celebrate or condemn the "hip hop generation," Hip Hop Matters focuses on the fierce and far-reaching battles being waged in politics, pop culture, and academe to assert greater control over the movement. At stake, Watkins argues, is the impact hip hop will have in the lives of the young people who live and breathe the culture. The story unfolds through revealing profiles, looking at such players as Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, widely recognized as America's first hip-hop mayor; Chuck D, the self-described "rebel without a pause" who championed the Internet as a way to keep socially relevant rap music alive; and young activists who represent hip hop's insurgent voice. Watkins also presents incisive analysis of the corporate takeover of hip hop; the culture's march into America's colleges and universities; and the rampant misogyny that undermines the movement's progressive claims. Ultimately, we see how the struggle for hip hop reverberates with a larger world: global media consolidation and conglomeration; racial and demographic flux; generational cleavages; the reinvention of the pop music industry; and the ongoing struggle to enrich the lives of ordinary youth.
Customer Reviews:
Important for Scholars of Hip Hop Culture.......2006-06-28
An important discussion of the history and meaning of hip hop music and culture. Inspires academics to "get it right". Read this, watch documentaries "Style Wars" and "RIZE" and I promise you'll be throwing dance parties in your living room and writing operational definitions for "Bling".
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- Compelling new biography of King
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From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice (Politics and Culture in Modern America)
Thomas F. Jackson
Manufacturer: University of Pennsylvania Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0812239695 |
Book Description
Winner of the 2007 Liberty Legacy Foundation Award of the Organization of American Historians for the best book on "any historical aspect of the civil rights struggle in the United States from the nation's founding to the present."
Martin Luther King, Jr., is widely celebrated as an American civil rights hero. Yet King's nonviolent opposition to racism, militarism, and economic injustice had deeper roots and more radical implications than is commonly appreciated, Thomas F. Jackson argues in this searching reinterpretation of King's public ministry. Between the 1940s and the 1960s, King was influenced by and in turn reshaped the political cultures of the black freedom movement and democratic left. His vision of unfettered human rights drew on the diverse tenets of the African American social gospel, socialism, left-New Deal liberalism, Gandhian philosophy, and Popular Front internationalism.
King's early leadership reached beyond southern desegregation and voting rights. As the freedom movement of the 1950s and early 1960s confronted poverty and economic reprisals, King championed trade union rights, equal job opportunities, metropolitan integration, and full employment. When the civil rights and antipoverty policies of the Johnson administration failed to deliver on the movement's goals of economic freedom for all, King demanded that the federal government guarantee jobs, income, and local power for poor people. When the Vietnam war stalled domestic liberalism, King called on the nation to abandon imperialism and become a global force for multiracial democracy and economic justice.
Drawing widely on published and unpublished archival sources, Jackson explains the contexts and meanings of King's increasingly open call for "a radical redistribution of political and economic power" in American cities, the nation, and the world. The mid-1960s ghetto uprisings were in fact revolts against unemployment, powerlessness, police violence, and institutionalized racism, he argued. His final dream, a Poor People's March on Washington, aimed to mobilize Americans across racial and class lines to reverse a national cycle of urban conflict, political backlash, and policy retrenchment. King's vision of economic democracy and international human rights remains a powerful inspiration for those committed to ending racism and poverty in our time.
Customer Reviews:
Compelling new biography of King.......2007-01-09
This is the most important and original book on Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. to be published in years. Jackson offers a persuasive account that challenges the conventional wisdom about King and his goals. King was not just the apostle of nonviolence. He was not just someone who wanted everyone to get along. King was a radical--who saw that personal transformation was not enough. Jackson shows how King saw the black freedom struggle as one of power and economics. This book is beautifully written and deeply researched. It will be impossible to think about King in the same way ever again after reading Jackson's account.
Book Description
Herman Gray takes a sweeping look at black popular culture over the past decade to explore culture's role in the push for black political power and social recognition. In a series of linked essays, he finds that black artists, scholars, musicians, and others have been instrumental in reconfiguring social and cultural life in the United States and he provocatively asks how black culture can now move beyond a preoccupation with inclusion and representation.
Gray considers how Wynton Marsalis and his creation of a jazz canon at Lincoln Center acted to establish cultural visibility and legitimacy for jazz. Other essays address such topics as the work of the controversial artist Kara Walker; the relentless struggles for representation on network television when those networks are no longer the primary site of black or any other identity; and how black musicians such as Steve Coleman and George Lewis are using new technology to shape and extend black musical traditions and cultural identities.
Customer Reviews:
The Poverty of Sociological Reductionism in Black Cultural Studies.......2006-07-20
Gray, a sociologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, builds on his previous scholarship on the circulation of race in network television and jazz in this study of contemporary black cultural politics. The book starts on a promising foot, offering a paradigm of cultural production that examines how current "black self-representation and collective self-fashioning in music, visual arts, broadcast television, and new information technologies...move beyond cultural politics preoccupied solely with inclusion, representation, and identity" (3). According to Gray, *Cultural Moves* is interested in the interplay between media, technology, consumerism, and institutionality as they bear on current strategies of black cultural representation.
Unfortunately, the rest of the book fails to deliver on this intriguing premise. Gray is the type of sociologist who spends so much time setting up his structuralist account of social action that he never gets around to actually analyzing the things -- artistic practices, musical and visual texts -- that constitute cultural production as such. On the potentially illustrative case of Wynton Marsalis' directorship of the jazz program at the Lincoln Center, for example, Gray is paralyzed by utterly meaningless abstractions -- to wit, "jazz is characterized by a complex set of social values, a sophisticated tradition of recognizable texts and practitioners, and a systemic means of reproduction" (37). Wow. I can almost hear Marsalis howling in mock disgust at Gray's sociological reductionism, for evacuated from this discussion is *any* concept of the properly aesthetic irruptions that Marsalis' jazz project brings to the U.S. musical and concertgoing establishment. Instead, we leave this example with merely a vague intimation of Marsalis' "cultural difference."
In a similar vein, chapters on the circulation of blacks in postnetwork TV culture (pp. 77-113) and in cyberspace (pp. 133-47) cite NO examples of actual texts, television shows, websites, etc. to support Gray's theories, save a smattering of references to Fox's *In Living Color*. Rather than engage original interpretive analysis of the multitude of examples available to him, Gray is content to wax academic on the *idea* of black cultural production with trite, vacuous pieties such as, "To the extent that television ever did produce effective national identifications by managing racial difference through exclusion and eventually incorporation, it did so primarily through representation and consumption" (105). This is a truly unfortunate sentence, enamored as it is of its seeming intelligence when all it says is the painfully obvious -- that television's "racial" meaning is a function of representation and consumption.
In short, this book is a reductive sociological account of complex cultural phenomena -- a mode of scholarship that I've noted is all-too-common in the field of black cultural studies in particular. As someone who is committed to the serious, in-depth study of black cultural politics, I'm dismayed by scholars like Gray who cannot understand cultural practices as they are taken up by living, breathing people rather than disembodied, structuralist theories. (And not especially smart structuralist theories at that.)
Book Description
In this sophisticated study of power and resistance, Jean Comaroff analyzes the changing predicament of the Barolong boo Ratshidi, a people on the margins of the South African state. Like others on the fringes of the modern world system, the Tshidi struggle to construct a viable order of signs and practices through which they act upon the forces that engulf them. Their dissenting Churches of Zion have provided an effective medium for reconstructing a sense of history and identity, one that protests the terms of colonial and post-colonial society and culture.
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Historian Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore examines an unfamiliar world in this groundbreaking study, the world of middle-class, educated black women at a time that was one of the nadirs of black-white relations in America. With the Supreme Court's affirmation of legal segregation, Southern black men found themselves disfranchised and excluded from politics. Black women filled that vacuum, Gilmore argues, making a place for themselves as ambassadors to the white community, and as activists on behalf of blacks, and bequeathing to their descendants a heritage of resistance that culminated in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s.
Book Description
Glenda Gilmore recovers the rich nuances of southern political history by placing black women at its center. She explores the pivotal and interconnected roles played by gender and race in North Carolina politics from the period immediately preceding the disfranchisement of black men in 1900 to the time black and white women gained the vote in 1920. Gender and Jim Crow argues that the ideology of white supremacy embodied in the Jim Crow laws of the turn of the century profoundly reordered society and that within this environment, black women crafted an enduring tradition of political activism.
According to Gilmore, a generation of educated African American women emerged in the 1890s to become, in effect, diplomats to the white community after the disfranchisement of their husbands, brothers, and fathers. Using the lives of African American women to tell the larger story, Gilmore chronicles black women's political strategies, their feminism, and their efforts to forge political ties with white women. Her analysis highlights the active role played by women of both races in the political process and in the emergence of southern progressivism. In addition, Gilmore illuminates the manipulation of concepts of gender by white supremacists and shows how this rhetoric changed once women, black and white, gained the vote.
Customer Reviews:
Political and Economic Shaping of Gender.......2004-10-28
The influence of sex on gender is often mistakenly emphasized to the extent where sex and gender are seen as synonyms. Historian Glenda Gilmore challenges this aberration by re-examining the formative years of Jim Crow in North Carolina through the lens of middle-class African American Women. Her reconstruction of this assumed history demonstrates acute gender construction divergences based on race, class, and political circumstance. Gilmore discloses the dynamics of marriage, education, and above all hope in shaping the differences between gender construction between African Americans and whites.
The racial progressive momentum of Reconstruction shaped educated African American women to uplift their race in an effort to improve living standards for their families, to open up opportunities for their sex for both races, and to change white attitudes toward African Americans. By accenting the life of Sarah Dudley Petty, Gilmore reveals that her activism as a "feminist" and as an African American was in contrast to white women because black women were responding not just to patriarchy but to racial oppression as well.
A famous example of how African American women hoped to uplift their race was through their work in the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). This organization provided North Carolina's black women "their best hope for building strong communities and securing interracial cooperation" (32). The WCTU became a point of mutually for both whites and blacks to improve community and gender equality. When black men voted, white women welcomed and sought out the activism of black women. Political circumstance for both groups of women afforded a glimmer of hope that racial equality was possible, however, as the political circumstance changed under the swagger of Jim Crow, white WCTU members got behind white supremacist leaders.
Gilmore explains the gender construction of whites was molded by the downturn of the economy. As hard times hit the North Carolina agrarian economy, a reconsideration of racial parity was in quick demand and an explicit white supremacy movement formed to deny blacks all their gains from Reconstruction. The "New White Men" sought to reconstruct racial interaction, and in particular sexual interaction between the "races." Gilmore reveals that the White New Man effectively created a social norm where it was no longer a demonstration of strength to have sex with a black woman but a sign of weakness. New White Men now expected white women, across class boundaries, to be wholesome and chaste in order to maintain racial purity. In turn, white women began to hold the White New Men culpable for the previous generation that allowed for racial miscegenation transgressions. Such feminine pressure as expressed by the Waddell women, Gilmore argues, supplied the once ineffectual Alfred Waddell to lead the Wilmington slaughter and take the office of mayor of Wilmington.
In the dismal days after the successful drive of disenfranchisement, when black men were pushed out of the political and civic circles, Gilmore fruitfully uncovers how black women advanced the condition of African Americans. African American women took charge amidst the Progressive Era in women's missionary societies and volunteer organizations. Gilmore demonstrates how Black women were instrumental in the rise of the welfare state and how they shrewdly created political ties with white women in un-seemingly apolitical fashion.
Gilmore's reconstruction of a microcosm of race relations in North Carolina has revealed the larger aggregate on America's shameful history of racism and misogyny. Her emphasis on social influences of gender construction affords an effective analysis of the vibrancy of agency within the seemingly impregnable shadow of structure.
An innovative look at post-Reconstruction race relations.......2002-03-02
As Gilmore writes (p. 1) in Gender and Jim Crow, "since historians enter a story at its end, they sometimes forget that what is past to them was future to their subjects." And with regard to black optimism, potential and opportunities during Reconstruction, African American "subjects" looked forward to a future of encouraging possibilities, as African American males had real political power and influence within the Republican and populist parties, which courted their votes. These men and women believed that race as a social classification would decline in importance in favor of class. Yet just as the hopes of Agrarian radicals were thwarted by the harsh the realities of the two-party system, so too were the dreams of Reconstruction-era blacks crushed by the resurgence of white supremacy and the systematic attempts by whites to disenfranchise the Negro. Gilmore presents this tale of high hopes and shattered dreams in her first chapter, "Place and Possibility."
Gilmore's story is one of perseverance among the increasingly subjugated blacks of North Carolina after Reconstruction ended, in particular, the struggle of middle class black women to maintain power, dignity and to some degree control over their lives and communities. By the 1890s, the ugly image of white supremacy showed its face, as white men fought a successful battle to disenfranchise black men through the instrument of fear, that is to say, fear for the safety of white women from the ravenous clutches of Negro rapists. As Gilmore details, this sexually based contrivance branded black men as beasts and drove them from the political realm. Articulate black women, she argues, stepped in to this cultural and political vacuum to coordinate with whites (especially white women and Northern reformers) to get social services and to work for "racial uplift," especially through church and voluntary associations such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Gilmore notes that these types of activities were not as exposed to white restrictions or ire as overt political action, and thus helped to assure some success by these middle-class black females. It seems that black women could travel within certain community and political circles that were no longer open to their male counterparts.
Gender and Jim Crow is an innovative look at post-Reconstruction race relations, in that the chief actors in Gilmore's tale are women. It nicely dovetails with Kantrowitz's Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy, in that we see similar examples of the creation of Jim Crow and the use of sexual fears to bolster notions of white supremacy as well as white political solidarity. While Kantrowitz shows that Ben Tillman was representative of many of white Southerners of his day, I am unconvinced that Gilmore's subjects are as representative. Her geographic realm is limited to one state of the Upper South, North Carolina; did black women carve out a similar role for themselves in the Deep South as well? Additionally, her cast of characters is quite small, and perhaps we are drawn to these women and their story because of its very exceptionalsim and not its typicality. Nevertheless, Gilmore's new and nuance perspective is groundbreaking and valuable in that we see the era of Jim Crow from a viewpoint previously unexplored.
Original, important, a tad romantic.......1999-05-27
Gilmore breaks new ground on many fronts that will interest social historians of race and political historians. She uncovers the myriad arenas in which black women and white women pursued "politics" outside the formal arenas of electoral institutions. She also reveals the surprising coalitions formed across racial lines and the mindset of an upper-South State on the eve of disenfranchisement. Gilmore's writing flows smoothly, as other reviewers have noted, but at times becomes overwrought and sentimentalized in a way that makes it sometimes tedious and sometimes aggravating to stay with the text. She's become captured a bit by her characters and sources. But this is a small criticism in the context of an overwise pathbreaking study that's well worth the read.
Best of Genre.......1999-03-09
This book is a mind-blower. It reveals the history of white supremacy as an overt political campaign in the South in the early 20th century, and more importantly the roles that middle-class black women self-consciously assumed in this very dangerous cultural arena. Historins talks a lot about ideology and race and agency, but this is the most skillful and convincing account that I've read: by examining how people - men, women, poor, rich, black, white - understood and tried to shape their worlds, Gilmore recasts a significant portion of American history, and made me re-examine my assumptions about racism and gender and politics. I'm working towards my graduate degree in history, so I've had to read scores of books that cover similar ground - and this is the by far the best treatment that I've read. Also very important: Gilmore is an excellent writer - this text reads as smoothly and as compellingly as a novel. Can't recommend it highly enough.
A revelation of extraordinary African American women........1998-09-04
Gilmore gives a voice to an otherwise obscure - not to mention forgotten- group that set the pace for the civil rights movements of the 1950's and 1960's. Countless women contributed tirelessly in the struggle against racism, illiteracy, disease and most notably, suffrage. Gilmore does justice to those who have gone unrecognized.
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Soul Power: Culture, Radicalism, and the Making of a U.S. Third World Left
Cynthia Young
Manufacturer: Duke University Press
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ASIN: 082233691X |
Book Description
Soul Power is a cultural history of those whom Cynthia A. Young calls “U.S. Third World Leftists,” activists of color who appropriated theories and strategies from Third World anticolonial struggles in their fight for social and economic justice in the United States during the “long 1960s.” Nearly thirty countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America declared formal independence in the 1960s alone. Arguing that the significance of this wave of decolonization to U.S. activists has been vastly underestimated, Young describes how literature, films, ideologies, and political movements that originated in the Third World were absorbed by U.S. activists of color. She shows how these transnational influences were then used to forge alliances, create new vocabularies and aesthetic forms, and describe race, class, and gender oppression in the United States in compelling terms.
Young analyzes a range of U.S. figures and organizations, examining how each deployed Third World discourse toward various cultural and political ends. She considers a trip that LeRoi Jones, Harold Cruse, and Robert F. Williams made to Cuba in 1960; traces key intellectual influences on Angela Y. Davis’s writing; and reveals the early history of the hospital workers’ 1199 union as a model of U.S. Third World activism. She investigates Newsreel, a late 1960s activist documentary film movement, and its successor, Third World Newsreel, which produced a seminal 1972 film on the Attica prison rebellion. She also considers the L.A. Rebellion, a group of African and African American artists who made films about conditions in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. By demonstrating the breadth, vitality, and legacy of the work of U.S. Third World Leftists, Soul Power firmly establishes their crucial place in the history of twentieth-century American struggles for social change.
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