Read complete books and articles on: African-American Social History

At Questia, we offer:

Exclusive access to more than 67,000 books and 1.5 million articles.
Trusted resources from leading publishers.
Time saving tools to do better, faster research!

15 of the Best Books and Articles on: African-American Social History

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Law Never Here: A Social History of African American Responses to Issues of Crime and Justice » Read Now
by Frankie Y. Bailey, Alice P. Green. 236 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

Shared racial and cultural experiences and the collective memory of those experiences play important roles in determining the responses of African Americans to issues of crime and violence. By examining American history through the prism of African American experience, this volume provides a...
Read More

Shared racial and cultural experiences and the collective memory of those experiences play important roles in determining the responses of African Americans to issues of crime and violence. By examining American history through the prism of African American experience, this volume provides a framework for understanding contemporary issues regarding crime and justice, including the much-discussed gap between how blacks and whites perceive the fairness of the criminal justice system. Following a thesis offered by W.E.B. Du Bois with regard to African American responses to oppression, the authors argue that responses by African Americans to issues of crime and justice have taken three main forms--resistance, accommodation, and self-determination. These responses are related to efforts by African Americans to carve out social and psychological "space" for themselves and to find their "place" in America.
Show less
2.

I Will Wear No Chain!: A Social History of African-American Males » Read Now
by Christopher B. Booker. 262 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

This volume traces the social history of African American men from the days of slavery to the present, focusing on their achievements, their changing image, and their role in American society. The author places the contemporary issue of Black men's disproportionate involvement with criminal justice...
Read More

This volume traces the social history of African American men from the days of slavery to the present, focusing on their achievements, their changing image, and their role in American society. The author places the contemporary issue of Black men's disproportionate involvement with criminal justice within its social and historical context, while analyzing the most significant movements aiming to improve the status of Blacks in our society. The book's main thesis is that an ever-changing, yet ever-present process of criminalization has entrapped Black men throughout history, thus creating a major barrier to their collective development. The topics discussed include the role of Blacks in the Civil War, Booker T. Washington, the Civil Rights movement, and the Million Man March.
Show less
3.

The Social Gospel in Black and White: American Racial Reform, 1885-1912 » Read Now
by Ralph E. Luker. 448 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, History, Entire Library
4.

From Black to African American: A New Social Representation » Read Now
by Gina Philogene. 237 pgs.

Collections: History, Psychology, Entire Library

An analysis of the recent switch from the name "Black" to "African American" symbolizes a reconceptualization of Americans of African descent away from race to culture. This book examines the emergence of a new representation whose rapid spread has been fuelled by widely shared projections of a...
Read More

An analysis of the recent switch from the name "Black" to "African American" symbolizes a reconceptualization of Americans of African descent away from race to culture. This book examines the emergence of a new representation whose rapid spread has been fuelled by widely shared projections of a different future capable of overcoming the legacy of racism.
Show less
5.

The Resurgence of Race: Black Social Theory from Reconstruction to the Pan-African Conferences » Read Now
by William Toll. 280 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...Its primary tools are drawn from social history rather than literary criticism...Through a careful study of American social history he could explain more precisely...By...
6.

Theories of Social Action in Black Literature » Read Now
by Chester Hedgepeth Jr. 158 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...Chester: Theories of Social Action in Black Literature...Afro-American authors - History and criticism. 2...20th century - History and criticism. 3...century - Political...
7.

History and Memory in African-American Culture » Read Now
by Genevieve Fabre, Robert O'Meally. 326 pgs.

Collections: History, Literature, Entire Library

As Nathan Huggins once stated, altering American history to account fully for the nation's black voices would change the tone and meaning--the frame and the substance--of the entire story. Rather than a sort of Pilgrim's Progress tale of bold ascent and triumph, American history with the black parts...
Read More

As Nathan Huggins once stated, altering American history to account fully for the nation's black voices would change the tone and meaning--the frame and the substance--of the entire story. Rather than a sort of Pilgrim's Progress tale of bold ascent and triumph, American history with the black parts told in full would be transmuted into an existential tragedy, closer, Huggins said, to Sartre's No Exit than to the vision of life in Bunyan. The relation between memory and history has received increasing attention both from historians and from literary critics. In this volume, a group of leading scholars has come together to examine the role of historical consciousness and imagination in African-American culture. The result is a complex picture of the dynamic ways in which African-American historical identity constantly invents and transmits itself in literature, art, oral documents, and performances. Each of the scholars represented has chosen a different "site of memory"--from a variety of historical and geographical points, and from different ideological, theoretical, and artistic perspectives. Yet the book is unified by a common concern with the construction of an emerging African-American cultural memory. The renowned group of contributors, including Hazel Carby, Werner Sollors, Veve Clark, Catherine Clinton, and Nellie McKay, among others, consists of participants of the five-year series of conferences at the DuBois Institute at Harvard University, from which this collection originated. Conducted under the leadership of Genevieve Fabre, Melvin Dixon, and the late Nathan Huggins, the conferences--and as a result, this book--represent something of a cultural moment themselves, and scholars and students of American and African-American literature and history will be richer as a result.
Show less
8.

Black Women in the New World Order: Social Justice and the African American Female » Read Now
by Willa Mae Hemmons. 289 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

This book employs a sociological perspective to examine the situation of the African American female in light of changing global economic, political, and educational events. The legal forum is utilized along with social statistics to describe the worsening plight of women and minorities in the face...
Read More

This book employs a sociological perspective to examine the situation of the African American female in light of changing global economic, political, and educational events. The legal forum is utilized along with social statistics to describe the worsening plight of women and minorities in the face of intensified ethnic competition and decreased world resources. A multiplicity of methods are used to clarify and detail the negative influence of global forces in the forums of the courts upon the Black woman. In addition, the negative impact upon the working classes is implied in describing the devastation from the agenda known as "the new world order." The author combines the disciplines of law and sociology to provide a grassroots approach to understanding exactly how policies which are unresponsive to the needs of working people actually inhibit global growth.
Show less
9.

African American Women and the Vote, 1837-1965 » Read Now
by Ann D. Gordon, Bettye Collier-Thomas. 217 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

"An exciting and pathbreaking collection containing many exceptionally well-written, thought-provoking, insightful essays on a subject that has never before received this concentrated attention". -- Darlene Clark Hine
10.

Ensuring Inequality: The Structural Transformation of the African-American Family » Read Now
by Donna L. Franklin. 262 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

There is a crisis today in the American family, and this crisis has been particularly severe in the African American community. Black women are more likely than ever to bear children as teenagers, to remain single, and to raise their children in poverty. As a result, a staggering number of...
Read More

There is a crisis today in the American family, and this crisis has been particularly severe in the African American community. Black women are more likely than ever to bear children as teenagers, to remain single, and to raise their children in poverty. As a result, a staggering number of African-American children are growing up without fathers and living in destitution. In this insightful new book, Donna L. Franklin offers an in depth account of the history and development of the African American family, revealing why the marriage and family experiences of African-Americans differs from those of white America, and highlighting the cultural and governmental forces that have combined to create this divide and to push the black family to the edge of catastrophe. In Ensuring Inequality, Franklin traces the evolution of the black family from slavery to the present, showing the cumulative effects of centuries of historical change. She begins with a richly researched account of the impact of slavery on the black family, finding that slavery not only caused extreme instability and suffering for families, but established a lasting pattern of poverty which made the economic advantages of marriage unattainable. She provides a sharp critique of the policies of the Freedmen's Bureau during Reconstruction, and demonstrates the mixed impact of the new pattern of sharecropping. On one hand, tenant farming allowed greater autonomy than the older gang labor system, and tended to consolidate two parent families; on the other hand, it reinforced male authority, and bound African Americans in debt peonage. The twentieth century brought a host of changes for black families, and Franklin incisively examines their effects. First, black women began to move to cities in search of jobs as domestic servants, while men stayed behind to work the fields, dividing the families. Then, two world wars sparked the great migration north, as African Americans pursued employment in booming factories. When the white soldiers returned home, however, many blacks found themselves out of work, shunted to the least desirable, lowest paying jobs. Roosevelt's New Deal offered limited help: in the North, it tolerated the red lining of urban neighborhoods, making it difficult for blacks to obtain home mortgages; in the South, blacks found that, as agricultural laborers, they were exempted from most labor laws, while agricultural subsidies were administered in favor of white farmers. And the distinction made between programs paid for by beneficiaries (such as social security) and those based on need (such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children) stigmatized the poor. Most blacks found themselves living an ever more tenuous, socially isolated existence. Franklin brings her comprehensive, nuanced study right up to the present, showing the impact on the urban poor of changes in the economy and society, from the dramatically shrinking pool of good jobs to the rise of the new right. "The increasing reliance on welfare by young black mothers," she writes, "corresponded to the erosion of opportunities for young black males." More important, she offers new approaches to solving the crisis. Not only does she recommend federal intervention to create new economic opportunity in urban ghettos, but she also stresses the importance of black self-help and proposes a plan of action. In addition, she outlines social interventions that can stabilize and strengthen poor, mother-only families living in ghetto neighborhoods. Exhaustively researched and insightfully written, Ensuring Inequality makes an important contribution to the central debate in American politics today.
Show less
11.

Mighty Like a River: The Black Church and Social Reform » Read Now
by Andrew Billingsley. 266 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

Throughout the history of the African American people there has been no stronger resource for overcoming adversity than the black church. From its role in leading a group of free Blacks to form a colony in Sierra Leone in the 1790s to helping ex-slaves after the Civil War, and from playing major...
Read More

Throughout the history of the African American people there has been no stronger resource for overcoming adversity than the black church. From its role in leading a group of free Blacks to form a colony in Sierra Leone in the 1790s to helping ex-slaves after the Civil War, and from playing major roles in the Civil Rights Movement to offering community outreach programs in American cities today, black churches have been the focal point of social change in their communities. Based on extensive research over several years, Mighty Like a River is the first comprehensive account of how black churches have helped shape American society. An expert in African American culture, Andrew Billingsley surveys nearly a thousand black churches across the country, including its oldest, the First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia. These black churches, whose roots extend back to antebellum times, have periodically confronted social, economic, and political problems facing the African American community. Mighty Like a River addresses such questions as: How widespread and effective is the community activity of black churches? What are the patterns of activities being undertaken today? How do activist churches confront such problems as family instability, youth development, AIDS and other health issues, and care for the elderly? With profiles of the remarkable black heroes and heroines who helped create the activist church, and a compelling agenda for expanding the black church's role in society at large, Mighty Like a River is an inspirational, visionary, and definitive account of the subject.
Show less
12.

African American Religious History: A Documentary Witness » Read Now
by Milton Sernett C. 598 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, History, Entire Library

...RELIGIOUS HISTORY A DOCUMENTARY...32 AFRICAN AMERICAN CATHOLICS...JESSIE MAPP, Social Work at Olivet...course on African American history with the...religious history of...
13.

A Fire in the Bones: Reflections on African-American Religious History » Read Now
by Albert J. Raboteau. 224 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, History, Entire Library
14.

Black Leadership for Social Change » Read Now
by Jacob U. Gordon, Samuel Cook Dubois. 242 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

This book presents a comprehensive overview of Black leadership in every aspect of American life, including movements for social justice, education, business, and politics. In the quest for human rights and social advancement, African-American leaders have emerged to lead the fight to overcome...
Read More

This book presents a comprehensive overview of Black leadership in every aspect of American life, including movements for social justice, education, business, and politics. In the quest for human rights and social advancement, African-American leaders have emerged to lead the fight to overcome racial and economic barriers. This struggle has influenced the exercise of Black leadership in many other areas and the author uses an interdisciplinary approach to reveal the changes, continuities, and variety of African-American approaches to effective leadership. The book also suggests a theoretical framework for future research on the impact of Black leadership in America.
Show less
15.

The Color of Work: The Struggle for Civil Rights in the Southern Paper Industry, 1945-1980 » Read Now
by Timothy J. Minchin. 269 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

Histories of the civil rights movement have generally overlooked the battle to integrate the South's major industries. The paper industry, which has played an important role in the southern economy since the 1930s, has been particularly neglected. Using previously untapped legal records and oral...
Read More

Histories of the civil rights movement have generally overlooked the battle to integrate the South's major industries. The paper industry, which has played an important role in the southern economy since the 1930s, has been particularly neglected. Using previously untapped legal records and oral history interviews, Timothy Minchin provides the first in-depth account of the struggle to integrate southern paper mills.
Minchin describes how jobs in the southern paper industry were strictly segregated prior to the 1960s, with black workers confined to low-paying, menial positions. All work literally had a color: every job was racially designated and workers were represented by segregated local unions. Though black workers tried to protest workplace inequities through their unions, their efforts were largely ineffective until passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act opened the way for scores of antidiscrimination lawsuits. Even then, however, resistance from executives and white workers ensured that the fight to,integrate the paper industry was a long and difficult one.
Show less