Category: American History

August 28, 2009

Columbia University Press editor on the politics of Black hair

We were all very excited to see that “Black Hair, Still Tangled in Politics,” an article from yesterday’s New York Times featured a quote from our colleague Afua Adusei-Gontarz, an assistant editor Columbia University Press (pictured). The article discussed the...

July 29, 2009

Acts of Conscience and the history of radical pacifism in the United States

Speaking of titles (see below), the excellent blog Religion in American History has been looking at two books with the same title: Acts of Conscience. More precisely, there has been essays about Columbia’s Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern...

July 22, 2009

Houston Baker on the arrest of Henry Louis Gates

The following post is by Houston Baker, Distinguished University Professor at Vanderbilt University and the author of many books, most recently Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era. The surreal arrest of Professor Henry...

July 10, 2009

Lisa Keller Recounts Her Brief Encounter with Robert McNamara aka "The Guy with Slickum in His Hair"

Lisa Keller is the author of Triumph of Order: Democracy and Public Space in New York and London and is associate professor at Purchase College, State University of New York. In the following post, which is cross-posted at History News...

July 7, 2009

Jeffrey Perry on GRITtv with Laura Flanders

Jeffrey Perry, author of Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918, was recently on GRITtv with Laura Flanders to discuss his new book. (Please note, the embedded video is not showing up on some version of IE. Click here...

July 6, 2009

The African Diaspora as a Perspective on the World — A Post by Patrick Manning

The following post by Patrick Manning, author of The African Diaspora: A History Through Culture, originally appeared on the History News Network. When I agreed in 1990 to write a history of the African diaspora, I found it an exciting...

July 1, 2009

Celebrate the Fourth with Hubert Harrison

The coming Fourth of July weekend will no doubt offer up the familiar American images of cookouts and fireworks as well as tributes to former presidents and the founders of the country. However, for those interested in more obscure but...

May 20, 2009

Patrick Manning on the Future of Black Identity

In the epilogue to The African Diaspora: A History Through Culture, Patrick Manning draws on the history described in his book to explore some key issues, past, present, and future, relating to slavery, racism, reparations, and the advancement of the...

May 13, 2009

Interview with Houston Baker

Voxunion.com has just posted an interview on WPFW with Houston Baker, author of Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era. In the interview, Baker discusses the ways leading Black intellectuals such as Michael Eric...

May 7, 2009

Hubert Harrison as book reviewer

Scott McLemee’s piece on the Columbia Journalism Review Web site explores Hubert Harrison’s role as a book reviewer and critic. Harrison is of course the subject of Jeffrey Perry’s new biography, Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918, which...

April 30, 2009

Joseph Kip Kosek at the Library of Congress

The Library of Congress has recently posted a video of Joseph Kip Kosek discussing his recent book Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy. Here is a description of the talk from the Library of Congress: According to...

April 17, 2009

Jeffrey Perry — A DIY Scholar

The Princeton Alumni Weekly recently ran a great article on Do-it-yourself scholars. Among the scholars portrayed in the article is Jeffrey Perry author of the acclaimed and recently published biography Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918. Perry’s new...