Tag: Black History

February 1, 2020

Join Us In Celebrating Black History Month 2020

It’s the first day of Black History Month, and we’re celebrating by featuring interviews and guest posts from scholars and authors about the history of U.S. property restrictions and finance, fair housing, affirmative action, the Black Lives Matters movement and...

March 22, 2019

In the Black: A Brief History of Early Black Women Investors

In the hilarious Showtime series Black Monday, set in the late 1980s, Dawn Towner (played by Regina Hall in gloriously shimmering peacock shades of eye shadow) is the only female head trader on Wall Street. Towner holds a small stake...

March 21, 2019

Book Excerpt! Banking on Freedom: Black Women in U.S. Finance Before the New Deal (introduction and chapter 2)

“Shennette Garrett-Scott’s compelling and highly original account demonstrates that, for black people, banks were more than financial institutions. In the hands of black women, capital accumulation, credit, and insurance became community building practices, mutual aid, strategies for collective survival, and...

March 20, 2019

Five African American Women Pioneers in U.S. Finance

Shennette Garrett-Scott

Between 1888 and 1930, African Americans opened more than a hundred banks and thousands of other financial institutions. One of those institutions was St. Luke Bank in Richmond, Virginia: the first and only bank run by black women. In her...

February 28, 2019

Lance Freeman on the History of the Ghetto in Black America

“Ghettos, which conjure up images of abandoned buildings, crime, and decay, would hardly seem to be something to celebrate in the original spirit of Woodson’s Negro History week. But whatever the popular stereotypes, ghettos were and continue to be more...

February 21, 2019

Book Excerpt! Incomparable Empires: Modernism and the Translation of Spanish and American Literature, by Gayle Rogers

“By de-coupling their translational practices from the national literary traditions and imperial teleologies they were supposed to express and reflect, the writers analyzed in Incomparable Empires carved out creative spaces that radically reconfigured U.S. and Spanish literatures. Rogers’s brilliantly contextualized...

February 20, 2019

Gayle Rogers Recasts Langston Hughes as the Reporter-Translator of the Modern Black Experience

We’re continuing our celebration of Black History Month with this guest post by Gayle Rogers, author of Incomparable Empires: Modernism and the Translation of Spanish and American Literature. In this post, he discusses complicated American author Langston Hughes’ dilemma in...

February 13, 2019

James Davis on the History of the Blackface Performance

This week we’re celebrating Black History Month with this guest post by James Davis, author of Eric Walrond: A Life in the Harlem Renaissance and the Transatlantic Caribbean.  In this post, he discusses the blackface performance. Enter our drawing for a chance to...

January 21, 2019

Book Excerpt! The Freedom Schools: Student Activists in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement

“The activists and young learners who made the Freedom Schools possible have greatly gone unsung. In the midst of imminent danger, they learned and experienced democracy while illustrating the efficacy of community participation in education. Hale rightly places them at...

December 13, 2018

Lance Freeman on A Haven and a Hell: The Ghetto in Black America

 “A Haven and a Hell is a highly-accessible and necessary book for a broader and richer understanding of urban Black America.” ~Marcus Anthony Hunter, coauthor of Chocolate Cities: The Black Map of American Life Today we are featuring a guest post from Lance...

November 29, 2018

The N-Word, Again: Bénédicte Boisseron on Afro-Dog Blackness and the Animal Question

“Dazzling in its reach and groundbreaking in its methodology, Afro-Dogredraws the contours of intellectual inquiry with dogs at the lead. Boisseron aims to rethink the hyper-legality of racism and the practice of inequality in ways that are radical and far-reaching.” ~...

April 27, 2018

135th Anniversary of the Birth of Hubert Harrison: “Father of Harlem Radicalism”

Today, marks the 135th anniversary of the birth of Hubert Harrison:“Father of Harlem Radicalism” and founder of the first organization and first newspaper of the militant “New Negro Movement.” In observance of this momentous occasion, we present you with this...