Searching for Black Confederates
Searching for Black Confederates

Author: Kevin M. Levin

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2019-08-09

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1469653273

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More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, scores of websites, articles, and organizations repeat claims that anywhere between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans fought willingly as soldiers in the Confederate army. But as Kevin M. Levin argues in this carefully researched book, such claims would have shocked anyone who served in the army during the war itself. Levin explains that imprecise contemporary accounts, poorly understood primary-source material, and other misrepresentations helped fuel the rise of the black Confederate myth. Moreover, Levin shows that belief in the existence of black Confederate soldiers largely originated in the 1970s, a period that witnessed both a significant shift in how Americans remembered the Civil War and a rising backlash against African Americans' gains in civil rights and other realms. Levin also investigates the roles that African Americans actually performed in the Confederate army, including personal body servants and forced laborers. He demonstrates that regardless of the dangers these men faced in camp, on the march, and on the battlefield, their legal status remained unchanged. Even long after the guns fell silent, Confederate veterans and other writers remembered these men as former slaves and not as soldiers, an important reminder that how the war is remembered often runs counter to history.

Half American
Half American

Author: Matthew F. Delmont

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2024-01-09

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1984880411

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The definitive history of World War II from the African American perspective, by award-winning historian and civil rights expert Winner of the 2023 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Nonfiction A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 A 2022 Book of the Year from TIME, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and more More than one million Black soldiers served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregated units while waging a dual battle against inequality in the very country for which they were laying down their lives. The stories of these Black veterans have long been ignored, cast aside in favor of the myth of the “Good War” fought by the “Greatest Generation.” And yet without their sacrifices, the United States could not have won the war. Half American is World War II history as you’ve likely never read it before. In these pages are stories of Black military heroes and civil rights icons such as Benjamin O. Davis Jr., the leader of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen, who fought to open the Air Force to Black pilots; Thurgood Marshall, the chief lawyer for the NAACP, who investigated and publicized violence against Black troops and veterans; poet Langston Hughes, who worked as a war correspondent for the Black press; Ella Baker, the civil rights leader who advocated on the home front for Black soldiers, veterans, and their families; and James G. Thompson, the twenty-six-year-old whose letter to a newspaper laying bare the hypocrisy of fighting against fascism abroad when racism still reigned at home set in motion the Double Victory campaign. Their bravery and patriotism in the face of unfathomable racism is both inspiring and galvanizing. An essential and meticulously researched retelling of the war, Half American honors the men and women who dared to fight not just for democracy abroad but for their dreams of a freer and more equal America.

The African American Experience During World War II
The African American Experience During World War II

Author: Neil A. Wynn

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Pub Incorporated

Published: 2011-09-22

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 9781442210318

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Synopsis: World War II was crucial in the development of the emerging Civil Rights movement, whether through the economic and social impact of the war, or through demands for equality in the military. This period was characterized by an intense transformation of black hopes and expectations, encouraged by real socio-economic shifts and departures in federal policy. During the war, black self consciousness found powerful expression in new movements such as the "Double V" campaign that linked the fight for democracy at home for the fight for democracy abroad. A half century after the war, this volume presents a much-needed, up-to-date, short and readable interpretation of existing scholarship on the era and its issues. Drawing on more than thirty years of teaching and research, Dr. Wynn pulls together primary sources and locates the war years within the long-term developments of the twentieth century.

Unequal under Law
Unequal under Law

Author: Doris Marie Provine

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2008-09-15

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 0226684784

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Race is clearly a factor in government efforts to control dangerous drugs, but the precise ways that race affects drug laws remain difficult to pinpoint. Illuminating this elusive relationship, Unequal under Law lays out how decades of both manifest and latent racism helped shape a punitive U.S. drug policy whose onerous impact on racial minorities has been willfully ignored by Congress and the courts. Doris Marie Provine’s engaging analysis traces the history of race in anti-drug efforts from the temperance movement of the early 1900s to the crack scare of the late twentieth century, showing how campaigns to criminalize drug use have always conjured images of feared minorities. Explaining how alarm over a threatening black drug trade fueled support in the 1980s for a mandatory minimum sentencing scheme of unprecedented severity, Provine contends that while our drug laws may no longer be racist by design, they remain racist in design. Moreover, their racial origins have long been ignored by every branch of government. This dangerous denial threatens our constitutional guarantee of equal protection of law and mutes a much-needed national discussion about institutionalized racism—a discussion that Unequal under Law promises to initiate.

Minorities at War
Minorities at War

Author: Elmira Muratova

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-11-11

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 1040251617

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This collection focuses on Ukraine’s ethno-cultural minorities who in recent years have undergone forced displacement, emigration, the destruction of familiar ways of life, and a transformation of identity and language behaviour. The book examines the impact of Russia’s war against Ukraine, which began with the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas in 2014. It shows what happens to the cultural identities of minority groups and considers the mechanisms and components of their resilience in times of crisis. Key themes addressed include minorities’ collective memory and coping strategies, mobilisation and humanitarianism, forced displacement, and the preservation of identity. While most works on the Russo-Ukrainian war focus on the international context and the causes of the war and its humanitarian consequences for the population of Ukraine and the region as a whole, this book seeks to mainstream the issue of ethno-cultural minorities, which is often neglected in the coverage of this type of conflict. The book will be of interest to academics, researchers and policy-makers working in the areas of Law, Political Science, Anthropology, Human Geography, Religious Studies and War and Peace Studies.

They Left Great Marks on Me
They Left Great Marks on Me

Author: Kidada E. Williams

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2012-03-12

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 0814795366

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"Well after slavery was abolished, its legacy of violence left deep wounds on African Americans' bodies, minds, and lives. For many victims and witnesses of the assaults, rapes, murders, nightrides, lynchings, and other bloody acts that followed, the suffering this violence engendered was at once too painful to put into words yet too horrible to suppress. Despite the trauma it could incur, many African Americans opted to publicize their experiences by testifying about the violence they endured and witnessed." "In this evocative and deeply moving history, Kidada Williams examines African Americans' testimonies about racial violence. By using both oral and print culture to testify about violence, victims and witnesses hoped they would be able to graphically disseminate enough knowledge about its occurrence that federal officials and the American people would be inspired bear witness to thier suffering and support their demands for justice. In the process of testifying, these people created a vernacular history of the violence they endured and witnessed, as well as the identities that grew from the experience of violence. This history fostered an oppositional consciousness to racial violence that inspired African Americans to form and support campaigns to end violence. The resulting crusades against racial violence became one of the political training grounds for the civil rights movement." -- Book Cover.

Double Victory
Double Victory

Author: Ronald T. Takaki

Publisher: Little Brown & Company

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 9780316831550

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A history of America in World War II is told through the lives of an ethnically diverse group of ordinary Americans struggling for equality at home and fighting for freedom overseas. Takaki's revealing book shows that there were more struggles--and more victories--during WWII than most people ever imagined. 37 photos.

The New Jim Crow
The New Jim Crow

Author: Michelle Alexander

Publisher: The New Press

Published: 2020-01-07

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 1620971941

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One of the New York Times’s Best Books of the 21st Century Named one of the most important nonfiction books of the 21st century by Entertainment Weekly‚ Slate‚ Chronicle of Higher Education‚ Literary Hub, Book Riot‚ and Zora A tenth-anniversary edition of the iconic bestseller—"one of the most influential books of the past 20 years," according to the Chronicle of Higher Education—with a new preface by the author "It is in no small part thanks to Alexander's account that civil rights organizations such as Black Lives Matter have focused so much of their energy on the criminal justice system." —Adam Shatz, London Review of Books Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists and organizations motivated by Michelle Alexander's unforgettable argument that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." As the Birmingham News proclaimed, it is "undoubtedly the most important book published in this century about the U.S." Now, ten years after it was first published, The New Press is proud to issue a tenth-anniversary edition with a new preface by Michelle Alexander that discusses the impact the book has had and the state of the criminal justice reform movement today.

Asian American Studies Now
Asian American Studies Now

Author: Jean Yu-Wen Shen Wu

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2010-03-08

Total Pages: 673

ISBN-13: 0813549337

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Asian American Studies Now truly represents the enormous changes occurring in Asian American communities and the world, changes that require a reconsideration of how the interdisciplinary field of Asian American studies is defined and taught. This comprehensive anthology, arranged in four parts and featuring a stellar group of contributors, summarizes and defines the current shape of this rapidly changing field, addressing topics such as transnationalism, U.S. imperialism, multiracial identity, racism, immigration, citizenship, social justice, and pedagogy. Jean Yu-wen Shen Wu and Thomas C. Chen have selected essays for the significance of their contribution to the field and their clarity, brevity, and accessibility to readers with little to no prior knowledge of Asian American studies. Featuring both reprints of seminal articles and groundbreaking texts, as well as bold new scholarship, Asian American Studies Now addresses the new circumstances, new communities, and new concerns that are reconstituting Asian America.

Enemies in Love
Enemies in Love

Author: Alexis Clark

Publisher: The New Press

Published: 2018-05-15

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 1620971879

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A “New & Noteworthy” selection of The New York Times Book Review “Alexis Clark illuminates a whole corner of unknown World War II history.” —Walter Isaacson, New York Times bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci “[A]n irresistible human story. . . . Clark's voice is engaging, and her tale universal.” —Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power and American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House A true and deeply moving narrative of forbidden love during World War II and a shocking, hidden history of race on the home front This is a love story like no other: Elinor Powell was an African American nurse in the U.S. military during World War II; Frederick Albert was a soldier in Hitler's army, captured by the Allies and shipped to a prisoner-of-war camp in the Arizona desert. Like most other black nurses, Elinor pulled a second-class assignment, in a dusty, sun-baked—and segregated—Western town. The army figured that the risk of fraternization between black nurses and white German POWs was almost nil. Brought together by unlikely circumstances in a racist world, Elinor and Frederick should have been bitter enemies; but instead, at the height of World War II, they fell in love. Their dramatic story was unearthed by journalist Alexis Clark, who through years of interviews and historical research has pieced together an astounding narrative of race and true love in the cauldron of war. Based on a New York Times story by Clark that drew national attention, Enemies in Love paints a tableau of dreams deferred and of love struggling to survive, twenty-five years before the Supreme Court's Loving decision legalizing mixed-race marriage—revealing the surprising possibilities for human connection during one of history's most violent conflicts.