The Life of Madie Hall Xuma
The Life of Madie Hall Xuma

Author: Wanda A. Hendricks

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2022-10-25

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 0252053575

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Revered in South Africa as "An African American Mother of the Nation," Madie Beatrice Hall Xuma spent her extraordinary life immersed in global women's activism. Wanda A. Hendricks's biography follows Hall Xuma from her upbringing in the Jim Crow South to her leadership role in the African National Congress (ANC) and beyond. Hall Xuma was already known for her social welfare work when she married South African physician and ANC activist Alfred Bitini Xuma. Becoming president of the ANC Women’s League put Hall Xuma at the forefront of fighting racial discrimination as South Africa moved toward apartheid. Hendricks provides the long-overlooked context for the events that undergirded Hall Xuma’s life and work. As she shows, a confluence of history, ideas, and organizations both shaped Hall Xuma and centered her in the histories of Black women and women’s activism, and of South Africa and the United States.

Threatening Property
Threatening Property

Author: Elizabeth A. Herbin-Triant

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2019-05-28

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 0231548478

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White supremacists determined what African Americans could do and where they could go in the Jim Crow South, but they were less successful in deciding where black people could live because different groups of white supremacists did not agree on the question of residential segregation. In Threatening Property, Elizabeth A. Herbin-Triant investigates early-twentieth-century campaigns for residential segregation laws in North Carolina to show how the version of white supremacy supported by middle-class white people differed from that supported by the elites. Class divides prevented Jim Crow from expanding to the extent that it would require separate neighborhoods for black and white southerners as in apartheid South Africa. Herbin-Triant details the backlash against the economic successes of African Americans among middle-class whites, who claimed that they wished to protect property values and so campaigned for residential segregation laws both in the city and the countryside, where their actions were modeled on South Africa’s Natives Land Act. White elites blocked these efforts, primarily because it was against their financial interest to remove the black workers that they employed in their homes, farms, and factories. Herbin-Triant explores what the split over residential segregation laws reveals about competing versions of white supremacy and about the position of middling whites in a region dominated by elite planters and businessmen. An illuminating work of social and political history, Threatening Property puts class front and center in explaining conflict over the expansion of segregation laws into private property.

African American Doctors of World War I
African American Doctors of World War I

Author: W. Douglas Fisher

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2015-11-27

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1476623171

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In World War I, 104 African American doctors joined the United States Army to care for the 40,000 men of the 92nd and 93rd Divisions, the Army's only black combat units. The infantry regiments of the 93rd arrived first and were turned over to the French to fill gaps in their decimated lines. The 92nd Division came later and fought alongside other American units. Some of those doctors rose to prominence; others died young or later succumbed to the economic and social challenges of the times. Beginning with their assignment to the Medical Officers Training Camp (Colored)--the only one in U.S. history--this book covers the early years, education and war experiences of these physicians, as well as their careers in the black communities of early 20th century America.

Sawdust in Your Pockets
Sawdust in Your Pockets

Author: Eric Medlin

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2023-10-15

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 0820365521

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During the twentieth century, three industries—tobacco, textiles, and furniture—dominated the economy of North Carolina. The first two are well known and documented, being the subject of numerous books, movies, and articles. In contrast, the furniture industry has been mostly ignored by historians, although, at its height, it was nearly as large and influential as these other two concerns. Furniture companies employed thousands of workers and shaped towns, culture, and local life from Hickory to Goldsboro. Sawdust in Your Pockets: A History of the North Carolina Furniture Industry is the first survey of the state’s furniture industry from its cabinetmaking beginnings to its digital present. Historian Eric Medlin shows how the industry transitioned from high-quality, individual pieces to the affordable, mass-produced furniture of High Point and Thomasville factories in the late nineteenth century. He then traces the rise of the industry to its midcentury peak, when North Carolina became the largest furniture-producing state in the country. Medlin discusses how competition, consolidation, and globalization challenged the furniture industry in the late twentieth century and how its businesses, workers, and professionals have adapted and evolved to this day.