Writings of Frank Marshall Davis
Writings of Frank Marshall Davis

Author: Frank Marshall Davis

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2009-09-09

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 9781604733846

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Writings of Frank Marshall Davis: A Voice of the Black Press edited by John Edgar Tidwell Frank Marshall Davis (1905-1987) was a central figure in the black press, working as reporter and editor for the Atlanta World, the Associated Negro Press, the Chicago Star, and the Honolulu Record. Writings of Frank Marshall Davis presents a selection of Davis's nonfiction, providing an unprecedented insight into one journalist's ability to reset the terms of public conversation and frame the news to open up debate among African Americans and all Americans. During the middle of the twentieth century, Davis set forth a radical vision that challenged the status quo. His commentary on race relations, music, literature, and American culture was precise, impassioned, and engaged. At the height of World War II, Davis boldly questioned the nature of America's potential postwar relations and what they meant for African Americans and the nation. His work frequently challenged the usefulness of race as a social construct, and he eventually disavowed the idea of race altogether. Throughout his career, he championed the struggles of African Americans for equal rights and laboring people seeking fair wages and other benefits. Writings of Frank Marshall Davis reveals a writer in touch with the most salient issues defining his era and his desire to insert them into the public sphere. John Edgar Tidwell provides an introduction and contextual notes on each major subject area Davis explored. John Edgar Tidwell is an associate professor of English at the University of Kansas.

Livin' the Blues
Livin' the Blues

Author: Frank Marshall Davis

Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press

Published: 2003-04-15

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 9780299135041

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Frank Marshall Davis was a prominent poet, journalist, jazz critic, and civil rights activist on the Chicago and Atlanta scene from the 1920s through 1940s. He was an intimate of Langston Hughes and Richard Wright and an influential editor at the Chicago Evening Bulletin, the Chicago Whip, the Chicago Star, and the Atlanta World. He renounced his writing career in 1948 and moved to Hawaii, forgotten until the Black Arts Movement rediscovered him in the 1960s. Because of his early self-exile from the literary limelight, Davis's life and work have been shrouded in mystery. Livin' the Blues offers us a chance to rediscover this talented poet and writer and stands as an important example of black autobiography, similar in form, style, and message to those of Langston Hughes and Richard Wright. "Both a social commentary and intellectual exploration into African American life in the twentieth century."—Charles Vincent, Atlanta History

The Communist
The Communist

Author: Paul Kengor

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-07-17

Total Pages: 505

ISBN-13: 1451698151

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“I admire Russia for wiping out an economic system which permitted a handful of rich to exploit and beat gold from the millions of plain people… As one who believes in freedom and democracy for all, I honor the Red nation.” —FRANK MARSHALL DAVIS, 1947 In his memoir, Barack Obama omits the full name of his mentor, simply calling him “Frank.” Now, the truth is out: Never has a figure as deeply troubling and controversial as Frank Marshall Davis had such an impact on the development of an American president. Although other radical influences on Obama, from Jeremiah Wright to Bill Ayers, have been scrutinized, the public knows little about Davis, a card-carrying member of the Communist Party USA, cited by the Associated Press as an “important influence” on Obama, one whom he “looked to” not merely for “advice on living” but as a “father” figure. Aided by access to explosive declassified FBI files, Soviet archives, and Davis’s original newspaper columns, Paul Kengor explores how Obama sought out Davis and how Davis found in Obama an impressionable young man, one susceptible to Davis’s worldview that opposed American policy and traditional values while praising communist regimes. Kengor sees remnants of this worldview in Obama’s early life and even, ultimately, his presidency. Is Obama working to fulfill the dreams of Frank Marshall Davis? That question has been impossible to answer, since Davis’s writings and relationship with Obama have either been deliberately obscured or dismissed as irrelevant. With Paul Kengor’s The Communist, Americans can finally weigh the evidence and decide for themselves.

Black Moods
Black Moods

Author: Frank Marshall Davis

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2024-02-12

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 0252055527

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Black Moods collects for the first time all of Frank Marshall Davis’s extant published poems as well as his previously unpublished work. From sharp-edged sketches of Southside Chicago’s urban landscape to the prismatic world that lay beneath Hawaii’s placid surface, Davis’s muscular poems blend social, cultural, and political concerns--always shaped by his promise to “try to be as direct as good blues.” John Edgar Tidwell’s introduction examines both Davis’s poetry and his politics, presenting a subtle portrait of a complex writer devoted to exposing discriminatory practices and reaffirming the humanity of the common people.

Dupes
Dupes

Author: Paul Kengor

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2023-06-27

Total Pages: 614

ISBN-13: 1684516110

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In this startling, intensively researched book, bestselling historian Paul Kengor shines light on a deeply troubling aspect of American history: the prominent role of the "dupe." From the Bolshevik Revolution through the Cold War and right up to the present, many progressives have unwittingly aided some of America's most dangerous opponents. Based on never-before-published FBI files, Soviet archives, and other primary sources, Dupes exposes the legions of liberals who have furthered the objectives of America's adversaries. Kengor shows not only how such dupes contributed to history's most destructive ideology—Communism, which claimed at least 100 million lives—but also why they are so relevant to today's politics.

Dreams from My Father
Dreams from My Father

Author: Barack Obama

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2007-01-09

Total Pages: 463

ISBN-13: 0307394123

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS In this iconic memoir of his early days, Barack Obama “guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race” (The Washington Post Book World). “Quite extraordinary.”—Toni Morrison In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man—has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey—first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance. Praise for Dreams from My Father “Beautifully crafted . . . moving and candid . . . This book belongs on the shelf beside works like James McBride’s The Color of Water and Gregory Howard Williams’s Life on the Color Line as a tale of living astride America’s racial categories.”—Scott Turow “Provocative . . . Persuasively describes the phenomenon of belonging to two different worlds, and thus belonging to neither.”—The New York Times Book Review “Obama’s writing is incisive yet forgiving. This is a book worth savoring.”—Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here “One of the most powerful books of self-discovery I’ve ever read, all the more so for its illuminating insights into the problems not only of race, class, and color, but of culture and ethnicity. It is also beautifully written, skillfully layered, and paced like a good novel.”—Charlayne Hunter-Gault, author of In My Place “Dreams from My Father is an exquisite, sensitive study of this wonderful young author’s journey into adulthood, his search for community and his place in it, his quest for an understanding of his roots, and his discovery of the poetry of human life. Perceptive and wise, this book will tell you something about yourself whether you are black or white.”—Marian Wright Edelman

Red Scare Racism and Cold War Black Radicalism
Red Scare Racism and Cold War Black Radicalism

Author: James Zeigler

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2015-08-14

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 149680239X

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During the early years of the Cold War, racial segregation in the American South became an embarrassing liability to the international reputation of the United States. For America to present itself as a model of democracy in contrast to the Soviet Union's totalitarianism, Jim Crow needed to end. While the discourse of anticommunism added the leverage of national security to the moral claims of the civil rights movement, the proliferation of Red Scare rhetoric also imposed limits on the socioeconomic changes necessary for real equality. Describing the ways anticommunism impaired the struggle for civil rights, James Zeigler reconstructs how Red Scare rhetoric during the Cold War assisted the black freedom struggle's demands for equal rights but labeled “un-American” calls for reparations. To track the power of this volatile discourse, Zeigler investigates how radical black artists and intellectuals managed to answer anticommunism with critiques of Cold War culture. Stubbornly addressed to an American public schooled in Red Scare hyperbole, black radicalism insisted that antiracist politics require a leftist critique of capitalism. Zeigler examines publicity campaigns against Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s alleged Communist Party loyalties and the import of the Cold War in his oratory. He documents a Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored anthology of ex-Communist testimonials. He takes on the protest essays of Richard Wright and C. L. R. James, as well as Frank Marshall Davis's leftist journalism. The uncanny return of Red Scare invective in reaction to President Obama's election further substantiates anticommunism's lasting rhetorical power as Zeigler discusses conspiracy theories that claim Davis groomed President Obama to become a secret Communist. Long after playing a role in the demise of Jim Crow, the Cold War Red Scare still contributes to the persistence of racism in America.

Rethinking Social Realism
Rethinking Social Realism

Author: Stacy I. Morgan

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 9780820325798

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The social realist movement, with its focus on proletarian themes and its strong ties to New Deal programs and leftist politics, has long been considered a depression-era phenomenon that ended with the start of World War II. This study explores how and why African American writers and visual artists sustained an engagement with the themes and aesthetics of social realism into the early cold war-era--far longer than a majority of their white counterparts. Stacy I. Morgan recalls the social realist atmosphere in which certain African American artists and writers were immersed and shows how black social realism served alternately to question the existing order, instill race pride, and build interracial, working-class coalitions. Morgan discusses, among others, such figures as Charles White, John Wilson, Frank Marshall Davis, Willard Motley, Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, Elizabeth Catlett, and Hale Woodruff.

The Marshall Mission to China, 1945–1947
The Marshall Mission to China, 1945–1947

Author: John Hart Caughey

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2011-08-28

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 1442212942

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Biotechnology crop production area increased from 1.7 million hectares to 148 million hectares worldwide between 1996 to 2010. While genetically modified food is a contentious issue, the debates are usually limited to health and environmental concerns, ignoring the broader questions of social control that arise when food production methods become corporate-owned intellectual property. Drawing on legal documents and dozens of interviews with farmers and other stakeholders, Corporate Crops covers four case studies based around litigation between biotechnology corporations and farmers. Pechlaner investigates the extent to which the proprietary aspects of biotechnologies--from patents on seeds to a plethora of new rules and contractual obligations associated with the technologies--are reorganizing crop production. The lawsuits include patent infringement litigation launched by Monsanto against a Saskatchewan canola farmer who, in turn, claimed his crops had been involuntarily contaminated by the company's GM technology; a class action application by two Saskatchewan organic canola farmers launched against Monsanto and Aventis (later Bayer) for the loss of their organic market due to contamination with GMOs; and two cases in Mississippi in which Monsanto sued farmers for saving seeds containing its patented GM technology. Pechlaner argues that well-funded corporate lawyers have a decided advantage over independent farmers in the courts and in creating new forms of power and control in agricultural production. Corporate Crops demonstrates the effects of this intersection between the courts and the fields where profits, not just a food supply, are reaped.

F.B. Eyes
F.B. Eyes

Author: William J. Maxwell

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-01-04

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1400852064

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How FBI surveillance influenced African American writing Few institutions seem more opposed than African American literature and J. Edgar Hoover's white-bread Federal Bureau of Investigation. But behind the scenes the FBI's hostility to black protest was energized by fear of and respect for black writing. Drawing on nearly 14,000 pages of newly released FBI files, F.B. Eyes exposes the Bureau’s intimate policing of five decades of African American poems, plays, essays, and novels. Starting in 1919, year one of Harlem’s renaissance and Hoover’s career at the Bureau, secretive FBI "ghostreaders" monitored the latest developments in African American letters. By the time of Hoover’s death in 1972, these ghostreaders knew enough to simulate a sinister black literature of their own. The official aim behind the Bureau’s close reading was to anticipate political unrest. Yet, as William J. Maxwell reveals, FBI surveillance came to influence the creation and public reception of African American literature in the heart of the twentieth century. Taking his title from Richard Wright’s poem "The FB Eye Blues," Maxwell details how the FBI threatened the international travels of African American writers and prepared to jail dozens of them in times of national emergency. All the same, he shows that the Bureau’s paranoid style could prompt insightful criticism from Hoover’s ghostreaders and creative replies from their literary targets. For authors such as Claude McKay, James Baldwin, and Sonia Sanchez, the suspicion that government spy-critics tracked their every word inspired rewarding stylistic experiments as well as disabling self-censorship. Illuminating both the serious harms of state surveillance and the ways in which imaginative writing can withstand and exploit it, F.B. Eyes is a groundbreaking account of a long-hidden dimension of African American literature.