Showing results for "A Life Study" in African American Studies

This is the story of Dr. Geneva Smitherman, aka "Dr. G," the pioneering linguist often referred to as the "Queen of Black Language." In a series of narrative essays, Dr. G writes eloquently and powerfully about the role of language in social transformation and the academic, intellectual, linguistic, and societal debates that shaped her groundbreaking work as a Black Studies O.G. and a Womanist scholar-activist of African American Language.

The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass was Douglass' third autobiography. In it he was able to go into greater detail about his life as a slave and his escape from slavery, as he and his family were no longer in any danger from the reception of his work. In this engrossing narrative he recounts early years of abuse; his dramatic escape to the North and eventual freedom, abolitionist campaigns, and his crusade for full civil rights for former slaves.

Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, gaining note for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counter-example to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens.

Remaking a Life uses the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a lens to understand how women generate radical improvements in their social well being in the face of social stigma and economic disadvantage. Drawing on interviews with nationally recognized AIDS activists as well as over one hundred Chicago-based women living with HIV/AIDS, Celeste Watkins-Hayes takes listeners on an uplifting journey through women’s transformative projects, a multidimensional process in which women shift their approach to their physical, social, economic, and political survival.

Life and Times of Frederick Douglass covers the life of the prominent abolitionist during and after the Civil War. Here, Douglass provides a fuller account of his escape from slavery and the underground railway to freedom. It includes his recollections of presidents Garfield and Lincoln, Johnson and Garfield, and an account of his service as Marshall of the District of Columbia.

Stokely Carmichael, the charismatic and controversial Black activist, stepped onto the pages of history when he called for "Black Power" during a speech one humid Mississippi night in 1966. Carmichael’s life changed that day, and so did America’s struggle for civil rights. "Black Power" became the slogan of an era, provoking a national reckoning on race and democracy. In Stokely, preeminent civil rights scholar Peniel E. Joseph presents a groundbreaking biography of Carmichael.

Beginning with his final departure from Neverland, Untouchable takes listeners through Jackson's final four years, as he shuttled from California to the Middle East, Ireland, Asia, the East Coast, and Las Vegas, planning to recapture his wealth and reputation with a comeback album and a series of 50 mega-concerts, for which he was rehearsing until the day before his death. Sullivan has never-before-reported information about Jackson's business dealings and the pedophilia allegations that irreparably marked his reputation, and he had exclusive access to inner-circle figures.

The earliest known prison memoir by an African American writer—recently discovered and authenticated by a team of Yale scholars—sheds light on the longstanding connection between race and incarceration in America. In 2009, scholars at Yale University came across a startling manuscript: the...

In this unprecedented deep dive into inner-city gang life, Mark Bowden takes listeners inside a Baltimore gang, offers an in-depth portrait of its notorious leader, and chronicles the 2016 FBI investigation that landed eight gang members in prison.

First published in 1789, this autobiography of Olaudah Equiano comprises a variety of styles, such as a slavery narrative, travel tale, and spiritual journey. It recounts Equiano's time as a slave, and chronicles his attempts at becoming an independent man through his study of the Bible, and his eventual success in gaining his freedom.

The truth about slavery in America from a former slave, Fredrick Douglass. Mr. Douglass was one of the most articulate Americans of his era. There was no such person as a happy slave and black lives mattered only to abolitionists and the slaves themselves.

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass was published in 1845; it is a memoir and treatise on abolition written by the famous author and former slave Frederick Douglass. The book includes two introductions by well-known abolitionists: a preface by William Lloyd Garrison, and a letter by Wendell Phillips, both confirming the veracity of the account and the literacy of its author. It is generally considered to be the most famous of a number of abolition narratives written by former slaves in the same era.

Buck O'Neil once described him as "Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and Tris Speaker rolled into one". Among experts, he is regarded as the best player in Negro Leagues history. During his prime, he became a legend in Cuba and one of Black America's most popular figures. Yet even among serious sports fans, Oscar Charleston is virtually unknown today.

Soul by Soul tells the story of slavery in antebellum America by moving away from the cotton plantations and into the slave market itself, the heart of the domestic slave trade. Taking us inside the New Orleans slave market, the largest in the nation, where 100,000 men, women, and children were packaged, priced, and sold, Walter Johnson transforms the statistics of this chilling trade into the human drama of traders, buyers, and slaves, negotiating sales that would alter the life of each.

Renowned as a diversity and inclusion strategist, Michelle Gadsden-Williams held C-Suite positions at major organizations for many years and then took the off-ramp to probe a different career path, launching Ceiling Breakers LLC, with the primary goal to help women and professionals of color reach their full potential. As a woman of color and corporate executive who has worked and traveled the world for several Fortune 500 companies - all while managing a chronic illness - she provides insight into overcoming the barriers facing professionals in today's workplace.

Inner-city Black America is often stereotyped as a place of random violence; in fact, violence in the inner city is regulated through an informal but well-known code of the street. How you dress, talk, and behave can have life-or-death consequences, with young people particularly at risk. The most powerful force counteracting this code and its reign of terror is the strong, loving, decent family, and we meet many heroic figures in the course of this narrative.

Speaking My Soul is the honest story of linguist John R. Rickford's life from his early years as the youngest of ten children in Guyana to his status as Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Stanford, of the transformation of his identity from colored or mixed race in Guyana to black in the USA, and of his work championing Black Talk and its speakers. In this engaging memoir, Rickford recalls landmark events for his racial identity.

Art T. Burton sifts through fact and legend to discover the truth about one of the most outstanding peace officers in late 19th-century America - and perhaps the greatest lawman of the Wild West era. Fluent in Creek and other Southern native languages, physically powerful, skilled with firearms, and a master of disguise, Bass Reeves was exceptionally adept at apprehending fugitives and outlaws, and his exploits were legendary in Oklahoma and Arkansas.

Mari N. Crabtree traces the long afterlife of lynching in the South through the traumatic memories it left in its wake. African American victims and survivors had to find a way to live through and beyond the horrors of lynching. Crabtree offers a theory of African American collective trauma and memory rooted in a strategy for “working through” trauma that has long existed within the African American cultural tradition: the ironic spirit of the blues sensibility—a spirit of misdirection and cunning that blends joy and pain.

In Betty Reid Soskin's 96 years of living, she has been a witness to a grand sweep of American history. When she was born in 1921, the lynching of African-Americans was a national disgrace, minstrel shows were the most popular American form of entertainment, women were looked at suspiciously by...