Democracy Abroad, Lynching at Home

Democracy Abroad, Lynching at Home PDF Author: Tameka Bradley Hobbs
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813059844
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
"Hobbs unearths four lynchings that are critical to the understanding of the origins of civil rights in Florida. The oral histories from the victims' families and those in the communities make this a valuable contribution to African American, Florida, and civil rights history."--Derrick E. White, author of The Challenge of Blackness "A compelling reminder of just how troubling and violent the Sunshine State's racial past has been. A must read."--Irvin D.S. Winsboro, editor of Old South, New South, or Down South? Florida is frequently viewed as an atypical southern state--more progressive and culturally diverse--but, when examined in proportion to the number of African American residents, it suffered more lynchings than any of its Deep South neighbors during the Jim Crow era. Investigating this dark period of the state's history and focusing on a rash of anti-black violence that took place during the 1940s, Tameka Hobbs explores the reasons why lynchings continued in Florida when they were starting to wane elsewhere. She contextualizes the murders within the era of World War II, contrasting the desire of the United States to broadcast the benefits of its democracy abroad while at home it struggled to provide legal protection to its African American citizens. As involvement in the global war deepened and rhetoric against Axis powers heightened, the nation's leaders became increasingly aware of the blemish left by extralegal violence on America's reputation. Ultimately, Hobbs argues, the international implications of these four murders, along with other antiblack violence around the nation, increased pressure not only on public officials in Florida to protect the civil rights of African Americans in the state but also on the federal government to become more active in prosecuting racial violence.

Democracy Abroad, Lynching at Home

Democracy Abroad, Lynching at Home PDF Author: Tameka Bradley Hobbs
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813059844
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Get Book

Book Description
"Hobbs unearths four lynchings that are critical to the understanding of the origins of civil rights in Florida. The oral histories from the victims' families and those in the communities make this a valuable contribution to African American, Florida, and civil rights history."--Derrick E. White, author of The Challenge of Blackness "A compelling reminder of just how troubling and violent the Sunshine State's racial past has been. A must read."--Irvin D.S. Winsboro, editor of Old South, New South, or Down South? Florida is frequently viewed as an atypical southern state--more progressive and culturally diverse--but, when examined in proportion to the number of African American residents, it suffered more lynchings than any of its Deep South neighbors during the Jim Crow era. Investigating this dark period of the state's history and focusing on a rash of anti-black violence that took place during the 1940s, Tameka Hobbs explores the reasons why lynchings continued in Florida when they were starting to wane elsewhere. She contextualizes the murders within the era of World War II, contrasting the desire of the United States to broadcast the benefits of its democracy abroad while at home it struggled to provide legal protection to its African American citizens. As involvement in the global war deepened and rhetoric against Axis powers heightened, the nation's leaders became increasingly aware of the blemish left by extralegal violence on America's reputation. Ultimately, Hobbs argues, the international implications of these four murders, along with other antiblack violence around the nation, increased pressure not only on public officials in Florida to protect the civil rights of African Americans in the state but also on the federal government to become more active in prosecuting racial violence.

Democracy Abroad, Lynching at Home

Democracy Abroad, Lynching at Home PDF Author: Tameka B. Hobbs
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813051314
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
When most people think of lynching and racial violence in the South, the Sunshine State does not immediately come to mind. While many consider Florida to be less 'southern' than, say, Georgia or Mississippi, when examined in proportion to its African American residents, the state experienced more racial violence than any state in the nation. This historical study examines four lynchings that took place in Florida during the era of World War II - the lynching of Arthur C. Williams in Gadsden County in 1941; Cellos Harrison in Jackson County in 1943; Willie James Howard in Suwannee County in 1944; and Jesse James Payne in Madison County in 1945 - and the response to them.

My Soul Is a Witness

My Soul Is a Witness PDF Author: Mari N. Crabtree
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030025041X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
An intimate look at the afterlife of lynching through the personal stories of Black victims and survivors who lived through and beyond its trauma Mari N. Crabtree traces the long afterlife of lynching in the South through the traumatic memories it left in its wake. She unearths how African American victims and survivors found ways to live through and beyond the horrors of lynching, offering a theory of African American collective trauma and memory rooted in the ironic spirit of the blues sensibility--a spirit of misdirection and cunning that blends joy and pain. Black southerners often shielded their loved ones from the most painful memories of local lynchings with strategic silences but also told lynching stories about vengeful ghosts or a wrathful God or the deathbed confessions of a lyncher tormented by his past. They protested lynching and its legacies through art and activism, and they mourned those lost to a mob's fury. They infused a blues element into their lynching narratives to confront traumatic memories and keep the blues at bay, even if just for a spell. Telling their stories troubles the simplistic binary of resistance or submission that has tended to dominate narratives of Black life and reminds us that amid the utter devastation of lynching were glimmers of hope and an affirmation of life.

Half American

Half American PDF Author: Matthew F. Delmont
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1984880411
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
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.

Hostile Heartland

Hostile Heartland PDF Author: Brent M.S. Campney
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252051335
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
We forget that racist violence permeated the lower Midwest from the pre-Civil War period until the 1930s. From Kansas to Ohio, whites orchestrated extraordinary events like lynchings and riots while engaged in a spectrum of brutal acts made all the more horrific by being routine. Also forgotten is the fact African Americans forcefully responded to these assertions of white supremacy through armed resistance, the creation of press outlets and civil rights organizations, and courageous individual activism. Drawing on cutting-edge methodology and a wealth of documentary evidence, Brent M. S. Campney analyzes the institutionalized white efforts to assert and maintain dominance over African Americans. Though rooted in the past, white violence evolved into a fundamentally modern phenomenon, driven by technologies such as newspapers, photographs, automobiles, and telephones. Other surprising insights challenge our assumptions about sundown towns, who was targeted by whites, law enforcement's role in facilitating and perpetrating violence, and the details of African American resistance.

Borders of Violence and Justice

Borders of Violence and Justice PDF Author: Brian D. Behnken
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469670135
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
Brian Behnken offers a sweeping examination of the interactions between Mexican-origin people and law enforcement—both legally codified police agencies and extralegal justice—across the U.S. Southwest (especially Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas) from the 1830s to the 1930s. Representing a broad, colonial regime, police agencies and extralegal groups policed and controlled Mexican-origin people to maintain state and racial power in the region, treating Mexicans and Mexican Americans as a "foreign" population that they deemed suspect and undesirable. White Americans justified these perceptions and the acts of violence that they spawned with racist assumptions about the criminality of Mexican-origin people, but Behnken details the many ways Mexicans and Mexican Americans responded to violence, including the formation of self-defense groups and advocacy organizations. Others became police officers, vowing to protect Mexican-origin people from within the ranks of law enforcement. Mexican Americans also pushed state and territorial governments to professionalize law enforcement to halt abuse. The long history of the border region between the United States and Mexico has been one marked by periodic violence, but Behnken shows us in unsparing detail how Mexicans and Mexican Americans refused to stand idly by in the face of relentless assault.

Race, Labor, and Violence in the Delta

Race, Labor, and Violence in the Delta PDF Author: Michael Pierce
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
ISBN: 1682262065
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
"This essay collection grew out of a conference marking the hundredth anniversary of one of the nation's deadliest labor conflicts - the 1919 Elaine Massacre, during which white mobs ruthlessly slaughtered over two hundred African Americans across Phillips County, Arkansas, in response to a meeting of unionized Black sharecroppers. The essays here demonstrate that the brutality that unfolded in Phillips County was characteristic of the culture of race- and labor-based violence that prevailed in the century after the Civil War"--

Remembering Lucile

Remembering Lucile PDF Author: Polly E. Bugros McLean
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607328259
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
In 1918 Lucile Berkeley Buchanan Jones received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado, becoming its first female African American graduate (though she was not allowed to "walk" at graduation, nor is she pictured in the 1918 CU yearbook). In Remembering Lucile, author Polly McLean depicts the rise of the African American middle class through the historical journey of Lucile and her family from slavery in northern Virginia to life in the American West, using their personal story as a lens through which to examine the greater experience of middle-class Blacks in the early twentieth century. The first-born daughter of emancipated slaves, Lucile refused to be defined by the racist and sexist climate of her times, settling on a career path in teaching that required great courage in the face of pernicious Jim Crow laws. Embracing her sister’s dream for higher education and W. E. B. Du Bois’s ideology, she placed education and intelligence at the forefront of her life, teaching in places where she could most benefit African American students. Over her 105 years she was an eyewitness to spectacular, inspiring, and tragic moments in American history, including horrific lynchings and systemic racism in housing and business opportunities, as well as the success of women's suffrage and Black-owned businesses and educational institutions. Remembering Lucile employs a unique blend of Black feminist historiography and wider discussions of race, gender, class, religion, politics, and education to illuminate major events in African American history and culture, as well as the history of the University of Colorado and its relationship to Black students and alumni, as it has evolved from institutional racism to welcoming acceptance. This extensive biography paints a vivid picture of a strong, extraordinary Black woman who witnessed an extraordinary time in America and rectifies her omission from CU’s institutional history. The book fills an important gap in the literature of the history of Blacks in the Rocky Mountain region and will be of significance to anyone interested in American history. Media: Denver Post Daily Camera Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine

Millard Fillmore Caldwell

Millard Fillmore Caldwell PDF Author: Gary R. Mormino
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813065526
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
When actions of the past clash with the values of today Millard Fillmore Caldwell (1897–1984) was once considered one of the greatest Floridians of his generation. Yet today he is known for his inability to adjust to the racial progress of the modern world. In this biography, leading Florida historian Gary Mormino tackles the difficult question of how to remember yesterday’s heroes who are now known to have had serious flaws. The last Florida governor born in the nineteenth century and the first to govern in the atomic age, Caldwell was beloved in his time for leading the state through the hard years of World War II. He was wildly successful in a political career that may never be matched, serving as governor, congressman, state legislator, and chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court. He passed important educational reform legislation. But his attitudes toward race and citizenship strike Americans today as embarrassing and shocking. He refused to address black leaders by their titles. He argued for segregated bomb shelters. And he accepted lynching as part of the southern way of life. Mormino measures the contributions of Caldwell alongside his glaring faults, discussing his complicated role in shaping modern Florida. In the current debates surrounding public memorials and historical memory in the United States, Millard Fillmore Caldwell is a timely example of one man’s contested legacy. A volume in the series Florida in Focus, edited by Andrew K. Frank

Diaspora Pride - People, Places, and Things (V4)

Diaspora Pride - People, Places, and Things (V4) PDF Author: Indiana Robinson
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 138713616X
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
As a nation, we should preserve our social memory by honoring those who paved the way for us to exist, recognizing those who etched their indelible mark on our lives, and remembering those who went to the great beyond before us as expressed in the Salute to the Dearly Departed segment (People); our regions, areas, and territories; our locales, hotspots, and hangouts and places we love to visit and events we constantly attend in (Places), and the happenings and the things that we cherish to death - items, commodities, artifacts, and products (Things). So dear readers, enjoy the mind "triggers" and heart-wrenching "diggers" you will find in this book honouring the 55th year of celebrating Jamaica's independence and the tantalizing trip down memory lane with this unofficial reference/resource guide by your side. You will recollect who is who (people), where is where (places), and what is what (things) in both the Jamaican and the Diaspora/Global context.