New Books in African American Studies

How could members of a movement committed to cosmopolitanism accommodate nationalism? How could men and women committed to non-resistance reconcile themselves to politics when the authority of even democratic polities depended ultimately upon the threat of force? How could activists committed to equality — the essence of democracy — deny that the democratic process produced policies that were manifestly unjust? Those are some of the main questions that animate W. Caleb McDaniel‘s important book The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery: Garrisonian Abolitionists and Transatlantic Reform (Louisiana State University Press, 2013). The most deeply research study of the transatlantic networks of the radical antislavery movement to date, it raises questions about the tensions between cosmopolitanism and nationalism, peace and violence, and means and ends that continue to bedevil those struggling to achieve social justice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Thanks in no small part to John K. Thornton, professor of history at Boston University, the field of Atlantic history has emerged as one of the most exciting fields of historical research over the past quarter century. Thornton has long insisted that the the age of discovery fostered linkages between the Americas, Europe, and Africa that transformed the diverse peoples of all three regions. Europeans did not simply impose their will upon Africans and Native Americans. A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250-1820 (Cambridge University Press, 2012) showcases Thornton’s deep research in the primary source material of multiple nationalities — and languages — to provide the most comprehensive interpretation we have of how the first era of globalization transformed the cultures of all the peoples of the Atlantic basin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

“The public don’t understand jazz music as we musicians do. A diminished seventh don’t mean a thing to them, but they go for high notes. After all, the public is paying. If musicians depended on musicians at the box office they would starve to death.”–Louis Armstrong Brian Harker’s Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings (Oxford University Press, 2011) is an artful jambalaya of rigorous musical analysis, thoughtful cultural contexts, and some provocative informed speculation as to how Armstrong absorbed, innovated, and consolidated the music we call jazz. Harker focuses his analysis and discussion on seven of Louis Armstrong’s “Hot Five” recordings, made during the period between 1925 and 1928. Harker’s recording-as-“snap-shot” approach illuminates how Armstrong used novelty, musical narrative, rhythmic variation, harmonic changes, “sweet” and “hot” elements,  and technical virtuosity in his vast recording repertoire. Harker also details how Armstrong relentlessly wedded his drive for self-improvement and creative expression to commercial realities, giving the reader fascinating anecdotes and back stories about this extraordinary African-American’s journey for personal and musical acceptance. Highlights of Harker’s song -by-song analysis include Armstrong’s “novelty” imitation of a clarinet’s cascading arpeggios in “Cornet Chop Suey,” his “telling a story” in “Big Butter and Egg Man,” his negotiation of harmonic changes in “Potato Head Blues,” his crowd-thrilling high note playing in “SOL Blues” and “Gully Low Blues,” his “sweet jazz” elements in “Savoy Blues” and his brilliant amalgam of all the afore-mentioned jazz elements in his masterpiece recording, “West End Blues.” Brian Harker, a Professor of Music at Brigham Young University and former professional trumpet player himself, has spent a good part of his life studying Louis Armstrong. And, he is quite interesting and provocative when he is a speculative detective. Some examples include how he shares the theory that some of Armstrong’s dynamic rhythmic experimentation was inspired by Armstrong’s association with the dance team of Brown and McGraw, or how Armstrong’s sustained high C virtuosity was influenced by his admiration for opera superstar Enrico Caruso as well as his competitive rivalry with trumpeter Reuben Reeves – or how Armstrong’s incorporating elements of “sweet music” (in Savoy Blues) may have been inspired by Armstrong’s own predilection for Guy Lombardo’s sweet jazz as a preferred musical background during his own romantic trysts.  This gives feel and flesh to the book and complements Harker’s studied analyses of Armstrong’s solo transcriptions. Louis Armstrong drew from everything and everyone around him. He constantly tried to improve himself musically and personally and yet, at the same time, resented the “putting on of airs,” all the while negotiating the politics of race and the brutal realities of the music and entertainment world. Harker’s thoughtful cultural introspections gives the reader a greater appreciation for what Armstrong himself had to endure and transcend during the Hot Five recording period of his career. According to Harker, Louis was most proud of his “color barrier” advances in radio and film and saw his Hot Five recordings as simply another pay... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Why does it seem like everyone in the atheist movement is white and male? Are African-American women less interested in secularism? In her book, Godless Americana: Race and Religious Rebels (Infidel Books, 2013), Dr. Sikivu Hutchinson critiques the mainstream atheist movement’s lack of diversity and uncovers some of the reasons why African-Americans seem so connected to religion. She reveals that racism and social and economic disadvantage has led to a dearth of resources in black communities – a gap that churches often end up filling. Though there is a strong tradition of African-American secular humanism, it has focused on social justice issues and the intersection of racism, classism, capitalism and religion, topics usually ignored by the media and the mainstream secular movement. Dr. Hutchinson also criticizes the new atheism’s singularfocus on science and reason to the detriment of social justice and anti-racist consciousness. Sikivu’s blog can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Whiteness studies has confirmed that race is a social construction, even for whites, and that the identity we understand as white is also a social invention. Those who benefit from this invention accrue privileges that others either must pay dearly to obtain or cannot have at all. But there are those who are willing to give up this privilege in the name of equality (white anti-racists) and those who ask ‘Why should we have to?’ (white nationalists). Of course this summary is a reduction. To get a fuller, more meaningful account of what drives anti-racists and white nationalists read Matthew W. Hughey‘s insightfully written book White Bound: Nationalists, Antiracists, and the Shared Meanings of Race (Stanford University Press, 2012). In it, he reveals that both groups appeal to many of the same discourses on race and also share some of the same underlying narratives. If both groups then ascribe to the same stories and beliefs, what’s the difference between the two and how can anti-racists help the struggle for civil rights and fight against discrimination if they hold white nationalist ideologies? And how can white nationalist serve the interests of white supremacy if they share liberal views? Or is it more complex? To find out listen to this lively exchange. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Jesus has inspired millions of people to both strive for social justice and commit horrific acts of violence. In the United States, Jesus has remained central in the construction of American identities and debates about Jesus have frequently revolved around his skin color and bodily appearance. In The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America (University of North Carolina Press, 2012), we get a history of Americans’ encounters with images of Jesus and the creation of them. Edward J. Blum, professor of history at San Diego State University, and Paul Harvey, professor of history at University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, have carefully mined a plethora of sources, including paintings, drawings, music, poetry, sermons, visions, and other historical documents, to reveal the rich conversation Americans have had around religion and race. The Color of Christ offers a chronological history from the colonial period to the present that weaves through the construction of Jesus’ image in various Christian groups consisting of primarily white members, and appropriations and challenges within Native Americans and African Americans communities. In our chat, Blum and Harvey discuss the ups and downs of American religious history, offering various vignettes of Jesus’ role in determining opinions about race. They also help us think about being an author, including issues of public scholarship, hustling as an academic, creating a book website, successful peer review, editorial control, and co-writing a book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

You know you are not going to get the same old story about progressive literacies and education from Carmen Kynard, who ends the introduction to her book with a saying from her grandmother: “Whenever someone did something that seemed contradictory enough to make them untrustworthy, my grandmother simply called it runnin’ with the rabbits but huntin’ with the dogs.” Kynard persuasively illustrates throughout her book the extent to which progressive and liberal educationalists hold up progress toward truly liberatory education for African Americans and Latinos because they seek to please both rabbits and dogs in the 21st Century. In her own words, Kynard begins with this critique: “American schools and universities, through their scholarship and instructional designs, have often upheld a racial status quo alongside a rhetoric of dismantling it. These [are] not the workings of contradictory and confused individuals merely locked within their space and time. My grandmother understood that such contradictions happen inside of a totemic system. And once she pointed out that someone or something was runnin with the rabbits and huntin with the dogs, the expectation was that I would question the process and work to achieve an alternative awareness, ideological approach, and set of cultural practices” (19). Kynard is not taking the easy road. She looking calling out the racial double-tongue that characterizes the current educational discourse on cultural relevant teaching and learning. This is why a book such as this, which traces the histories, legacies, and influences of black protest movements (mostly student lead) on education and literacy is a must read now. Please listen in as I discuss this book with Kynard. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

The American Temperance Movement remains an interesting and important topic. Considering the various attitudes that influenced laws about alcohol sale and consumption of the past are often referred to when reviewing issues related to liquor legislation today. However, what may not be as readily considered is the role that interracial race relations affected and may still impact legislation today. In H. Paul Thomspon Jr.’s A Most Stirring and Significant Episode: Religion and the Rise and Fall of Prohibition in Black Atlanta, 1865-1887 (Northern Illinois University Press, 2012), we are given a front row seat to a 22 year period, from the end of slavery to the failure of Reconstruction, when blacks and whites in Atlanta, Georgia, were negotiating, wrangling and vying for various iterations of temperance, from prohibition to anti-prohibition. Thompson uncovers not only the role that race played in this period, but that religion and region (the North’s relationship to the South) played as well. This fascinating read is sure to capture the attention of any interested in religion, or region, or race, or prohibition during this fascinating and important period of history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

What do you do if you accompany a friend on her research trip to Boston University’s Gotlieb Archival Research Center and end up finding a treasure trove of letters, news articles, hand written notes, and original drafts of nonfiction by one of your favorite authors? Keith Clark wrote a book. A truly insightful and wonderful one on the known but understudied Ann Petry. The title? The Radical Fiction of Ann Petry (Louisiana State University Press, 2013). Those familiar with the work of Petry probably know her mid-century, naturalist novel The Street and probably place among the likes of Richard Wright. However, Clark expands our notion of Petry’s work, takes us on a journey that shows her work within other traditions, such as gothic, modernism and realism. He also shows her as a politically active figure, even writing letters to presidents. This book is a must read for any interested in any of the topics Clark undertakes, since he handles each with care, deft, and discernment. He’s equally loquacious and informative during our interview. Please, listen in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

The American penitentiary model began as not merely a physical construct, but as a philosophical and religious one. Prisoners were to use their time in silence and isolation to contemplate their crimes/sins and to pursue God’s grace. Alexis de Tocqueville’s trip to America began not as a study of American democracy, but of its prisons, though he would go on to write about both arguing that arguing that American social reformers were beginning to view prisons as the “remedy for all of the evils of society”. As with many of his other observations Tocqueville was both accurate and prescient. Today America has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, more than four times the number of second place contender Russia. Regions like upstate NY that used to rely on logging, dairy farms, and manufacturing now rely on prison jobs for economic stability, while states like Mississippi release prisoners in the thousand because they cannot afford to continue to house them. Private prisons trade shares on the NASDAQ, promising to ‘lock up the profits’ of investors, which often means cutting corners in areas that can actually lead to rehabilitation – prisoner education, job training and substance abuse treatment. Marc Mauer‘s Race to Incarcerate (New Press, 2013) is a graphic exploration of this reality based on his earlier book by the same title. Marc was kind enough to speak with us. I hope you enjoy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies