The Black Republic


Book Description

In The Black Republic, Brandon R. Byrd explores the ambivalent attitudes that African American leaders in the post-Civil War era held toward Haiti, the first and only black republic in the Western Hemisphere. Following emancipation, African American leaders of all kinds—politicians, journalists, ministers, writers, educators, artists, and diplomats—identified new and urgent connections with Haiti, a nation long understood as an example of black self-determination. They celebrated not only its diplomatic recognition by the United States but also the renewed relevance of the Haitian Revolution. While a number of African American leaders defended the sovereignty of a black republic whose fate they saw as intertwined with their own, others expressed concern over Haiti's fitness as a model black republic, scrutinizing whether the nation truly reflected the "civilized" progress of the black race. Influenced by the imperialist rhetoric of their day, many African Americans across the political spectrum espoused a politics of racial uplift, taking responsibility for the "improvement" of Haitian education, politics, culture, and society. They considered Haiti an uncertain experiment in black self-governance: it might succeed and vindicate the capabilities of African Americans demanding their own right to self-determination or it might fail and condemn the black diasporic population to second-class status for the foreseeable future. When the United States military occupied Haiti in 1915, it created a crisis for W. E. B. Du Bois and other black activists and intellectuals who had long grappled with the meaning of Haitian independence. The resulting demand for and idea of a liberated Haiti became a cornerstone of the anticapitalist, anticolonial, and antiracist radical black internationalism that flourished between World War I and World War II. Spanning the Reconstruction, post-Reconstruction, and Jim Crow eras, The Black Republic recovers a crucial and overlooked chapter of African American internationalism and political thought.




Afrocentricity


Book Description

The author has written this book entitled 'Afrocentricity' especially for those Africans still in a confused state in order to show them the way to peace. Further he indicates that the book has created its own supporters and detractors and has also been at the core of intense debates about the de-colonizing of the African mind, the dismantling of America, and the destabilizing of the Eurocentric hegemony. This book is not meant to be unread, un-remarked upon, or unheard. Afrocentrists have multiplied in the theaters, universities, unions, political organizations, schools, and corporations. The challenge to the white racial hierarchy has been intense and severe; there can be no hiding from the agency of awakened Africans. In the next few decades it is anticipated that a mighty revolution of values, symbols, and actions might bring about a more equitable society. This revolution for justice and liberty shall be led by the aroused black nation committed to a world of peace.




Keywords for African American Studies


Book Description

Introduces key terms, interdisciplinary research, debates, and histories for African American Studies As the longest-standing interdisciplinary field, African American Studies has laid the foundation for critically analyzing issues of race, ethnicity, and culture within the academy and beyond. This volume assembles the keywords of this field for the first time, exploring not only the history of those categories but their continued relevance in the contemporary moment. Taking up a vast array of issues such as slavery, colonialism, prison expansion, sexuality, gender, feminism, war, and popular culture, Keywords for African American Studies showcases the startling breadth that characterizes the field. Featuring an august group of contributors across the social sciences and the humanities, the keywords assembled within the pages of this volume exemplify the depth and range of scholarly inquiry into Black life in the United States. Connecting lineages of Black knowledge production to contemporary considerations of race, gender, class, and sexuality, Keywords for African American Studies provides a model for how the scholarship of the field can meet the challenges of our social world.




African American Political Thought


Book Description

African American Political Thought offers an unprecedented philosophical history of thinkers from the African American community and African diaspora who have addressed the central issues of political life: democracy, race, violence, liberation, solidarity, and mass political action. Melvin L. Rogers and Jack Turner have brought together leading scholars to reflect on individual intellectuals from the past four centuries, developing their list with an expansive approach to political expression. The collected essays consider such figures as Martin Delany, Ida B. Wells, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Audre Lorde, whose works are addressed by scholars such as Farah Jasmin Griffin, Robert Gooding-Williams, Michael Dawson, Nick Bromell, Neil Roberts, and Lawrie Balfour. While African American political thought is inextricable from the historical movement of American political thought, this volume stresses the individuality of Black thinkers, the transnational and diasporic consciousness, and how individual speakers and writers draw on various traditions simultaneously to broaden our conception of African American political ideas. This landmark volume gives us the opportunity to tap into the myriad and nuanced political theories central to Black life. In doing so, African American Political Thought: A Collected History transforms how we understand the past and future of political thinking in the West.




African Scholars and Intellectuals in North American Academies


Book Description

This book examines the process and events surrounding the migration of African scholars, as well as their lives and lived experiences within and outside of their colleges and universities. The chapters chronicle the lived-experiences and observations of African scholars in North America and examine a range of issues, ideas, and phenomena within North American colleges and universities. The contributors examine the political, ethnic, or religious upheavals that informed their migration or banishment; contrast the teaching-learning-research environment in Africa and North America; and discuss on and off-campus experience with segregation and racial inequality. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of the African Diaspora, migration, and African Studies.




Africa and its Historical and Contemporary Diasporas


Book Description

Africa and its Historical and Contemporary Diasporas edited by Tunde Adeleke and Arno Sonderegger is an interdisciplinary study of the changing and complex nature of the Africa-Black Diaspora relationship. The contributors highlight the problems and challenges of this relationship and provide strategies for developing a more functional and mutually beneficial engagement in a radically changing global environment. This book presents new methodological approaches and research to study the many dimensions and complexities of Africa and its Diasporas. Collectively, this book addresses three vital themes. First, it foregrounds new and emerging forces reshaping the Africa-Black Diaspora nexus. Second, it highlights new and interdisciplinary approaches to “Diaspora” and “Pan-Africanism” (culture, religion, ideology, literature, philosophy, and epistemology). Third, it examines factors infusing the transformation in, and challenges of, African Diaspora and Pan-Africanist collaborations, and possible strategies of strengthening the relationship.




African Diasporas in the New and Old Worlds


Book Description

In the humanities, the term 'diaspora' recently emerged as a promising and powerful heuristic concept. It challenged traditional ways of thinking and invited reconsiderations of theoretical assumptions about the unfolding of cross-cultural and multi-ethnic societies, about power relations, frontiers and boundaries, about cultural transmission, communication and translation. The present collection of essays by renowned writers and scholars addresses these issues and helps to ground the ongoing debate about the African diaspora in a more solid theoretical framework. Part I is dedicated to a general discussion of the concept of African diaspora, its origins and historical development. Part II examines the complex cultural dimensions of African diasporas in relation to significant sites and figures, including the modes and modalities of creative expression from the perspective of both artists/writers and their audiences; finally, Part III focusses on the resources (collections and archives) and iconographies that are available today. As most authors argue, the African diaspora should not be seen merely as a historical phenomenon, but also as an idea or ideology and an object of representation. By exploring this new ground, the essays assembled here provide important new insights for scholars in American and African-American Studies, Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies, and African Studies. The collection is rounded off by an annotated listing of black autobiographies.




Black Intellectuals


Book Description

In this "important book, significant because it highlights the diversity and richness of Afro-American intellectual life" ("New York Times Book Review"), William Banks offers a centuries-deep analysis of black life in America, from the days of slavery and oppression to intellectuals of the modern age such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, Toni Morrison, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Photos.