Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities
Author: Craig Steven Wilder
Pubpsher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608193837
Category: History
Page: 352
View: 2445
A groundbreaking exploration of the intertwined histories of slavery, racism, and higher education in America, from a leading African American historian. A 2006 report commissioned by Brown University revealed that institution's complex and contested involvement in slavery--setting off a controversy that leapt from the ivory tower to make headlines across the country. But Brown's troubling past was far from unique. In Ebony and Ivy, Craig Steven Wilder, a rising star in the profession of history, lays bare uncomfortable truths about race, slavery, and the American academy. Many of America's revered colleges and universities--from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton to Rutgers, Williams College, and UNC--were soaked in the sweat, the tears, and sometimes the blood of people of color. Slavery funded colleges, built campuses, and paid the wages of professors. Enslaved Americans waited on faculty and students; academic leaders aggressively courted the support of slave owners and slave traders. Significantly, as Wilder shows, our leading universities, dependent on human bondage, became breeding grounds for the racist ideas that sustained them. Ebony and Ivy is a powerful and propulsive study and the first of its kind, revealing a history of oppression behind the institutions usually considered the cradle of liberal politics.
Intellectuals Confront the African American Experience
Author: Manning Marable
Pubpsher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231114769
Category: History
Page: 333
View: 865
What constitutes black studies and where does this discipline stand at the end of the twentieth century? In this wide-ranging and original volume, Manning Marable--one of the leading scholars of African American history--gathers key materials from contemporary thinkers who interrogate the richly diverse content and multiple meanings of the collective experiences of black folk. Here are numerous voices expressing very different political, cultural, and historical views, from black conservatives, to black separatists, to blacks who advocate radical democratic transformation. Here are topics ranging from race and revolution in Cuba, to the crack epidemic in Harlem, to Afrocentrism and its critics. All of these voices, however, are engaged in some aspect of what Marable sees as the essential triad of the black intellectual tradition: describing the reality of black life and experiences, critiquing racism and stereotypes, or proposing positive steps for the empowerment of black people. Highlights from Dispatches from the Ebony Tower: * Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Manning Marable debate the role of activism in black studies. * John Hope Franklin reflects on his role as chair of the President's race initiative. * Cornel West discusses topics that range from the future of the NAACP through the controversies surrounding Louis Farrakhan and black nationalism to the very question of what "race" means. * Amiri Baraka lays out strategies for a radical new curriculum in our schools and universities. * Marable's introduction provides a thorough overview of the history and current state of black studies in America.
Release on 2008 | by Ronyelle Bertrand Ricard,M. Christopher Brown
The Evolution, Mission, and Presidency of Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Author: Ronyelle Bertrand Ricard,M. Christopher Brown
Pubpsher: Stylus Publishing, LLC.
ISBN: 1579222749
Category: Education
Page: 150
View: 8879
What is the purpose of black colleges? Why do black colleges continue to exist? Are black colleges necessary? Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are at the same time the least studied and the least understood institutions of higher education and the most maligned and the most endangered. This unique study examines the mission of four-year HBCUs from the perspective of the campus president, as a foundation for understanding the relevance and role of these institutions. This is the first research to focus on the role of presidents of black colleges; is based on extensive interviews with fifteen presidents; and takes into particular account the type of campus environments in which they operate. Unlike community colleges, women's colleges, men's colleges, and Hispanic-serving colleges, Black colleges are racially identifiable institutions. They also vary significantly in, among other characteristics: size, control (public or private), religious affiliation, gender composition, and available resources. Although united in the historic mission of educating African Americans, each black college or university has its own identity and set of educational objectives. The book examines how presidents define and implement mission in the context of their campuses, view the challenges they face, and confront the factors that promote or hinder implementation of their missions.
Moral Knowledge, Religion, and Power Among the Uduk of Sudan
Author: Wendy James
Pubpsher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 9780198234166
Category: Religion
Page: 391
View: 3364
Notions of the person and of the foundations of bodily and moral experience lie at the heart of this second ethnographic volume devoted to the Uduk-speaking people of Sudan. The first part discusses enduring elements of personal knowledge in the context of a hunters' worldview. The second partgives an account of how alien religious discourse has confronted the Uduk in the course of the region's political history. The third section tells the story of the contemporaneous rise of a new diviners' movement, in part an antithetical response drawing upon the older cultural strata. The key actof the diviners is oracular consultation of the burning ebony wood: through the ebony, personal healing is sought and the foreign gods are kept at bay. The author abandons a number of older anthropological paradigms and their relativist assumptions. In drawing upon general moral philosophy,historical writing, and literary criticism, she offers a modern, humane analysis with important implications for the cross-cultural study of religion. In a new introduction Wendy James explains how the Sudan-Ethiopian borderlands were overrun by war in 1987, and how all the villages described in the original edition were destroyed. Having revisited the Uduk for various UN agencies she is able to provide an indication of the way in which they havesince been embroiled in the war, and how the survivors have increasingly embraced Christianity in the course of their exile. She refers to her own reports and publications written since 1988 and to the TV documentary on the Uduk and other refugees which she made with Granada in 1993. Details ofother recently published work on the region and to relevant new emphases in anthropology which focus on displacement, violence, and memory have also been added.
Ebony is based on a famous WWI charger that belonged to General Chapelle. The story opens with his birth in the stable of Hansall Manor where his arrival is greeted by family and staff. When he is four he goes to war with his mother, master and groom. The crossing is hazardous and terrifying for them and their equine comrades down in the hold of the ship. One by one the family and staff leave. Sally the parlour maid goes into the dangerous business of munitions. Bob the boot-boy runs away to join up. Jessica the General's daughter becomes a VAD. Only Molly, the fortune-telling cook, the General's wife and an old servant, are left. The horse hospitals at the front were provided and run by the Blue Cross Animals' Hospital entirely on voluntary donations. Everything possible was done for the horses. Lady Hamsall, along with many others in the country, worked incessantly to provide everything the horses needed. Ebony finally triumphs with his famous charge through the front line. 'Our Dumb Friends League' was the early name of the Blue Cross. Hopefully this story of Ebony might help his descendents today.
Ebony Washington is about to finish graduate school and move her child out of the gang infested, drug ridden, west-side Chicago neighborhood they live in. She meets Richard Pacini on the elevated train, and they hit it off instantly: they have complementing goals and personalities, they have the same outlook on life, and they have a mutual attraction for each other. Ebony refuses to allow her meddling friends or the father of her child, Trae, to keep her from pursuing a relationship with Richard or leading her life as she sees fit. Richard is speeding along a career path most would envy, but he isn't happy. He longs to have a loving family. When he meets Ebony on the train, he believes his prayers have been answered. Battling over his decisions with his mother is the norm for Richard. Dealing with people as manipulative as Trae is a whole new story. Richard knows Ebony is his angel, and no one will keep them apart. Trae would die before letting some white guy steal his woman. But he knows Ebony won't even consider taking him back as long as he is selling drugs. Now he has two missions: break up Ebony and Richard, and become the man Ebony wants.
Years ago, I met a friend in London I had not seen in many years. He posed a very interesting question to me. He wanted me to give him a statement on Jomo Kenyatta, who was then incarcerated as the leader of the Mau-Mau uprising in Kenya. Though I did not have an answer for my friend, I kept his question in my mind. Then, years later, my wife and I decided to visit Kenya on Safari with friends, which I recount here, vividly in this book. They were like two birds set free, hoop the coop, flew away from their prison abode, caged for decades, until Februrary 1990, on that sunny day in Capetown when I saw Nelson Mandella, live on CNN Television with his wife Winnie Mandela. They strolled through the gates of pollsmore Prison, away from 37 years of incarceration by the Apartheid Regime. That experience intrigued me enough that my wife and I decided, with a group of friends, to visit South Africa and see what would happen to us as a group of African Americans; it was while there that I touched yellow, Ebony Gold, as detailed in my book.
