Author: Shannon King

In historical writing, the introduction of an essay, article, or book operates as the roadmap for the work. It’s tells the reader exactly what the goal, objective, or argument of the work is, lays out its periodization, and it’s major themes.

Adina Back’s introduction in “Exposing the ‘Whole Myth” of Segregation,” she opens with a vignette, which she analyzes and then connect her analysis to the major argument and themes of her essay. Thereafter, she frames her essay within the context of what others have written and proceeds to develop what she will do in the essay.

 

Jacob Bueter

Abstract

The following paper gives a description of the Boston Busing crisis an issue that was surrounded by racial tension and legal action. The crisis began when black parents and students became unsatisfied with the quality of education they were receiving at predominately black schools. In response black activists set up busing systems to get black students to areas of Boston where they would receive a quality education. The NAACP sued the Boston public school system for racial segregation and in 1974 Judge Garrity ruled that the segregation of black students from white students was in violation of the Brown V. Board decision. This paper looks at the racial tension in Boston following Judge Garrity’s decision, specifically focusing on how white protestors used the facade of busing to front an anti desegregation platform. This paper also examines how Boston legislators contributed to the political climate at the time of the crisis.

 

Brian Chen

Abstract

         This essay examines the effect of the 228 incident and how it was perceived before and after the martial law in Taiwan. The essay shows how the 228 incident contributed to the formation of the Taiwanese identity, the restrictions on the freedom of speech, and then led to the democratization of Taiwan. Throughout the essay, it analyzes the long-term conflict between the local Taiwanese and the Mainland Chinese that has been around since the Nationalist Chinese government ruled Taiwan. The segregation of Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese and oppressions on the Taiwanese has contributed a lot to the lift of martial law in Taiwan when it was finally democratized. Although it can be inferred that the effects of the 228 incident was a direct result of the Nationalist Chinese government’s ruling, it could also be contributed by the complicated history of Taiwan. The cause and effect of the 228 incident has possessed a significant role in shaping the Taiwanese society before and even after the martial law was lifted.

 

Asha Beasley

Abstract

Music has always had a noteworthy influence on social movements. It can represent the issues of the movement and the songs can, as a result, become a type of anthem of the movement and the time period. The Civil Rights Movement is no stranger to this phenomenon, as many black artists during the 1960s and 1970s found their audience through the movement and the yearning for black liberation. This essay will therefore analyze the career of singer Nina Simone, who dedicated her talents to singing about black struggles in both the North and South, as well as having an active role in the movement as well. Later in her life, Nina Simone stated that her involvement with the movement and her increasingly radicalized beliefs were the reason that her career ended as quickly as it did. Essentially, she believed that she had been blackballed by the rest of the music industry simply because she had opinions. Through a deep reading of the lyrics to her protest songs “Mississippi Goddam” and “Backlash Blues,” this essay will analyze not only Nina Simone’s influence, but also her analysis and criticisms of racist America throughout the 1960s.

“A Womanist Perspective of the Black Power Movement” 

by Akinyele Umoja

“Ashley D. Farmer’s Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era represents an essential development in a new generation of Black Power scholarship. Farmer’s contribution is a woman-centered overview of the Black Power movement. Like Peniel Joseph’s work, Remaking Black Power will reinforce the significance of recognizing Black Power studies as a sub-field in African American history and Africana studies. Preceded by Rhonda Williams’s Concrete Demands: The Search for Black Power in the Twentieth Century and Robyn Spencer’s The Revolution has Come, Farmer’s Remaking Black Power continues a trend within Black Power scholarship that challenges masculinist narratives of the movement.

Remaking Black Power is cutting edge as it offers a comprehensive-womanist perspective of the Black Power movement. Farmer’s interpretation of various categories of women’s activism is unique and illuminating. From the “Militant Black Domestic” to “Revolutionary Black Woman,” “African/Afrikan Woman,” and “Third World Woman,” Farmer offers frameworks to explore the representation of activist women with a variety of ideological developments within Black Power. The “Militant Black Domestic” parallels the antecedents of the Black Power movement through grassroots civil rights and Old Left intersections with the Black freedom movement. The “Revolutionary Black Woman” highlights women’s engagement with the Black Panther Party (BPP) and self-described revolutionary nationalism. The focus of “African Woman” is in the cultural-nationalist ideological trend, specifically Kawaida, from the Organization Us to the Congress of African People. The “Afrikan Woman” is a variation of cultural nationalism to the development of Pan-Afrikan nationalism, which was a dominant ideological trend of the Black Power movement in the early 1970s.¹ Finally, the “Third World Woman” examines the revolutionary intersectional development of the Black Women’s Alliance and the Third World Women’s Alliance.”

“Red-State Teachers Unrest Just Keeps Spreading” by Ed Kilgore

“Eight Kentucky school districts — including those in Louisville and Lexington — are closed today as teachers stay home to protest the GOP legislature’s destructive “reforms” of their pension system. Oklahoma teachers are planning to strike on Monday despite winning a $6,100 pay raise. And Arizona teachers rallied at the state capital on Wednesday and are threatening to strike if their demands for major pay raises and restoration of education funding cuts are not met.

As this wave of unrest among teachers spreads nationally, it’s clear it has been inspired by the nine-day strike that won West Virginia teachers (and other state employees) a pay raise earlier this month. But there’s something more fundamental going on than copycat protests. We’re seeing a teacher-led backlash against years, and even decades, of Republican efforts at the state level to cut taxes and starve public investments. This is very clear in Oklahoma, where a quick pay raise the legislature passed this week is deemed by teachers to have missed the larger point:

“While this is major progress, this investment alone will not undo a decade of neglect. There is still work to do to get this legislature to invest more in our classrooms. And that work will continue Monday, when educators descend on the capitol,” Alicia Priest, president of the Oklahoma Education Association, said in a Facebook video Wednesday.”

“Race, Racism, and Southern Myths”

by William Sturkey

“In 2010, two historians edited a collection of thirteen essays written by white historians about “The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism.” Admittedly, I am not fully aware of the process of selecting the contributors to this volume, nor am I suggesting that this is an isolated intellectual exercise. In publications and conference rooms across the world—including those on my own campus—scholars of all racial and ethnic backgrounds have debated the notion of Southern distinctiveness. The most common device employed in such debates is the observation that racial segregation, oppression, and activism also existed outside the South.

For millions of African Americans, however, there has never been any question that the South is indeed exceptional. The South’s exceptionalism exists in Black memory and imagination because it is the only place in the United States where such high numbers and percentages of the Black population were enslaved. Further, it is the only place in the United States where the Southern system of racial apartheid known as Jim Crow pervaded Black life for nearly one hundred years after Emancipation.

When Mississippi migrant, Gus Courts, testified to a Senate Subcommittee in 1957, he called himself and other Black migrants, “American refugees from the terror in the South.” A voting rights activist, Courts fled Mississippi for Chicago soon after he was nearly killed in a drive-by shooting in retribution for his activism. One of Courts’ closest friends, Reverend George Lee, had been killed just six months prior. In Chicago, as in Mississippi, Gus Courts was not free to live anywhere he wanted because he was Black. Nonetheless, Courts saw the South as exceptional because of the pervasive state-supported and community organized anti-Black violence that undergirded Southern Jim Crow. In Chicago, unlike Mississippi, he could at least vote without being shot.^1″

In 1967, over 100 cities, large and small, exploded in fire and violence, the result of decades of discrimination against black populations in places like Cleveland, Nashville, Boston and Newark. The biggest riot at the time was in Detroit. After five days of rioting, 33 blacks and 10 whites were dead and property damage totaled more than $100 million.

Conversations in Black Freedom Studies: Revisiting the Uprisings of the 1960s

“I Live Paycheck to Paycheck”

By Jess Bidgood

“Public schools in West Virginia were closed for a sixth day on Thursday, as teachers striking over health care costs and pay largely rebuffed a deal this week between Gov. James C. Justice and union leadership aimed at getting them back to school.

Mr. Justice has ordered a task force to examine health care costs and the State House passed a bill raising wages by 5 percent. But with the bill’s fate in doubt in the Senate and scant details on health care funding, many teachers remained angry, and they flooded back to the Capitol, wearing red and black, to protest on Wednesday and Thursday.

We spoke on Wednesday night with Katie Endicott, 31, a high school English teacher from Gilbert, W.Va., about why she and many other teachers are not yet prepared to return to school. The interview has been edited and condensed.”

What are the origins of the strike?

They told us that essentially if you weren’t a single person, if you had a family plan, your health insurance was going to rise substantially. As a West Virginia teacher — and I’ve been teaching 10 years — I only clear right under $1,300 every two weeks, and they’re wanting to take $300 more away for me. But they tell me it’s O.K., because we’re going to give you a 1 percent pay raise. That equals out to 88 cents every two days.”

Restrictive Covenants Stubbornly Stay on the Books

“RICHMOND, Va. – NEALIE PITTS was shopping for a house for her son three years ago when she spotted a for-sale sign in front of a modest brick bungalow here. When she stopped to ask the owner about it, at first she thought she misheard his answer.

“This house is going to be sold to whites only,” said the owner, Rufus Matthews, according to court papers filed by Ms. Pitts, who is African-American. “It’s not for colored.”

Mr. Matthews later testified before the Virginia Fair Housing Board that he believed a clause in his deed prohibited him from selling to a black buyer. A 1944 deed on his property restricts owners from selling to “any person not of the Caucasian race.”

Such clauses have been unenforceable for nearly 60 years. But historians who track such things say that thousands of racist deed restrictions, as well as restrictive covenants governing homeowner associations, survive in communities across the country.”

Other articles:

Why Is America’s Housing so Segregated?

Interview with Richard Rothstein, author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America