Selected New Materials:March 2009
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African American Women’s Rhetoric: The Search for Dignity, Personhood, And Honor. Deborah F. Atwater. Africana Library: E185.86 .A89 2009
African American Women's Rhetoric is a comprehensive study of the ways in which African American women in politics, education, business, and other social contexts have tried to persuade their audiences to value what they say and who they are. Through detailed examinations of the rhetoric of a variety of women in important periods in American history, Deborah Atwater reveals that African American women today who engage in speech in the public sphere (such as Condoleezza Rice, Barbara Jordan, and others) stem from an important lineage of active, outspoken women. (amazon.com)
The American Journal of Barack Obama from Boyhood to the White House. Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Africana Library: E901.1 .O23 A44 2008b
For decades Americans have turned to LIFE to see, understand, and remember the most important events and people of our time. Just as LIFE once opened up the glittering Kennedy White House, LIFE now focuses its lens on Barack Obama. The American Journey of Barack Obama covers the candidate from his childhood and adolescence to his time as editor of The Harvard Law Review and his Chicago activist years, culminating with the excitement and fervor of the historic 2008 Democratic National Convention. The unfolding drama of Obama's life and political career is cinematic in scope, and never has it been presented so compellingly. In addition to a powerful array of photographs that were taken by many of the country's greatest photographers (and some that were snapped, in the quiet moments, by Obama family members themselves), this book also includes a Foreword by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, an incisive narrative biography and original essays by some of our finest writers, including Gay Talese, Charles Johnson, Melissa Fay Greene, Andrei Codrescu, Fay Weldon, Richard Norton Smith, Bob Greene and several others. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
An American Story: The Speeches of Barack Obama. David Olive. Africana Library: E901.1 .O23 O45 2008
Barack Obama, junior senator from Illinois, first captured America’s attention with his keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in 2004. Now, as near-Democratic candidate for President, Obama’s superb and captivating oratory style has earned him comparisons to John F. Kennedy and even Martin Luther King and on the campaign trail Obama has achieved near rock-star status. Obama speaks on themes of race, identity, community, and above all, his hoped-for vision of a New America. His legions of supporters gravitate towards his unblemished idealism. Still, as David Olive writes, even the most ardent supporters of Barack Obama might wonder at times if the mesmerizing orator is more style than substance. Here, interspersed with the entire text of Obamas key speeches, Olive explores the controversies: Obama shedding his American flag lapel pin, Reverend Wright, his antiwar stance, his strong Christian faith, and his often racially charged remarks and the victories: passage for more than 280 bills in his last two years in the Illinois state senate, his actions towards social justice, and his remarkable rise from underdog to potential future president of the United States. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
Barack Obama: The Inaugural Address 2009;Together with Abraham Lincoln’s first and second inaugural addresses and the Gettysburg Address and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-reliance.Barack Obama. Africana Library: J82 .E91 2009
Tying into the official theme for the 2009 Inauguration, 'A New Birth of Freedom' from Lincoln's famous Gettysburg Address, Penguin presents a keepsake edition commemorating the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama with words of the two great thinkers and writers who have helped shape him politically, and personally: Abraham Lincoln and Ralph Waldo Emerson, complementing Obama's own inaugural address. Having Lincoln and Emerson's most influential, memorable, and eloquent words along with Obama's much-anticipated historical inaugural address will be a gift of inspiration and a memento for generations. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
Black Pioneers: Images of the Black Experience on the North American Frontier. John W. Ravage. Africana Library: E185 .925 .R38 2008
It is difficult to piece together existing records that describe the migrations of African Americans in the nineteenth-century American West. Efforts to assemble collections of oral histories, images, diaries, and other written documents on the black experience in the Western United States and Canada have proven surprisingly fruitful, however, and the rewarding culmination of such research flourishes in the archival images found in this second edition of John Ravage's Black Pioneers. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
Caribbean Reasonings, George Padmore: Pan-African Revolutionary. Fitzroy Baptiste and Rupert Lewis. Africana Library: CT3150 .P12 G46 2009
George Padmore is activist, writer, thinker, born leader and champion of the Pan-Africanism movement. In Caribbean Reasonings - George Padmore: A Pan-African Revolutionary, Editors Fitzroy Baptiste and Rupert Lewis s selection of papers unveil a fitting portrait of the life and times of this legendary Trinidadian. The essays in this collection, explore Padmore s development from student activist to political figure under the auspices of C.L.R. James, and his role as journalist and organizer, creating the International African Services Bureau and subsequently organizing the historic 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress in England. (www.amazon.com/Caribbean-Reasonings-Padmore-Pan-African-Revolutionary)
Change We Can Believe In: Barack Osama’s Plan To Renew America’s Promise. Barrack Obama. Africana Library: JK468 .P64 O33 2008
At this defining moment in our history, Americans are hungry for change. After years of failed policies and failed politics from Washington, this is our chance to reclaim the American dream. Barack Obama has proven to be a new kind of leader one who can bring people together, be honest about the challenges we face, and move this nation forward. Change We Can Believe In outlines his vision for America. In these pages you will find bold and specific ideas about how to fix our ailing economy and strengthen the middle class, make health care affordable for all, achieve energy independence, and keep America safe in a dangerous world. Change We Can Believe In asks you not just to believe in Barack Obamas ability to bring change to Washington, it asks you to believe in yours. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
Freedom's Main Line: The Journey of Reconciliation and the Freedom Rides. Derek Charles Catsam. Africana Library: E185.61 .C295 2008
In 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and other civil rights groups began organizing the Freedom Rides. The Freedom Riders were; volunteers of different backgrounds who traveled on buses throughout the; American South to help enforce the Supreme Court ruling that had declared racial segregation on public transportation illegal. In Freedoms Main Line: The Journey of Reconciliation and the Freedom Rides, Derek Catsam shows how the Freedom Rides were crucial in raising awareness among decision makers and in bringing the realities of racial segregation into American homes through national media coverage. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
Freedom by Any Means: Con Games, Voodoo Schemes, True love and Lawsuits on the Underground Railroad. Betty Deramus. Africana Library: E450.D473 2009
Much of what we think we know about African American history isn't completely true, says Betty DeRamus in the introduction to Freedom by Any Means. According to the usual story, slaves gained their freedom by running away, being freed by their owners, buying their way out of bondage or having someone else buy them. But how do we account for people like John Bowley, who bluffed his and his family's way to freedom, or Althea Lynch, whose cooking sprang her from jail? And what about all those who managed to win their freedom by sidestepping tricks and traps or winning lawsuits? Bowley, Lynch and dozens of others are as vivid and surprising as the very real characters that made the veteran journalist's first book, Forbidden Fruit, a best-seller. Essence magazine described Forbidden Fruit as "a rich collection of true slave-era tales that are at times haunting, often riveting, but always triumphant in the end. The same can be said of Freedom by Any Means, which takes a broader look at the various extraordinary ways that enslaved and dehumanized people achieved freedom and the means to a self-determined life. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
The French Atlantic Triangle. Christopher L. Miller. Africana Library: PQ145.6 S38 M55 2008
The French slave trade forced more than one million Africans across the Atlantic to the islands of the Caribbean. It enabled France to establish Saint-Domingue, the single richest colony on earth, and it connected France, Africa, and the Caribbean permanently. Yet the impact of the slave trade on the cultures of France and its colonies has received surprisingly little attention. Until recently, France had not publicly acknowledged its history as a major slave-trading power. The distinguished scholar Christopher L. Miller proposes a thorough assessment of the French slave trade and its cultural ramifications, in a broad, circum-Atlantic inquiry.This magisterial work is the first comprehensive examination of the French Atlantic slave trade and its consequences as represented in the history, literature, and film of France and its former colonies in Africa and the Caribbean. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
The Grammar of Repetition. Jason Kandybowicz.Africana Library: PL8577.1 .K36 2008
The focus of this volume is repetition, an atypical outcome of movement operations in which displaced elements are pronounced multiple times. Although cross-linguistically rare, the phenomenon obtains robustly in Nupe, a Benue-Congo language of Nigeria. Repetition raises a tension of the descriptive-explanatory variety. In order to achieve both measures of adequacy, movement theory must be supplemented with an account of the conditions that drive and constrain multiple pronunciations. This book catalogs these conditions, bringing to light a number of undocumented aspects of Nupe grammar. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
Ivory’s Ghosts: The White Gold of History and the Fate of Elephants. John Fredrick Walker. Africana Library: QL737 .P98 W35 2009
Long before gold and gemstones held allure, humans were drawn to the jewels of the
elephant its great tusks-for their beauty, rarity, and ability to be finely carved. In Ivory's Ghosts, John Frederick Walker tells the astonishing story of the human lust for ivory and its cataclysmic implications for elephants. Each age and each culture, from ancient Egypt to nineteenth-century America and modern Japan, found its own artistic, religious, and even industrial uses for the remarkable material that comes from the teeth of elephants and a handful of other mammals. Sensuous figurines, scientific instruments, pistol grips, and piano keys were all the result-as was human enslavement and the wholesale slaughter of elephants. By the 1980s, elephant poaching threatened the last great herds of the African continent and led to a worldwide ban on international trade. But the ban has failed to stop poaching, and debate continues over what to do with the legitimate and growing stockpiles of ivory recovered from elephants that die of natural causes. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
Let Your Motto Be Resistance African American Portraits. Africana Library: E185 .96 .W574 2007
The book features 100 images selected by the principal author Deborah Willis from the photography collection of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. The book traces the history of portrait photography through the lens of the African American experience, exploring its influential role in shaping public identity and individual notions of race and status. The book also explores the effect on race relations of these positive images that celebrate the beauty of African Americans from the mid-nineteen century to the present. The wide range of subjects includes sculptor Edmonia Lewis, scientist George Washington Carver, educator Booker T. Washington, performer Paul Robeson, singers Marian Anderson and Billie Holliday, labor leader Asa Philip Randolph, sociologist and author W.E.B. Dubois, poet Langston Hughes, sports figures Muhammed Ali and Shaquille O'Neal, playwright Lorraine Hansberry, and painter Jacob Lawrence. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
Lord Leverhulme’s Ghosts: Colonial Exploitation in the Congo. Jules Marchal. Africana Library: HD4875 .C74 M3713 2008
The definitive account of early twentieth-century exploitation in the world's only privately owned colony. In the early twentieth century, the worldwide rubber boom led British entrepreneur Lord Leverhulme to the Belgian Congo. Warmly welcomed by the murderous regime of King Leopold II, Leverhulme set up a private kingdom reliant on the horrific Belgian system of forced labor, a program that reduced the population of Congo by half and accounted for more deaths than the Nazi holocaust. In this definitive, meticulously researched history, Jules Marchal exposes the nature of forced labor under Lord Leverhulme's rule and the appalling conditions imposed upon the inhabitants of Congo. With an extensive introduction by Adam Hochschild, Lord Leverhulme's Ghosts is an important and urgently needed account of a laboratory of colonial exploitation.(Bowker’s Books in Print)
Malcolm X, African America Revolutionary. Dennis D. Wainstock. Africana Library: BP223.Z8 L5779 2009
While this biography of Malcolm X touches upon his early life and young adulthood, it focuses most prominently on the revolutionary's final years, which were largely dominated by his departure from the Nation of Islam and his conflict with Elijah Muhammad. It begins with Malcolm's seven-year imprisonment at the age of 21, when he began his noted quest for self-education and first became familiar with the teachings of the Nation of Islam, and continues through his official adoption of the religion of the Nation of Islam; his ministry at Elijah Muhammad's Temple Number Seven and other significant contributions to the Nation's growth; his eventual disillusionment and rejection of the Nation's teachings; and his pilgrimage to Mecca and other international travels. There is a particular focus on the 11-month period from March 8, 1964, when Malcolm officially left the Nation of Islam, to February 21, 1965, when he was assassinated while delivering a speech at Manhattan's Audubon Ballroom. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
Nuer-American Passages: Globalizing Sudanese Migration. Dianna J. Shandy. DT155.2 .N85 S43 2007
Half a century after social anthropologist Sir Edward E. Evans-Pritchard introduced the Nuer people - cattle farmers in Sudan - to the global consciousness, they began arriving in the United States as refugees, settling in such cities as Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Nashville, Tennessee, and Saint Paul, Minnesota. In this study of their migration from a war-torn society to North America, Dianna Shandy asks how the diaspora Nuer, especially Nuer-Americans, deal with complex social networks while maintaining their Nuerness. Assumptions that refugees fleeing to Western countries come from stone-age societies do not recognize the ways Africans employ social networks and technology in their quest for better lives for themselves and their families. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
Saudi Arabia & Ethiopia: Islam, Christianity and Politics Entwined. Haggai Erlich. Africana Library: BL65 .P7 E75 2007
A creatively conceived and significant work that deepens our understanding of the history of both countries, contemporary Africa? Middle East relations, and most originally, Muslim perceptions of Africa. James Jankowski, University of Colorado? This is not only a historical account, but one that brings the tension between Islam and Christianity in Ethiopia and its relation to Saudi Arabia up to the present. It is essential reading for those seeking an understanding of the role of religion in the interaction of these key countries in Africa and the Middle East. David Shinn, George Washington University. What is the significance of Islam? growing strength in Ethiopia? And what is the impetus for the Saudi financing of hundreds of new mosques and schools in the country, the establishment of welfare organizations, and the spread of the Arabic language? Haggai Erlich explores the interplay of religion and international politics as it has shaped the development of modern Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia. Tracing Saudi-Ethiopian relations from the 1930s to the present, Erlich highlights the nexus of concrete politics and the conceptual messages of religion. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
What Obama Means: For Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Future. Jabari Asim. Africana Library: E907 .A85 2009
This is our moment. This is our time, Barack Obama declared in his victory speech on November 4, 2008. Such a moment is an opportunity to explore who we are, where we've been, and what the emergence of a leader like Obama can tell us about our culture, our politics, and our future. In What Obama Means, Jabari Asim, author of the acclaimed The N Word, provides the context needed to understand what the Obama presidency means to Americans of all backgrounds. Asim moves easily from the contemporary to the historical, showing how performers and athletes, such as Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan, laid the groundwork for Obama as much as did leaders such as Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. DuBois, and Martin Luther King Jr. He examines the impact of Sidney Poitier (whose Guess Who's Coming to Dinner could have been the story of the president's parents) and how the actor's navigation of Hollywood was a forerunner for Obama's own path in wooing America's white voters. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
Women and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1965. Davis W. Houck and David E. Dixon. Africana Library: E185.61 .W828 2009
Historians have long agreed that women--black and white--were instrumental in shaping the civil rights movement. Until recently, though, such claims have not been supported by easily accessed texts of speeches and addresses. With this first-of-its-kind anthology, Davis W. Houck and David E. Dixon present thirty-nine full-text addresses by women who spoke out while the struggle was at its most intense. Beginning with the Brown decision in 1954 and extending through the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the editors chronicle the unique and important rhetorical contributions made by such well-known activists as Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Daisy Bates, Lillian Smith, Mamie Till-Mobley, Lorraine Hansberry, Dorothy Height, and Rosa Parks. (Bowker’s Books in Print)
He Got Game. Calif.?: Touchstone Home Video ; Burbank, Calif. : Distributed by Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 1998. 1 videodisc (136 min.). Africana Library: Videodisc, 404
With promises of a reduced sentence, Jake Shuttles worth is granted temporary release from state prison in order to persuade the nation’s top college basketball recruit, his estranged son Jesus, to play ball for the Governor’s alma mater! Includes theatrical trailer. Participants: Denzel Washington, Ray Allen, Milla Jovovich.
King: A Film Record; Montgomery To Memphis. United States : Richard Kaplan Productions, 2009. 2 videodisc (182 min.). Africana Library: Videodisc 406, pt 1-2
King documents the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his non-violent campaign for racial equality and justice from 1955-1968. Nothing is contrived and there are no narrations, only the stirring words of Dr. King’s memorable sermons and speeches. The film is history, unvarnished and unretouched, as recorded by newsreel and television camera of the period"--Container. Participants: Host: Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee, Ben Gazzara, Charlton Heston, James Earl Jones, Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, Anthony Quinn, Clarence Williams III, and Joanne Woodward.
NYASA 2008 Annual Conference. Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University Part One, 2008. 5 videodiscs (364 min.). Africana Library: Videodisc 403, disc 1-5
Presents the 2008 annual conference of the New York African Studies Association hosted by Cornell University, March 28-29, 2008. Reflections on Ali Mazrui’s legacy in honor of his 75th birthday, NYASA award, and NYASA distinguished Africanist award were presented. Participants: Speakers: Kassahun Checole, Yvette Alex Assensoh, N’Dri Assie-Lumumba, Seifudein Adem, Suleyman Nyang, Alamin Mazrui, Joseph Inikori, Thomas Uthup, Etin Anwar, Lindah Mhando, Checole kassahun, Locksley Edmondson Ali A. Mazrui.
The Order of Myths. New York, N.Y.: Cinema Guild, c2008. 1 videodisc (79 min.). Africana Library: Videodisc 405
The first Mardi Gras in America was celebrated in Mobile, Alabama in 1703. In 2007, it is still racially segregated. Filmmaker Margaret Brown, herself a daughter of Mobile, escorts us into the parallel hearts of the city’s two carnivals to explore the complex contours of this hallowed tradition and the elusive forces that keep it organized along enduring color lines. With unprecedented access, Brown... uncovers a tangled web of historical violence, power dynamics, and intertwined and interdependent race relations.
Shaft in Africa. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2000 (originally released in 1973). 1 videodisc (112 min.). Africana Library: Videodisc 407
Detective John Shaft is persuaded by diplomats at the United Nations to track down a slave-trading operation. This is the third film in the Shaft series.
Shaft’s Big Score. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2000 (originally released in 1972). 1 videodisc (105 min.). Africana Library: Videodisc 408
Private eye John Shaft runs afoul of the underworld as he investigates a friends murder. Participants: Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn.
