Download or read book The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia written by Gerald L. Smith and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2015-08-28 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of African Americans in Kentucky is as diverse and vibrant as the state's general history. The work of more than 150 writers, The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia is an essential guide to the black experience in the Commonwealth. The encyclopedia includes biographical sketches of politicians and community leaders as well as pioneers in art, science, and industry. Kentucky's impact on the national scene is registered in an array of notable figures, such as writers William Wells Brown and bell hooks, reformers Bessie Lucas Allen and Shelby Lanier Jr., sports icons Muhammad Ali and Isaac Murphy, civil rights leaders Whitney Young Jr. and Georgia Powers, and entertainers Ernest Hogan, Helen Humes, and the Nappy Roots. Featuring entries on the individuals, events, places, organizations, movements, and institutions that have shaped the state's history since its origins, the volume also includes topical essays on the civil rights movement, Eastern Kentucky coalfields, business, education, and women. For researchers, students, and all who cherish local history, The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia is an indispensable reference that highlights the diversity of the state's culture and history.

Download or read book Free Frank written by Juliet E.K. Walker and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Free Frank is not only a testament to human courage and resourcefulness but affords new insight into the American frontier. Born a slave in the South Carolina piedmont in 1777, Frank died a free man in 1854 in a town he had founded in western Illinois. His accomplishments, creditable for any frontiersman, were for a black man extraordinary. We first learn details of Frank's life when in 1795 his owner moved to Pulaski County, Kentucky. We know that he married Lucy, a slave on a neighboring farm, in 1799. Later he was allowed to hire out his time, and when his owner moved to Tennessee, Frank was left in charge of the Kentucky farm. During the War of 1812, he set up his own saltpeter works, an enterprise he maintained until he left Kentucky. In 1817 he purchased his wife's freedom for $800; two years later he bought his own liberty for the same price. Now free, he expanded his activities, purchasing land and dealing in livestock. With his wife and four of his children, Free Frank left Kentucky in 1830 to settle on a new frontier. In Pike County, Illinois, he purchased a farm and later, in 1836, platted and successfully promoted the town of New Philadelphia. The desire for freedom was an obvious spur to his commercial efforts. Through his lifetime of work he purchased the liberty of sixteen members of his family at a cost of nearly $14,000. Goods and services commanded a premium in the life of the frontier. Free Frank's career shows what an exceptional man, through working against great odds, could accomplish through industry, acumen, and aggressiveness. His story suggests a great deal about business activity and legal practices, as well as racial conditions, on the frontier. Juliet Walker has performed a task of historical detection in recreating the life of Free Frank from family traditions, limited personal papers, public documents, and secondary sources. In doing so, she has added a significant chapter to the history of African Americans.

Download or read book African American Historic Places written by National Register of Historic Places and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 1995-07-13 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Culled from the records of the National Register of Historic Places, a roster of all types of significant properties across the United States, African American Historic Places includes over 800 places in 42 states and two U.S. territories that have played a role in black American history. Banks, cemeteries, clubs, colleges, forts, homes, hospitals, schools, and shops are but a few of the types of sites explored in this volume, which is an invaluable reference guide for researchers, historians, preservationists, and anyone interested in African American culture. Also included are eight insightful essays on the African American experience, from migration to the role of women, from the Harlem Renaissance to the Civil Rights Movement. The authors represent academia, museums, historic preservation, and politics, and utilize the listed properties to vividly illustrate the role of communities and women, the forces of migration, the influence of the arts and heritage preservation, and the struggles for freedom and civil rights. Together they lead to a better understanding of the contributions of African Americans to American history. They illustrate the events and people, the designs and achievements that define African American history. And they pay powerful tribute to the spirit of black America.

Download or read book Library Service to African Americans in Kentucky from the Reconstruction Era to the 1960s written by Reinette F. Jones and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2002 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the majority of libraries in the state of Kentucky did not offer services to African Americans between the years 1860 and 1960, public libraries did employ them. The Louisville Public Library, a leader in the development of library management and education from 1905 to 1925, began in 1912 offering classes to train African American women to be librarians in segregated public library branches that were opening in the South. In 1925, an academic library program was developed for African Americans at the Hampton Institute in Virginia to continue the work that began in Kentucky. This movement culminated with Helen F. Frye's becoming the first African-American to graduate with a master of science degree in library science from the University of Kentucky Library School in 1963. This work moves from the provision by Berea College of the first library services to a fully integrated student body in 1866 through the integration of the state's only accredited library science program at the University of Kentucky in 1949 to the civil rights initiatives of the 1960s. Also addressed are the interconnectedness of libraries and societal events and how one affected the other.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of African American Business History written by Juliet E. K. Walker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1999-11-30 with total page 756 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black business activity has been sustained in America for almost four centuries. From the marketing and trading activities of African slaves in Colonial America to the rise of 20th-century black corporate America, African American participation in self-employed economic activities has been a persistent theme in the black experience. Yet, unlike other topics in African American history, the study of black business has been limited. General reference sources on the black experience—with their emphasis on social, cultural, and political life—provide little information on topics related to the history of black business. This invaluable encyclopedia is the only reference source providing information on the broad range of topics that illuminate black business history. Providing readily accessible information on the black business experience, the encyclopedia provides an overview of black business activities, and underscores the existence of a historic tradition of black American business participation. Entries range from biographies of black business people to overview surveys of business activities from the 1600s to the 1990s, including slave and free black business activities and the Black Wallstreet to coverage of black women's business activities, and discussions of such African American specific industries as catering, funeral enterprises, insurance, and hair care and cosmetic products. Also, there are entries on blacks in the automotive parts industry, black investment banks, black companies listed on the stock market, blacks and corporate America, civil rights and black business, and black athletes and business activities.

Download or read book On Jordan s Banks written by Darrel E. Bigham and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 607 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the Ohio River and its settlements are an integral part of American history, particularly during the country's westward expansion. The vibrant African American communities along the Ohio's banks, however, have rarely been studied in depth. Blacks have lived in the Ohio River Valley since the late eighteenth century, and since the river divided the free labor North and the slave labor South, black communities faced unique challenges. In On Jordan's Banks, Darrel E. Bigham examines the lives of African Americans in the counties along the northern and southern banks of the Ohio River both before and in the years directly following the Civil War. Gleaning material from biographies and primary sources written as early as the 1860s, as well as public records, Bigham separates historical truth from the legends that grew up surrounding these communities. The Ohio River may have separated freedom and slavery, but it was not a barrier to the racial prejudice in the region. Bigham compares early black communities on the northern shore with their southern counterparts, noting that many similarities existed despite the fact that the Roebling Suspension Bridge, constructed in 1866 at Cincinnati, was the first bridge to join the shores. Free blacks in the lower Midwest had difficulty finding employment and adequate housing. Education for their children was severely restricted if not completely forbidden, and blacks could neither vote nor testify against whites in court. Indiana and Illinois passed laws to prevent black migrants from settling within their borders, and blacks already living in those states were pressured to leave. Despite these challenges, black river communities continued to thrive during slavery, after emancipation, and throughout the Jim Crow era. Families were established despite forced separations and the lack of legally recognized marriages. Blacks were subjected to intimidation and violence on both shores and were denied even the most basic state-supported services. As a result, communities were left to devise their own strategies for preventing homelessness, disease, and unemployment. Bigham chronicles the lives of blacks in small river towns and urban centers alike and shows how family, community, and education were central to their development as free citizens. These local histories and life stories are an important part of understanding the evolution of race relations in a critical American region. On Jordan's Banks documents the developing patterns of employment, housing, education, and religious and cultural life that would later shape African American communities during the Jim Crow era and well into the twentieth century.

Download or read book The History of Black Business in America written by Juliet E. K. Walker and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this wide-ranging study Stephen Foster explores Puritanism in England and America from its roots in the Elizabethan era to the end of the seventeenth century. Focusing on Puritanism as a cultural and political phenomenon as well as a religious movement, Foster addresses parallel developments on both sides of the Atlantic and firmly embeds New England Puritanism within its English context. He provides not only an elaborate critque of current interpretations of Puritan ideology but also an original and insightful portrayal of its dynamism. According to Foster, Puritanism represented a loose and incomplete alliance of progressive Protestants, lay and clerical, aristocratic and humble, who never decided whether they were the vanguard or the remnant. Indeed, in Foster's analysis, changes in New England Puritanism after the first decades of settlement did not indicate secularization and decline but instead were part of a pattern of change, conflict, and accomodation that had begun in England. He views the Puritans' own claims of declension as partisan propositions in an internal controversy as old as the Puritan movement itself. The result of these stresses and adaptations, he argues, was continued vitality in American Puritanism during the second half of the seventeenth century. Foster draws insights from a broad range of souces in England and America, including sermons, diaries, spiritual autobiographies, and colony, town, and court records. Moreover, his presentation of the history of the English and American Puritan movements in tandem brings out the fatal flaws of the former as well as the modest but essential strengths of the latter.

Download or read book African Americans in Boyle County written by Michael Thomas Hughes and Michael J. Denis for the Danville Boyle County African American Historical Society Inc. and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2022-08-29 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African Americans have lived in Boyle County, Kentucky, since the first settlement of the area in 1775. Mostly enslaved, by the Civil War, the county had one of the largest population of free Blacks in the area with the exception of Jefferson and Fayette Counties. Their presence in Danville, the county seat, but also in population centers scattered throughout the county resulted in a deep and broad influence, much of which was lost in the early 1900s due to out-migration, deaths, and especially urban renewal between 1963 and 1975. Within Danville, the South Second Street area was the heart of the Black community. Restaurants, groceries, pool halls, barbershops, and beauty shops were the center of commerce from the 1890s until the 1970s. The Bate School also drew students from the outlying settlements that did not have high schools of their own. Today, the majority of the African American community continues to live in the city of Danville, with small pockets in Perryville and outlying areas of Boyle County. Michael Thomas Hughes is a native of Boyle County and grew up in a segregated society. Michael J. Denis is a retired history teacher from Maine who moved to Boyle County and immediately fell in love with its history. The photographs in this book are mostly from the Danville Boyle County African American Historical Society Inc. collection (DBCAAHS), of which the authors are charter members.

Download or read book African American Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs written by Rachel Kranz and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For as long as there have been blacks in the Americas, there have been African-American entrepreneurs.

Download or read book Ku Klux written by Elaine Frantz Parsons and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2015-11-09 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive examination of the nineteenth-century Ku Klux Klan since the 1970s, Ku-Klux pinpoints the group's rise with startling acuity. Historians have traced the origins of the Klan to Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866, but the details behind the group's emergence have long remained shadowy. By parsing the earliest descriptions of the Klan, Elaine Frantz Parsons reveals that it was only as reports of the Tennessee Klan's mysterious and menacing activities began circulating in northern newspapers that whites enthusiastically formed their own Klan groups throughout the South. The spread of the Klan was thus intimately connected with the politics and mass media of the North. Shedding new light on the ideas that motivated the Klan, Parsons explores Klansmen's appropriation of images and language from northern urban forms such as minstrelsy, burlesque, and business culture. While the Klan sought to retain the prewar racial order, the figure of the Ku-Klux became a joint creation of northern popular cultural entrepreneurs and southern whites seeking, perversely and violently, to modernize the South. Innovative and packed with fresh insight, Parsons' book offers the definitive account of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction.

Download or read book Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad in the Kentucky Borderland written by J. Blaine Hudson and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-05-07 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1783 and 1860, more than 100,000 enslaved African Americans escaped across the border between slave and free territory in search of freedom. Most of these escapes were unaided, but as the American anti-slavery movement became more militant after 1830, assisted escapes became more common. Help came from the Underground Railroad, which still stands as one of the most powerful and sustained multiracial human rights movements in world history. This work examines and interprets the available historical evidence about fugitive slaves and the Underground Railroad in Kentucky, the southernmost sections of the free states bordering Kentucky along the Ohio River, and, to a lesser extent, the slave states to the immediate south. Kentucky was central to the Underground Railroad because its northern boundary, the Ohio River, represented a three hundred mile boundary between slavery and nominal freedom. The book examines the landscape of Kentucky and the surrounding states; fugitive slaves before 1850, in the 1850s and during the Civil War; and their motivations and escape strategies and the risks involved with escape. The reasons why people broke law and social convention to befriend fugitive slaves, common escape routes, crossing points through Kentucky from Tennessee and points south, and specific individuals who provided assistance--all are topics covered.

Download or read book African American Recipients of the Medal of Honor written by Charles W. Hanna and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-05-07 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Medal of Honor, one of the world's most highly revered military decorations, has been awarded to 3,457 men and one woman since its inception on December 21, 1861. This honor is bestowed upon those individuals who demonstrate courage in a life-threatening situation, who put their own lives at risk for the sake of others, and who display valor above and beyond the call of duty. This text details the stories of the 88 African Americans who have been awarded the Medal of Honor. Each entry chronicles the acts of bravery and courage that led to the serviceman's receiving this honor. Beginning with a brief history of the Medal of Honor, the book is then divided into eight sections covering every major conflict from the Civil War through the Vietnam War. An appendix of the number of medals awarded by wars and campaigns, a bibliography, and an index are included.

Download or read book Pulaski Co KY 20th Century War Vets written by and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 1999-06-15 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Faces of Kentucky written by James C. Klotter and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by Kentuckians for Kentuckians, Faces of Kentucky is a comprehensive history of Kentucky designed for young students. The state's story comes alive as never before through the images and life stories of the diverse people of the Commonwealth. The product of a collaboration of the state historian of Kentucky and an award-winning teacher (both native Kentuckians), Faces of Kentucky approaches learning as a voyage of discovery. Numerous illustrations, thought-provoking questions, and historical mysteries to be solved seek to challenge young readers and to help them think about their state, themselves, and their future. Features: Timelines from early history to present Discussion questions; Over 250 photographs; 25 Maps; Primary Documents; Teacher's Guide with companion CD for use in the elementary school classroom.

Download or read book From Slavery to Uncertain Freedom written by Randy Finley and published by University of Arkansas Press. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elites have shaped southern life and communities, argues the distinguished historian Willard Gatewood. These essays--written by Gatewood's colleagues and former students in his honor--explore the influence of particular elites in the South from the American Revolution to the Little Rock integration crisis. They discuss not only the power of elites to shape the experiences of the ordinary people, but the tensions and negotiations between elites in a particular locale, whether those elites were white or black, urban or rural, or male or female. Subjects include the particular kinds of power available to black elites in Savannah, Georgia, during the American Revolution; the transformation of a southern secessionist into an anti-slavery activist during the Civil War; a Tennessee "aristocrat of color" active in politics from Reconstruction to World War II; middle-class Southern women, both black and white, in the New Deal and the Little Rock integration crisis; and the different brands of paternalism in Arkansas plantations during the Jacksonian and Jim Crow eras and in the postwar Georgia carpet industry. Willard B. Gatewood's published works span political, intellectual, social, cultural, economic, military, ethnic, and even environmental history. His focus on the impact of the elite in history began with his first published monograph about a North Carolina educator, Eugene Clyde Brooks, and culminated in Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880--1920, first published by Indiana University Press in 1991 and reprinted by the University of Arkansas Press in 2000.

Download or read book Fight Like a Tiger written by Victoria L. Harrison and published by Southern Illinois University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-22 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the life of ambitious former slave Conway Barbour, Victoria L. Harrison argues that the idea of a black middle class traced its origins to the free black population of the mid-nineteenth century and developed alongside the idea of a white middle class. Although slavery and racism meant that the definition of middle class was not identical for white people and free people of color, they shared similar desires for advancement. Born a slave in western Virginia about 1815, Barbour was a free man by the late 1840s. His adventurous life took him through Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky; Cleveland, Ohio; Alton, Illinois; and Little Rock and Lake Village, Arkansas. In search of upward mobility, he worked as a steamboat steward, tried his hand at several commercial ventures, and entered politics. He sought, but was denied, a Civil War military appointment that would have provided financial stability. Blessed with intelligence, competence, and energy, Barbour was quick to identify opportunities as they appeared in personal relationships—he was simultaneously married to two women—business, and politics. Despite an unconventional life, Barbour found in each place he lived that he was one of many free black people who fought to better themselves alongside their white countrymen. Harrison’s argument about black class formation reframes the customary narrative of downtrodden free African Americans in the mid-nineteenth century and engages current discussions of black inclusion, the concept of “otherness,” and the breaking down of societal barriers. Demonstrating that careful research can reveal the stories of people who have been invisible to history, Fight Like a Tiger complicates our understanding of the intersection of race and class in the Civil War era.

Download or read book Blacks in the American West and Beyond America Canada and Mexico written by George H. Junne and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2000-05-30 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Almost a century before their arrival in the English New World, Blacks appeared alongside the Spanish in what is now the American West. Through their families, communities, and institutions, these Western Blacks left behind a long history, which is just now beginning to receive systematic scholarly treatment. Comprehensively indexing a variety of research materials on Blacks in the North American West, Junne offers an invaluable navigational tool for students of American and African-American history. Entries are organized both geographically and topically, and cover a broad range of subjects including cross-cultural interaction, health, art, and law. Contains a complete compilation of African-American newspapers.