Download or read book Our Black Year written by Maggie Anderson and published by . This book was released on 2012-02-14 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maggie and John Anderson were successful African American professionals raising two daughters in a tony suburb of Chicago. But they felt uneasy over their good fortune. Most African Americans live in economically starved neighborhoods. Black wealth is about one tenth of white wealth, and black businesses lag behind businesses of all other racial groups in every measure of success. One problem is that black consumers--unlike consumers of other ethnicities-- choose not to support black-ownedbusinesses. At the same time, most of the businesses in their communities are owned by outsiders. On January 1, 2009 the Andersons embarked on a year-long public pledge to "buy black." They thought that by taking a stand, the black community would be mobilized to exert its economic might. They thought that by exposing the issues, Americans of all races would see that economically empowering black neighborhoods benefits society as a whole. Instead, blacks refused to support their own, and others condemned their experiment. Drawing on economic research and social history as well as her personal story, Maggie Anderson shows why the black economy continues to suffer and issues a call to action to all of us to do our part to reverse this trend.
Download or read book Orange Is the New Black written by Piper Kerman and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-04-06 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES With a career, a boyfriend, and a loving family, Piper Kerman barely resembles the reckless young woman who delivered a suitcase of drug money ten years before. But that past has caught up with her. Convicted and sentenced to fifteen months at the infamous federal correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, the well-heeled Smith College alumna is now inmate #11187–424—one of the millions of people who disappear “down the rabbit hole” of the American penal system. From her first strip search to her final release, Kerman learns to navigate this strange world with its strictly enforced codes of behavior and arbitrary rules. She meets women from all walks of life, who surprise her with small tokens of generosity, hard words of wisdom, and simple acts of acceptance. Heartbreaking, hilarious, and at times enraging, Kerman’s story offers a rare look into the lives of women in prison—why it is we lock so many away and what happens to them when they’re there. Praise for Orange Is the New Black “Fascinating . . . The true subject of this unforgettable book is female bonding and the ties that even bars can’t unbind.”—People (four stars) “I loved this book. It’s a story rich with humor, pathos, and redemption. What I did not expect from this memoir was the affection, compassion, and even reverence that Piper Kerman demonstrates for all the women she encountered while she was locked away in jail. I will never forget it.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love “This book is impossible to put down because [Kerman] could be you. Or your best friend. Or your daughter.”—Los Angeles Times “Moving . . . transcends the memoir genre’s usual self-centeredness to explore how human beings can always surprise you.”—USA Today “It’s a compelling awakening, and a harrowing one—both for the reader and for Kerman.”—Newsweek
Download or read book First Year written by Rachel E. Carter and published by . This book was released on 2017-01-24 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Before the age of seventeen, the young men and women of Jerar are given a choice --pursue a trade or enroll in a trial year in one of the realm's three war schools to study as a soldier, knight, or mage ..."--
Download or read book White Rage written by Carol Anderson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-07-23 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the Civil War to our combustible present, White Rage reframes the continuing conversation about race in America, chronicling the history of the powerful forces opposed to black progress. Since the abolishment of slavery in 1865, every time African Americans have made advances towards full democratic participation, white reaction has fuelled a rollback of any gains. Carefully linking historical flashpoints – from the post-Civil War Black Codes and Jim Crow to expressions of white rage after the election of America's first black president – Carol Anderson renders visible the long lineage of white rage and the different names under which it hides. Compelling and dramatic in the history it relates, White Rage adds a vital new dimension to the conversation about race in America. 'Beautifully written and exhaustively researched' CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE 'An extraordinarily timely and urgent call to confront the legacy of structural racism' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 'Brilliant' ROBIN DIANGELO, AUTHOR OF WHITE FRAGILITY
Download or read book Between the World and Me written by Ta-Nehisi Coates and published by One World. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone) NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Washington Post • People • Entertainment Weekly • Vogue • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • New York • Newsday • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.
Download or read book Year of the Black Pony written by Walt Morey and published by Bethlehem Books. This book was released on 2006-05-04 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Fellows family has joined numerous others striving to make a go of homesteading in the Oregon high desert. But the venture has been disastrous from the start. Mr. Fellows, who is not a farmer, resents any advice from his wife, who grew up on a farm. Ma is not only troubled about the farming, but 7-year-old Ellie’s chronic illness has become a source of constant worry and expense. 12-year-old Chris, who cannot seem to please his father no matter what he does, eases his own misery by stealing time away from work to watch a neighbor’s scarcely broken black pony, only to get into more trouble. When it seems circumstances could not get worse for the struggling family, Fellows gets drunk and dies. Not willing to give up, Ma stubbornly—and creatively—seeks a way for the family to stay in Oregon. Frank Chase, an unintentional element in the death of Chris’s father, is added to the mix and challenged by Ma to keep his word to help the family. The resultant dramatic and sometimes humorous contest of wills comes to a satisfying culmination when, after Frank’s purchase of the wild black pony for Chris, Ma is reluctantly forced to once again use her “backbone of steel” for the good of all. Walt Morey’s careful research and vivid storytelling talent warmly bring to life the struggles and triumphs of homesteading in the Oregon high desert country in the early 1900’s.
Download or read book The Black Church written by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The instant New York Times bestseller and companion book to the PBS series. “Absolutely brilliant . . . A necessary and moving work.” —Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again “Engaging. . . . In Gates’s telling, the Black church shines bright even as the nation itself moves uncertainly through the gloaming, seeking justice on earth—as it is in heaven.” —Jon Meacham, New York Times Book Review From the New York Times bestselling author of Stony the Road and The Black Box, and one of our most important voices on the African American experience, comes a powerful new history of the Black church as a foundation of Black life and a driving force in the larger freedom struggle in America. For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity—an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today’s political landscape. At road’s end, and after Gates’s distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative—as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community’s most critical personal and social issues. In a country that has historically afforded its citizens from the African diaspora tragically few safe spaces, the Black Church has always been more than a sanctuary. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meetinghouses were subject to surveillance and destruction. Long after slavery’s formal eradication, church burnings and bombings by anti-Black racists continued, a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the African American struggle for equality. The past often isn’t even past—Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in the Mother Emanuel AME Church 193 years after it was first burned down by white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, following a thwarted slave rebellion. But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the heart of the Black political struggle, and it has produced many of the Black community’s most notable leaders. At the same time, some churches and denominations have eschewed political engagement and exemplified practices of exclusion and intolerance that have caused polarization and pain. Those tensions remain today, as a rising generation demands freedom and dignity for all within and beyond their communities, regardless of race, sex, or gender. Still, as a source of faith and refuge, spiritual sustenance and struggle against society’s darkest forces, the Black Church has been central, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear.
Download or read book The Color of Money written by Mehrsa Baradaran and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-14 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1863 black communities owned less than 1 percent of total U.S. wealth. Today that number has barely budged. Mehrsa Baradaran pursues this wealth gap by focusing on black banks. She challenges the myth that black banking is the solution to the racial wealth gap and argues that black communities can never accumulate wealth in a segregated economy.
Download or read book Overground Railroad written by Candacy A. Taylor and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This historical exploration of the Green Book offers “a fascinating [and] sweeping story of black travel within Jim Crow America across four decades” (The New York Times Book Review). Published from 1936 to 1966, the Green Book was hailed as the “black travel guide to America.” At that time, it was very dangerous and difficult for African-Americans to travel because they couldn’t eat, sleep, or buy gas at most white-owned businesses. The Green Book listed hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and other businesses that were safe for black travelers. It was a resourceful and innovative solution to a horrific problem. It took courage to be listed in the Green Book, and Overground Railroad celebrates the stories of those who put their names in the book and stood up against segregation. Author Candacy A. Taylor shows the history of the Green Book, how we arrived at our present historical moment, and how far we still have to go when it comes to race relations in America. A New York Times Notable Book of 2020
Download or read book The Torture Letters written by Laurence Ralph and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-01-15 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Torture is an open secret in Chicago. Nobody in power wants to acknowledge this grim reality, but everyone knows it happens—and that the torturers are the police. Three to five new claims are submitted to the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission of Illinois each week. Four hundred cases are currently pending investigation. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 125 black suspects were tortured by Chicago police officers working under former Police Commander Jon Burge. As the more recent revelations from the Homan Square “black site” show, that brutal period is far from a historical anomaly. For more than fifty years, police officers who took an oath to protect and serve have instead beaten, electrocuted, suffocated, and raped hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Chicago residents. In The Torture Letters, Laurence Ralph chronicles the history of torture in Chicago, the burgeoning activist movement against police violence, and the American public’s complicity in perpetuating torture at home and abroad. Engaging with a long tradition of epistolary meditations on racism in the United States, from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, Ralph offers in this book a collection of open letters written to protesters, victims, students, and others. Through these moving, questing, enraged letters, Ralph bears witness to police violence that began in Burge’s Area Two and follows the city’s networks of torture to the global War on Terror. From Vietnam to Geneva to Guantanamo Bay—Ralph’s story extends as far as the legacy of American imperialism. Combining insights from fourteen years of research on torture with testimonies of victims of police violence, retired officers, lawyers, and protesters, this is a powerful indictment of police violence and a fierce challenge to all Americans to demand an end to the systems that support it. With compassion and careful skill, Ralph uncovers the tangled connections among law enforcement, the political machine, and the courts in Chicago, amplifying the voices of torture victims who are still with us—and lending a voice to those long deceased.
Download or read book How Long til Black Future Month written by N. K. Jemisin and published by Orbit. This book was released on 2018-11-27 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three-time Hugo Award winner and NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin challenges and delights readers with thought-provoking narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption that sharply examine modern society in her first collection of short fiction, which includes never-before-seen stories. "Marvelous and wide-ranging." -- Los Angeles Times"Gorgeous" -- NPR Books"Breathtakingly imaginative and narratively bold." -- Entertainment Weekly Spirits haunt the flooded streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a parallel universe, a utopian society watches our world, trying to learn from our mistakes. A black mother in the Jim Crow South must save her daughter from a fey offering impossible promises. And in the Hugo award-nominated short story "The City Born Great," a young street kid fights to give birth to an old metropolis's soul.
Download or read book The Negro Motorist Green Book written by Victor H. Green and published by Colchis Books. This book was released on with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Negro Motorist Green Book was a groundbreaking guide that provided African American travelers with crucial information on safe places to stay, eat, and visit during the era of segregation in the United States. This essential resource, originally published from 1936 to 1966, offered a lifeline to black motorists navigating a deeply divided nation, helping them avoid the dangers and indignities of racism on the road. More than just a travel guide, The Negro Motorist Green Book stands as a powerful symbol of resilience and resistance in the face of oppression, offering a poignant glimpse into the challenges and triumphs of the African American experience in the 20th century.
Download or read book Locking Up Our Own written by James Forman, Jr. and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, America’s criminal justice system has become the subject of an increasingly urgent debate. Critics have assailed the rise of mass incarceration, emphasizing its disproportionate impact on people of color. As James Forman, Jr., points out, however, the war on crime that began in the 1970s was supported by many African American leaders in the nation’s urban centers. In Locking Up Our Own, he seeks to understand why. Forman shows us that the first substantial cohort of black mayors, judges, and police chiefs took office amid a surge in crime and drug addiction. Many prominent black officials, including Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Barry and federal prosecutor Eric Holder, feared that the gains of the civil rights movement were being undermined by lawlessness—and thus embraced tough-on-crime measures, including longer sentences and aggressive police tactics. In the face of skyrocketing murder rates and the proliferation of open-air drug markets, they believed they had no choice. But the policies they adopted would have devastating consequences for residents of poor black neighborhoods. A former D.C. public defender, Forman tells riveting stories of politicians, community activists, police officers, defendants, and crime victims. He writes with compassion about individuals trapped in terrible dilemmas—from the men and women he represented in court to officials struggling to respond to a public safety emergency. Locking Up Our Own enriches our understanding of why our society became so punitive and offers important lessons to anyone concerned about the future of race and the criminal justice system in this country.
Download or read book Determined written by Karen A. Sherry and published by Giles. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intended for general audiences, this publication presents a concise overview of four centuries of Black history in Virginia--from the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in 1619, through slavery and emancipation, segregation and the Civil Rights Movement, the election of the first Black President and present-day racial justice activism. Across these four centuries, Black Virginians have fought against various forms of oppression and, in the process, have brought about meaningful changes in American society. Their efforts have pushed our nation closer to its ideal of universal equality, yet America still struggles with widespread iniquities and systemic racism rooted in the long legacy of slavery and racial discrimination. Determined presents a chronological survey of this history through the stories of thirty five key individuals and events in Virginia that shaped the fight for Black equity. Although focused on Virginia, this is very much an American story, not only because Black people have shaped America's economic, political, and cultural identity, but also because Virginia has played a formative and central role in national race relations. Determined fills a great need for an accessible, responsible, comprehensive, and current publication about the history of race and racism in the Commonwealth since 1619. This need is particularly urgent given the events of 2020 which have prompted a national reckoning with our long history of systemic racism. Determined will foster a greater understanding of how we got to this moment, while also providing inspiration for how to make change and move our nation ever-closer to its ideal of universal equality.
Download or read book Breaking Ground written by Anne Snyder and published by . This book was released on 2022-01-04 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a pandemic and racial reckoning exposed society's faults, Christian thinkers were laying the groundwork for a better future. A public health and economic crisis provoked by Covid-19. A social crisis cracked open by the filmed murder of George Floyd. A leadership crisis laid bare as the gravity of a global pandemic met a country suffocating in political polarization and idolatry. In the spring of 2020 Comment and Plough magazines created a joint publishing project that would tap the resources of the Christian humanist tradition to respond collaboratively and imaginatively to these crises. This volume, written in real time during a year that revealed the depths of our society's fissures, provides a wealth of proposals and reflections on what should come after: how we can truly renew our civilization. Breaking Ground has grown into a network of institutions and people that will continue to respond to these ongoing challenges with a deeply Christian and human vision for the future. Contributors include Anthony Barr, Marilynne Robinson, N. T. Wright, Adam Carrington, Gregory Thompson, Shadi Hamid, Rachel Anderson, John Clair, Christine Emba, Jennifer Frey, Michael Wear, David Grubbs, John Milbank, Mark Noll, Michael Lamb, Joe Nail, Charles Camosy, Dante Stewart, Katherine Boyle, Duke Kwon, Gracy Olmstead, Phil Christman, Brad Littlejohn, Brandon Mcginley, Oliver O Donovan, Amy Julia Becker, Chris Lambert, Benya Kraus, Carlo Lancellotti, Luke Bretherton, Jake Meador, Jeffrey Bilbro, Mark Gerzon, Cherie Harder, Susannah Black, Joe Boland, Patrick Pierson, Samuel Kimbriel, Kurt Armstrong, Patrick Tomassi, Chris Lambert, Stuart Mcalpine, Elayne Allen, Mack Mccarter, Father Jack Wall, Myles Werntz, Tobias Cremer, Doug Sikkema, E. J. Hutchinson, J. L. Wall, Joel Halldorf, Aryana Petrosky Roberts, Chelsea Langston Bambino, Dhananjay Jagannathan, Dwan Dandridge, Erin And David Leaverton, Heather C. O'Haneson, Irena Dragas Jansen, James Matthew Wilson, Joseph M Keegin, Joshua Bambino, and L. M. Sacasas.
Download or read book The Education of Blacks in the South 1860 1935 written by James D. Anderson and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2010-01-27 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Anderson critically reinterprets the history of southern black education from Reconstruction to the Great Depression. By placing black schooling within a political, cultural, and economic context, he offers fresh insights into black commitment to education, the peculiar significance of Tuskegee Institute, and the conflicting goals of various philanthropic groups, among other matters. Initially, ex-slaves attempted to create an educational system that would support and extend their emancipation, but their children were pushed into a system of industrial education that presupposed black political and economic subordination. This conception of education and social order--supported by northern industrial philanthropists, some black educators, and most southern school officials--conflicted with the aspirations of ex-slaves and their descendants, resulting at the turn of the century in a bitter national debate over the purposes of black education. Because blacks lacked economic and political power, white elites were able to control the structure and content of black elementary, secondary, normal, and college education during the first third of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, blacks persisted in their struggle to develop an educational system in accordance with their own needs and desires.
Download or read book Black Like Me written by John Howard Griffin and published by Signet Book. This book was released on 1976 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This American classic has been corrected from the original manuscripts and indexed, featuring historic photographs and an extensive biographical afterword.
