Download or read book The Magnificent Activist written by Thomas Wentworth Higginson and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2000-07-06 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Higginson worked to abolish slavery, commanded the first black unit to fight for the Union, inspired the creation of Smith College, and edited Emily Dickinson's poetry. Included here are Higginson's abolitionist pieces like "Why Back John Brown?," anti-imperialist essays such as "Where Liberty is Not, There is My Country," women's rights articles like "Ought Women to Learn the Alphabet?", and pieces on nature, including "Water Lilies." Also in the collection are essays on Sappho, Longfellow, Dickinson, and Henry James. An extensive introduction precedes the whole volume and smaller introductions precede thematic sections. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book The Little Book of Little Activists written by Penguin Young Readers and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A celebration of political activism by America's youngest citizens--our children. You're never too young to care about your community or to stand up for your beliefs. That's the empowering message of this book, which is all about how real kids exercise their first amendment rights. Filled with inspiring photos of children at recent demonstrations and rallies, The Little Book of Little Activists also includes inspirational quotes from kids themselves on topics of equality, diversity, and feminism, as well as an introduction by Bob Bland, co-chair of the Women's March on Washington, and an afterword by civil rights activist Lynda Blackmon Lowery, author of Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March. Five percent of gross proceeds go to benefit the Children's Defense Fund. The Little Book of Little Activists is a child's very first introduction to political activism, presented at a level that they can understand and relate to. Perfect for parents who want to raise their kids to become participatory members of a democracy.
Download or read book Oil and Honey written by Bill McKibben and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2015-01-29 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling author and environmental activist Bill McKibben recounts the personal and global story of the fight to build and preserve a sustainable planet. Bill McKibben is not a person you'd expect to find hand - cuffed in the city jail in Washington, D.C. But that's where he spent three days in the summer of 2011, after leading the largest civil disobedience in thirty years to protest the Keystone XL pipeline. A few months later the protesters would see their efforts rewarded when President Obama agreed to put the project on hold. And yet McKibben realized that this small and temporary victory was at best a stepping - stone. With the Arctic melting, the Midwest in drought, and Hurricane Sandy scouring the Atlantic, the need for much deeper solutions was obvious. Some of those would come at the local level, and McKibben recounts a year he spends in the company of a beekeeper raising his hives as part of the growing trend toward local food. Other solutions would come from a much larger fight against the fossil - fuel industry as a whole. Oil and Honey is McKibben's account of these two necessary and mutually reinforcing sides of the global climate fight - from the absolute centre of the maelstrom and from the growing hive of small - scale local answers to the climate crisis. With characteristic empathy and passion, he reveals the imperative to work on both levels, telling the story of raising one year's honey crop and building a social movement that's still cresting.
Download or read book Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement written by Barbara Ransby and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stirring new portrait of one of the most important black leaders of the twentieth century introduces readers to the fiery woman who inspired generations of activists. (Social Science)
Download or read book Taking to the Streets written by Lina Khatib and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2014-05-20 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Debunks the simplistic narratives of youth-driven, social media revolutions in the Arab Spring. Taking to the Streets critically examines the conventional wisdom that the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings happened spontaneously and were directed by tech-savvy young revolutionaries. Pairing first-hand observations from activists with the critical perspectives of scholars, the book illuminates the concept of activism as an ongoing process, rather than a sudden burst of defiance. The contributors examine case studies from uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, evaluating the various manifestations of political activism within the context of each country's distinct sociopolitical landscape. The chapters include a country-specific timeline of the first year following the uprisings and conclude with lessons learned. First-hand observations include those of Libyan activist Rihab Elhaj, who reflects on how the revolution gave birth to Libyan civil society, as well as Syrian writer and human rights activist Khawla Dunia, who discusses how Syrians have tried to remain steadfast in their commitment to nonviolent resistance. A foreword by Prince Hicham Ben Abdallah El Alaoui—third in succession to the Moroccan throne and consulting professor at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL)—provides a historical overview of activism in the Middle East and North Africa. A postscript from CDDRL director Larry Diamond distinguishes the study of activism from that of democratization. Taking to the Streets will be used in courses on Middle East politics and will be relevant to scholars and the general public interested in democratization, political change, and activism.
Download or read book A Summer of Hummingbirds written by Christopher Benfey and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-04-17 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The country's most noted writers, poets, and artists converge at a singular moment in American life, a great companion to fans of the film A Quiet Passion, starring Cynthia Nixon as Emily Dickinson. At the close of the Civil War, the lives of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade intersected in an intricate map of friendship, family, and romance that marked a milestone in the development of American art and literature. Using the image of a flitting hummingbird as a metaphor for the gossamer strands that connect these larger-than-life personalities, Christopher Benfey re-creates the summer of 1882, the summer when Mabel Louise Todd-the protégé to the painter Heade-confesses her love for Emily Dickinson's brother, Austin, and the players suddenly find themselves caught in the crossfire between the Calvinist world of decorum, restraint, and judgment and a new, unconventional world in which nature prevails and freedom is all.
Download or read book To Free a Dolphin written by Keith Coulbourn and published by Renaissance Books. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this memorable first book, Behind the Dolphin Smile, Richard O'Barry told the inspiring story of his personal transformation from world-famous dolphin trainer (Flipper was his pupil) to dolphin liberator. Now, in To Free a Dolphin, he passionately recounts the dramatic story of his heart-breaking campaign to release captive dolphins back into the wild. With wit and insight he chronicles the extreme opposition he has faced from bureaucrats, major players in the captive-dolphin industry, rival wildlife groups, and well-meaning sentimentalists. He introduces readers to famous show animals he has helped, including Bogie and Bacall of Key Largo. And, most fascinating, he describes his struggles to deprogram and rehabilitate dolphins emotionally scarred from years of captivity--struggles that become battles for the animals' souls.
Download or read book Activist Life written by Christine Milne and published by Univ. of Queensland Press. This book was released on 2017-11-08 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Activist Life is the story of an apparently ordinary woman – a high-school English teacher from northwest Tasmania – who became a fiery environmental warrior, pitted against some of the most powerful business and political forces in the country. In it, Christine Milne tells her story through the objects that have symbolic meaning in both her personal and political life, from the butter pats in her kitchen that represent her journey from farm girl at Wesley Vale to environmental and human rights activist at the national and global level, to the Pride t-shirt she wore walking in Mardi Gras next to her son, after years of fighting for the legal reform of gay rights in Tasmania. She describes how politics actually works: the deals, the promises kept and broken, the horse-trading and treachery involved in some of the most controversial and difficult issues of our time, including the attempts to forge a workable and effective climate change policy for Australia, and Australia's treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. This is a fascinating insider's account of what it means to be a woman in politics: the sacrifices of family life and relationships, the relentless misogyny and sexism that must be endured, the gritty conviction that you must never, ever give up the pursuit of the greater good. It is the story of Australian politics and the fight to save the world, and essential reading for anyone who cares about either.
Download or read book Gay Is Good written by Michael G. Long and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-26 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contrary to popular notions, today’s LGBT movement did not begin with the Stonewall riots in 1969. Long before Stonewall, there was Franklin Kameny (1925–2011), one of the most significant figures in the gay rights movement. Beginning in 1958, he encouraged gay people to embrace homosexuality as moral and healthy, publicly denounced the federal government for excluding homosexuals from federal employment, openly fought the military’s ban against gay men and women, debated psychiatrists who depicted homosexuality as a mental disorder, identified test cases to advance civil liberties through the federal courts, acted as counsel to countless homosexuals suffering state-sanctioned discrimination, and organized marches for gay rights at the White House and other public institutions. In Gay Is Good, Long collects Kameny’s historically rich letters, revealing some of the early stirrings of today’s politically powerful LGBT movement. These letters are lively and colorful because they are in Kameny’s inimitable voice—a voice that was consistently loud, echoing through such places as the Oval Office, the Pentagon, and the British Parliament, and often shrill, piercing to the federal agency heads, military generals, and media personalities who received his countless letters. This volume collects approximately 150 letters from 1958 to 1975, a critical period in Kameny’s life during which he evolved from a victim of the law to a vocal opponent of the law, to the voice of the law itself. Long situates these letters in context, giving historical and biographical data about the subjects and events involved. Gay Is Good pays tribute to an advocate whose tireless efforts created a massive shift in social attitudes and practices, leading the way toward equality for the LGBT community.
Download or read book White Heat written by Brenda Wineapple and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2009-12-01 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: White Heat is the first book to portray the remarkable relationship between America's most beloved poet and the fiery abolitionist who first brought her work to the public. As the Civil War raged, an unlikely friendship was born between the reclusive poet Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a literary figure who ran guns to Kansas and commanded the first Union regiment of black soldiers. When Dickinson sent Higginson four of her poems he realized he had encountered a wholly original genius; their intense correspondence continued for the next quarter century. In White Heat Brenda Wineapple tells an extraordinary story about poetry, politics, and love, one that sheds new light on her subjects and on the roiling America they shared.
Download or read book The Sympathy of Religions written by Thomas Wentworth Higginson and published by . This book was released on 1876 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Magnificent Reverend Peter Thomas Stanford Transatlantic Reformer and Race Man written by Barbara McCaskill and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2020-06-15 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born into slavery in Hampton County, Virginia, orphaned soon thereafter, and raised for almost two years among Native Americans, the charismatic Rev. Peter Thomas Stanford (c. 1860–May 20, 1909) rose from humble and challenging beginnings to emerge as an inventive and passionate activist and educator who championed social justice. During the post- Reconstruction era and early twentieth century, Stanford traversed the United States, Canada, and England advocating for the rights of African Americans, including access to educational opportunities; attainment of the full rights and privileges of citizenship; protections from racial violence, social stereotyping, and a predatory legal system; and recognition of the artistic contributions that have shaped national culture and earned global renown. His imprint on working-class urban residents, Afro-Canadian settlements, and African American communities survives in the institutions he led and the works that presented his imaginative, literate, ardent, and often comic voice. With a reflection by Highgate Baptist Church’s former pastor, Rev. Dr. Paul Walker, this collection highlights Stanford’s writings: sermons, lectures, newspaper columns, entertainments, and memoirs. Editors Barbara McCaskill and Sidonia Serafini annotate his life and work throughout the volume, placing him within the context of his peers as a writer and editor. As an American expatriate, Stanford was seminal in redirecting antislavery activism into an international antilynching movement and a global campaign to dismantle slavery and slave trading. This book squarely inserts this influential thinker and activist in the African American literary canon.
Download or read book Until I Am Free written by Keisha N. Blain and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Critics Circle 2021 Biography Finalist 53rd NAACP Image Award Nominee: Outstanding Literary Work - Biography/Autobiography “[A] riveting and timely exploration of Hamer’s life. . . . Brilliantly constructed to be both forward and backward looking, Blain’s book functions simultaneously as a much needed history lesson and an indispensable guide for modern activists.”—New York Times Book Review Ms. Magazine “Most Anticipated Reads for the Rest of Us – 2021” · KIRKUS STARRED REVIEW · BOOKLIST STARRED REVIEW · Publishers Weekly Big Indie Books of Fall 2021 Explores the Black activist’s ideas and political strategies, highlighting their relevance for tackling modern social issues including voter suppression, police violence, and economic inequality. “We have a long fight and this fight is not mine alone, but you are not free whether you are white or black, until I am free.” —Fannie Lou Hamer A blend of social commentary, biography, and intellectual history, Until I Am Free is a manifesto for anyone committed to social justice. The book challenges us to listen to a working-poor and disabled Black woman activist and intellectual of the civil rights movement as we grapple with contemporary concerns around race, inequality, and social justice. Award-winning historian and New York Times best-selling author Keisha N. Blain situates Fannie Lou Hamer as a key political thinker alongside leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks and demonstrates how her ideas remain salient for a new generation of activists committed to dismantling systems of oppression in the United States and across the globe. Despite her limited material resources and the myriad challenges she endured as a Black woman living in poverty in Mississippi, Hamer committed herself to making a difference in the lives of others. She refused to be sidelined in the movement and refused to be intimidated by those of higher social status and with better jobs and education. In these pages, Hamer’s words and ideas take center stage, allowing us all to hear the activist’s voice and deeply engage her words, as though we had the privilege to sit right beside her. More than 40 years since Hamer’s death in 1977, her words still speak truth to power, laying bare the faults in American society and offering valuable insights on how we might yet continue the fight to help the nation live up to its core ideals of “equality and justice for all.” Includes a photo insert featuring Hamer at civil rights marches, participating in the Democratic National Convention, testifying before Congress, and more.
Download or read book Nancy Cunard written by Lois Gordon and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007-03-27 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lois Gordon's absorbing biography tells the story of a writer, activist, and cultural icon who embodied the dazzling energy and tumultuous spirit of her age, and whom William Carlos Williams once called "one of the major phenomena of history." Nancy Cunard (1896-1965) led a life that surpasses Hollywood fantasy. The only child of an English baronet (and heir to the Cunard shipping fortune) and an American beauty, Cunard abandoned the world of a celebrated socialite and Jazz Age icon to pursue a lifelong battle against social injustice as a wartime journalist, humanitarian aid worker, and civil rights champion. Cunard fought fascism on the battlefields of Spain and reported firsthand on the atrocities of the French concentration camps. Intelligent and beautiful, she romanced the great writers of her era, including three Nobel Prize winners, and was the inspiration for characters in the works of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, Pablo Neruda, Samuel Beckett, and Ernest Hemingway, among others. Cunard was also a prolific poet, publisher, and translator and, after falling in love with a black American jazz pianist, became deeply committed to fighting for black rights. She edited the controversial anthology Negro, the first comprehensive study of the achievement and plight of blacks around the world. Her contributors included Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Zora Neale Hurston, among scores of others. Cunard's personal life was as complex as her public persona. Her involvement with the civil rights movement led her to be ridiculed and rejected by both family and friends. Throughout her life, she was plagued by insecurities and suffered a series of breakdowns, struggling with a sense of guilt over her promiscuous behavior and her ability to survive so much war and tragedy. Yet Cunard's writings also reveal an immense kindness and wit, as well as her renowned, often flamboyant defiance of prejudiced social conventions. Drawing on diaries, correspondence, historical accounts, and the remembrances of others, Lois Gordon revisits the major movements of the first half of the twentieth century through the life of a truly gifted and extraordinary woman. She also returns Nancy Cunard to her rightful place as a major figure in the historical, social, and artistic events of a critical era.
Download or read book Paul Robeson written by Lindsey R. Swindall and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book locates Robeson's extraordinary accomplishments in the tumultuous events of twentieth-century history. Paul Robeson was, at points in his life, an actor, singer, football player, political activist and writer, one of the most diversely talented members of the Harlem Renaissance. Swindall centers Robeson's story around the argument that while Robeson leaned toward Socialism, a Pan-African perspective is fundamental to understanding his life as an artist and political advocate. Many previous works on Robeson have focused primarily on his involvement with the US Communist Party, paying little attention to the broader African influences on his politics and art. With each chapter focused on a decade of his life, this book affords us a fresh look at his story, and the ways in which the struggles, successes and studies of his formative years came to shape him as an artist, activist and man later on. --Cover.
Download or read book Letters to a Young Activist written by Todd Gitlin and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-07-21 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Be original. See what happens." So Todd Gitlin advises the young mind burning to take action to right the wrongs of the world but also looking for bearings, understanding, direction, and practical examples. In Letters to a Young Activist, Todd Gitlin looks back at his eventful life, recalling his experience as president of the formidable Students for a Democratic Society in the '60s, contemplating the spirit of activism, and arriving at some principles of action to guide the passion and energy of those wishing to do good. He considers the three complementary motives of duty, love, and adventure, and reflects on the changing nature of idealism and how righteous action requires realistic as well as idealistic thinking. And he looks forward to an uncertain future that is nevertheless full of possibility, a future where patriotism and intelligent skepticism are not mutually exclusive. Gitlin invites the young activist to enter imaginatively into some of the dilemmas, moral and practical, of being a modern citizen -- the dilemmas that affect not only the problems of what to think but also the problems of what to love and how to live.
Download or read book The Magnificent Mays written by John Herbert Roper, Sr. and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2012-08-15 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive biography of a dedicated civil rights activist and distinguished South Carolinian Civil rights activist, writer, theologian, preacher, and educator, Benjamin Elijah Mays (1894-1984) was one of the most distinguished South Carolinians of the twentieth century. He influenced the lives of generations of students as a dean and professor of religion at Howard University and as longtime president of Morehouse College in Atlanta. In addition to his personal achievements, Mays was also a mentor and teacher to Julian Bond, founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; future Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson; writer, preacher, and theologian Howard Washington Thurman; and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. In this comprehensive biography of Mays, John Herbert Roper, Sr., chronicles the harsh realities of Mays's early life and career in the segregated South and crafts an inspirational, compelling portrait of one of the most influential African American intellectuals in modern history. Born at the turn of the century in rural Edgefield County, South Carolina, Mays was the youngest son of former slaves turned tenant farmers. At just four years of age, he experienced the brutal injustice of the Jim Crow era when he witnessed the bloody 1898 Phoenix Riot, sparked by black citizens' attempts to exercise their voting rights. In the early 1930s Mays discovered the teachings of Mohandas Gandhi and traveled to India in 1938 to confer with him about his methods of nonviolent protest. An honoree of the South Carolina Hall of Fame and recipient of forty-nine honorary degrees, Mays strived tirelessly against racial prejudices and social injustices throughout his career. In addition to his contributions to education and theology, Mays also worked with the National Urban League to improve housing, employment, and health conditions for African Americans, and he played a major role in the integration of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). With honest appreciation and fervent admiration for Mays's many accomplishments and lasting legacy, Roper deftly captures the heart and passion of his subject, his lifelong quest for social equality, and his unwavering faith in the potential for good in the American people.
