The doubts of their fathers: The God debate, and the conflict between African American churches and civil rights organizations between the World Wars
August 2020
|
Journal article
|
Journal of Southern History
FFR
Race not place: the invasion, and possible retreat, of British historians of the American South
May 2020
|
Journal article
|
Journal of Southern History
FFR
Evangelicals and Race
January 2019
|
Chapter
|
The Routledge Research Companion to the History of Evangelicalism
The Other Special Relationship: Race, Rights, and Riots in Britain and the United States
February 2016
|
Edited book
The close diplomatic, economic, and military ties that comprising the "special relationship" between the United States and Great Britain have received plenty of attention from historians over the years. Less frequently noted are the countries' shared experiences of empire, white supremacy, racial inequality, and neoliberalism - and the attendant struggles for civil rights and political reform that have marked their recent history. This state-of-the-field collection traces the contours of this other "special relationship," exploring its implications for our understanding of the development of an internationally interconnected civil rights movement. Here, scholars from a range of research fields contribute essays on a wide variety of themes, from solidarity protests to calypso culture to white supremacy.
History
African and African American Histories in Europe: Joining the Conversation
January 2016
|
Journal article
|
Callaloo
4702 Cultural Studies, 36 Creative Arts and Writing, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology, 47 Language, Communication and Culture, 4303 Historical Studies, 3602 Creative and Professional Writing
Tomas Sniegon. Vanished History: The Holocaust in Czech and Slovak Historical Culture.
April 2015
|
Journal article
|
The American Historical Review
4303 Historical Studies, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology
Fictions of Speculation Response
January 2015
|
Journal article
|
JOURNAL OF AMERICAN STUDIES
Powerless at Home, Dangerous Abroad
January 2015
|
Journal article
|
New Labor Forum
4404 Development Studies, 48 Law and Legal Studies, 4806 Private Law and Civil Obligations, 44 Human Society
The March on London: British-American connections during the civil rights movement
January 2015
|
Journal article
|
German Historical Institute London Bulletin
The Night Malcolm X Spoke at the Oxford Union: A Transatlantic Story of Antiracist Protest
November 2014
|
Book
Less than three months before he was assassinated, Malcolm X spoke at the Oxford Union—the most prestigious student debating organization in the United Kingdom. The Oxford Union regularly welcomed heads of state and stars of screen and served as the training ground for the politically ambitious offspring of Britain’s "better classes." Malcolm X, by contrast, was the global icon of race militancy. For many, he personified revolution and danger. Marking the fiftieth anniversary of the debate, this book brings to life the dramatic events surrounding the visit, showing why Oxford invited Malcolm X, why he accepted, and the effect of the visit on Malcolm X and British students.
Stephen Tuck tells the human story behind the debate and also uses it as a starting point to discuss larger issues of Black Power, the end of empire, British race relations, immigration, and student rights. Coinciding with a student-led campaign against segregated housing, the visit enabled Malcolm X to make connections with radical students from the Caribbean, Africa, and South Asia, giving him a new perspective on the global struggle for racial equality, and in turn, radicalizing a new generation of British activists. Masterfully tracing the reverberations on both sides of the Atlantic, Tuck chronicles how the personal transformation of the dynamic American leader played out on the international stage.
History
Constraints, Opportunities, and the Decision to Pursue Business Ownership: Industry Choice among African American Owners of Small Businesses
October 2014
|
Journal article
|
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race
The choice between working as an employee and owning a business is shaped by constraints and opportunities. Among African Americans, understanding why the entrepreneurial path is chosen requires evaluating not only the relative importance of constraints pushing workers toward self-employment versus opportunities pulling entrants into firm ownership, but, more fundamentally, the changing opportunity structures shaping occupational choices. This study focuses on the 1960s and 1970s period when specific constraints historically limiting entrepreneurial alternatives began to change dramatically. Findings indicate that expanding opportunities sharply altered the industry composition of the Black business community.
Because economists view the decision to enter into business ownership as an exercise in freedom of choice made on the basis of one’s preferences, they tend not to appreciate that these decisions are made in specific socio-economic contexts and that changes in context matter. Facing altered opportunity structures, prospective Black entrepreneurs have often chosen to abandon fields offering low remuneration—particularly personal services—entering instead into higher yielding fields where creation of viable firms requires investment of capital by owners possessing appropriate expertise. This transformation has remolded the stagnant business community of the mid-1960s into a profoundly different, more dynamic one.
Black Entrepreneurship, Business Creation, Barriers, Access to Capital
American History and European Identity
June 2014
|
Journal article
|
American Historical Review
On the face of it, U.S. scholars are better placed than their European counterparts to make U.S. history more directly and explicitly relevant to their present, as evidenced by the common use of “we” and “our” in forewords and epilogues in historical monographs by American scholars.1 In turn, European historians might be presumed to be dispassionate observers of American domestic history because it is the history of a foreign nation (since the colonial period, at least). Indeed, reviews in American journals of historical monographs by European scholars often comment on the author's perch across the sea. But this does not mean that there is, or has been, a contrast between engaged U.S.-based historians and detached European writers when it comes to American history. Studying the history of a different nation can be a political statement in itself and at times has been quite a bold one, especially...
AHR Roundtable You the People
January 2014
|
Chapter
Historians across borders: Writing American history in a global age
Using the American past for the present: European historians and the relevance of writing American history
January 2014
|
Chapter
|
Historians Across Borders: Writing American History in a Global Age
Malcolm X's Visit to Oxford University: U.S. Civil Rights, Black Britain, and the Special Relationship on Race
February 2013
|
Journal article
|
American Historical Review
On December 3, 1964, a most unlikely figure was invited to speak at the University of Oxford Union's end-of-term “Queen and Country” debate: Mr. Malcolm X. The Oxford Union (as distinct from the university's representative student union) was the most prestigious student debating organization in the United Kingdom, regularly welcoming heads of state and stars of screen.1 It was also the student arm of the British establishment—the training ground for the politically ambitious offspring of Britain's better classes. Malcolm X, by contrast, personified revolution and danger. As The Sun, the most widely read British tabloid, explained to readers in a large-font caption under a photograph of Malcolm X: “He wants a separate Negro state in which coloured people could live undisturbed. And many Americans believe he would use violence to get it.”2 Certainly the FBI did. Its file on Malcolm X, opened in 1953, expanded by...
In the Cause of Freedom: Radical Black Internationalism from Harlem to London, 1917-1939
January 2013
|
Journal article
|
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
You, the People
January 2013
|
Book
Fog of War : The Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement
May 2012
|
Book
This collection is a timely reconsideration of the intersection between two of the dominant events of twentieth-century American history, the upheaval wrought by the Second World War and the social revolution brought about by the African American struggle for equality. Scholars from a wide range of fields explore the impact of war on the longer history of African American protest from many angles: from black veterans to white segregationists, from the rural South to northern cities, from popular culture to federal politics, and from the American confrontations to international connections. It is well known that World War II gave rise to human rights rhetoric, discredited a racist regime abroad, and provided new opportunities for African Americans to fight, work, and demand equality at home. It would be all too easy to assume that the war was a key stepping stone to the modern civil rights movement. But the book shows that in reality the momentum for civil rights was not as clear cut as that, with activists facing setbacks as well as successes and their opponents finding ways to establish more rigid defenses for segregation. While the way set the scene for a mass movement, it also narrowed some of the options for black activists.
Introduction
May 2012
|
Book
"You can sing and punch ... but you can't be a soldier or a man"
May 2012
|
Chapter
|
Fog of War : The Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement
Activists saw popular culture as a central battleground in the wartime fight for equality. With the involvement of black soldiers in the war effort, the inclusion of black advisors in the federal information bureaus, and the opportunities for leading black cultural figures to display patriotism, the war provided black leaders with an unprecedented opportunity to launch a propaganda campaign. They campaigned with vigor, yet, for the most part, in vain. The indifference of state officials and media moguls, and the opposition of southern censors, meant that-with a few tantalizing exceptions-African Americans did not break into mainstream popular culture as either good soldiers or everyday men and women. The only wartime breakthrough came as entertainers. The major legacy of the war with regard to popular culture, then, was not an improved place for African Americans, but the lessons black leaders learned about the importance of manipulating the black image.
IntroductionThe Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement
February 2012
|
Book
The Fog of War
February 2012
|
Book
This collection is a timely reconsideration of the intersection between two of the dominant events of twentieth-century American history, the upheaval wrought by the Second World War and the social revolution brought about by the African American struggle for equality. Scholars from a wide range of fields explore the impact of war on the longer history of African American protest from many angles: from black veterans to white segregationists, from the rural South to northern cities, from popular culture to federal politics, and from the American confrontations to international connections. It is well known that World War II gave rise to human rights rhetoric, discredited a racist regime abroad, and provided new opportunities for African Americans to fight, work, and demand equality at home. It would be all too easy to assume that the war was a key stepping stone to the modern civil rights movement. But the book shows that in reality the momentum for civil rights was not as clear cut as that, with activists facing setbacks as well as successes and their opponents finding ways to establish more rigid defenses for segregation. While the way set the scene for a mass movement, it also narrowed some of the options for black activists.
History
“You can sing and punch … but you can’t be a soldier or a man”African American Struggles for a New Place in Popular Culture
February 2012
|
Chapter
|
Fog of WarThe Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement
From Greensboro to Notting Hill: The Sit-Ins in England
January 2012
|
Chapter
|
From Sit-Ins to SNCC: The Student Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s
We Ain't What We Ought To Be
October 2011
|
Book
In this exciting revisionist history, Stephen Tuck traces the black freedom struggle in all its diversity, from the first years of freedom during the Civil War to President Obama’s inauguration. As it moves from popular culture to high politics, from the Deep South to New England, the West Coast, and abroad, Tuck weaves gripping stories of ordinary black people—as well as celebrated figures—into the sweep of racial protest and social change. The drama unfolds from an armed march of longshoremen in post–Civil War Baltimore to Booker T. Washington’s founding of Tuskegee Institute; from the race riots following Jack Johnson’s “fight of the century” to Rosa Parks’ refusal to move to the back of a Montgomery bus; and from the rise of hip hop to the journey of a black Louisiana grandmother to plead with the Tokyo directors of a multinational company to stop the dumping of toxic waste near her home.
We Ain’t What We Ought To Be rejects the traditional narrative that identifies the Southern non-violent civil rights movement as the focal point of the black freedom struggle. Instead, it explores the dynamic relationships between those seeking new freedoms and those looking to preserve racial hierarchies, and between grassroots activists and national leaders. As Tuck shows, strategies were ultimately contingent on the power of activists to protest amidst shifting economic and political circumstances in the U.S. and abroad. This book captures an extraordinary journey that speaks to all Americans—both past and future.
History
Responses to Robin D. G. Kelley, "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands"
January 2011
|
Journal article
|
JOURNAL OF AMERICAN STUDIES
The Civil Rights Movement and the Logic of Social Change
January 2011
|
Journal article
|
JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY
The Reversal of Black Voting Rights after Reconstruction'
August 2009
|
Chapter
|
Democratization in America: A Comparative-Historical Analysis
This shift in the premise of American political development opens up the
dynamics of American democracy itself to critical analysis ... From one
perspective, the United States American Political Development as a Process of
Democratization 5.
Political Science
Symposium: Contract and Domination by Carole Pateman and Charles W. Mills1
October 2008
|
Journal article
|
Journal of Political Ideologies
4408 Political Science, 4410 Sociology, 44 Human Society
We Are Taking Up Where the Movement of the 1960s Left Off: The Proliferation and Power of African American Protest during the 1970s
October 2008
|
Journal article
|
Journal of Contemporary History
The small city of Tupelo stands in the middle of former sharecropping country
in northern Mississippi. By the mid-twentieth century the ‘All-American’ city
had become a relatively prosperous mercantile centre, known to some as the
birthplace of Elvis Presley. City fathers boasted of settled race relations. Then
the summer came, and the civil rights protests began. A charismatic leader,
Alfred ‘Skip’ Robinson, inspired hymn-singing mass meetings in local
churches. Children joined their mothers on the picket lines, protesting poor
treatment in downtown shops. African American veterans led marches. Ku
Klux Klan members countermarched. City police beat up one young black
man. A local attorney filed suit. It was hard to know who was more worried
by the turn of events: the traditional African American leadership or the white
city fathers. To ‘heal the sore’ the city set up a biracial committee. To keep up
the pressure, the movement continued a ‘silent’ boycott. The committee agreed
to improve African American voter registration, investigate charges of police
brutality, and hire black workers at downtown stores.1
We know the plot of the story all too well. It is instantly recognizable as one
of hundreds of similar stories from the height of the civil rights movement.
Indeed, it is so predictable that it almost loses its human interest — except
that the Tupelo movement happened in 1978, more than a decade after the
heyday of the civil rights movement.
African American Protest during the Reagan Years: Forging New Agendas, Defending Old Victories
January 2008
|
Chapter
|
Ronald Reagan and the 1980s
4408 Political Science, 44 Human Society
Introduction: Reconsidering the 1970s - The 1960s to a disco beat?
January 2008
|
Journal article
|
Journal of Contemporary History
It is tempting to dismiss the 1970s in the United States as an ‘in-between’
decade. After all, the 1970s fell between two momentous decades: between the
swinging sixties and the materialistic eighties; between the liberal Great Society
and the conservative New Right revolution; between Presidents Kennedy and
Johnson and President Reagan; between the civil rights movement and the
religious right; between Vietnam and facing down the Evil Empire; between
landing on the moon and the Star Wars project; between rock ’n’ roll and rap.
Sandwiched between such dynamic eras, the 1970s stand small. The years
that Tom Wolfe famously described as the ‘me decade’ seemed to run out of
gas (literally, in American terminology, with long queues at the petrol pumps).1
This was the decade of Nixon’s Watergate and Carter’s weak leadership, of an
oil crisis and a hostage crisis, of economic stagflation and inner city decay, of
declining voter turnout and increasing pessimism, of a backlash against
bussing and affirmative action, of cringe-worthy blaxploitation movies and a
short-lived disco fad.
'We are taking up where the movement of the 1960s left off': The proliferation and power of African American protest during the 1970s
Democratization and the Disfranchisement of African Americans in the US South during the Late 19th Century
August 2007
|
Journal article
|
Democratization
The disfranchisement of African Americans in the South during the late 19th century highlights the role that mass actors, in this case African Americans, can play as part of the enforcement mechanism to prevent elites from backtracking on democracy. This episode in US history further suggests that for democratic progress to be consolidated, vulnerable groups require sufficient economic and social power to defend their formal rights. Newly emancipated African Americans gained the franchise in 1870. They voted in large numbers for two decades. But at the turn of the century each Southern state introduced disfranchising measures. The article discusses the efforts of Southern political elites to restore the antebellum social and political order, and the reasons the national state failed to intervene to protect the rights of former slaves. Above all, the article explores the nature of African American resistance and its effect on the timing and course of disfranchisement. It also draws attention to the importance of African American resistance by comparing Southern disfranchisement with the little-known cases of attempted disfranchisement of African Americans in the antebellum North and early 20th century Maryland. The article concludes that the relative strength of African Americans in contemporary America makes another rollback of democratic rights unlikely.
De-Centring the South: America's Nationwide White Supremacist Order after Reconstruction
February 2007
|
Journal article
|
Past and Present: A Journal of Historical Studies
A little taste of freedom: The black freedom struggle in Claiborne County, Mississippi.
January 2007
|
Journal article
|
JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY
De-centring the South: America's nationwide white supremacist order after reconstruction
January 2007
|
Journal article
|
PAST & PRESENT
Making the Voting Rights Act
December 2005
|
Chapter
|
The Voting Rights Act: Securing the Ballot
''When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law in 1965, he explained that '[t]his act flows from a clear and simple wrong...Millions of Americans are denied the vote because of their color. This law will ensure them the right to vote. The wrong is one which no American, in his heart, can justify.' ''''Now, in the fortieth anniversary year of its passage, readers can learn about the history, impact, and significance of this landmark event through the dynamic pairing of essays and primary source documents that define CQ Press's Landmark Events in U.S. History Series. The fifth volume in this award-winning collection, The Voting Rights Act, explores the origin, development, and consequences of this landmark legislation, and shows how its legacy continues to shape many aspects of U.S. government and politics.''Eminent scholars who have particular expertise in the subjects addressed write the insightful essays contained in this volume. Following these essays are related primary sources from the late nineteenth century to the present that add a dynamic 'you are there' immediacy to the coverage. Readers will find excerpts from relevant Supreme Court cases, key civil rights speeches and legal documents, and excerpts from speeches, hearings, and other documents related to the Voting Rights Act. Each document includes helpful head notes that give valuable context.''''As with all volumes in the Landmark Events in U.S. History Series, The Voting Rights Act presents a thorough and balanced treatment of a major historical event. The uniquely engaging approach will bring to life the history and significance of the Voting Rights Act for a wide range of library patrons, including high school and college-level students, as well as general readers and researchers looking for coverage of major U.S. events that is as interesting as it is informative.''
Fighting the Government With its Own Propaganda: The Struggle for Racial Equality in the USA During the Second World War
October 2005
|
Chapter
|
Holocaust and the Moving Image: Representations in Film and Television Since 1933
Based on an event held at the Imperial War Museum in 2001, this book is a blend of voices and perspectives - archivists, curators, filmmakers, scholars, and Holocaust survivors.
History
The New American histories
September 2005
|
Journal article
|
Historical Journal
For at least a decade, many American historians have bemoaned the downfall of synthesis in the writing of the history of the United States. A wide variety of subfields has replaced a single national narrative. This fragmentation has been caused in part by methodological changes in the historical profession worldwide, but also because of the collapse of American exceptionalism. However, there are still some distinctly American themes that are interwoven throughout these subfields. These themes include the rise of transnational and regional history as replacements for an exceptional national history, and above all the influence of the American present on the study of the American past.
This article summarizes the apparent fragmentation of the history of the United States before discussing some of the distinctively American themes that remain. The article then focuses in detail on five subfields in modern American history – the new western history, the new history of the segregated South, the cultural turn in Cold War history, and the histories of modern conservatism and modern evangelicalism – to show how these distinctively American themes recur in seemingly disconnected debates.
Deconstructing evangelicalism. Conservative Protestantism in the age of Billy Graham.
January 2005
|
Journal article
|
JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
Beyond Atlanta: The Struggle for Racial Equality in Georgia, 1940-1980
July 2003
|
Book
This sweeping history of the civil rights movement in the South's largest state tells of many Georgias. On one extreme is Atlanta, a metropolitan center of relative black prosperity and training ground of many movement leaders. On another is Albany. A city deep in the "black belt" of the plantation South, it is the site of Martin Luther King Jr.'s greatest civil rights setback. Somewhere in between is yet another Georgia, a Georgia whose communities once constituted hundreds of Jim Crow fiefdoms. In places like "Bad" Baker County near the southern border, or in the relatively moderate town of Rome in the northern hills, black-white relations were as crude or as nuanced as the outlook of the local sheriff.
Beyond Atlanta draws on interviews with almost two hundred people--black and white--who worked for, or actively resisted, the freedom movement. Among the topics Stephen Tuck covers are the absence of consistent support from the movement's national leadership and the frustration and innovation it alternately inspired at the local level. In addition, Tuck reveals friction, along urban-rural and poor-prosperous lines, about movement goals and tactics, and he highlights the often unheralded roles played by African American women, veterans, masons, unions, neighborhood clubs, and local NAACP branches.
Tuck's narrative begins before, and continues after, the well-documented years of direct action protest in the 1960s. Though grounded in local and state matters, it is attuned to such national developments as World War II, the 1954 Brown decision, the Civil Rights Acts of 1964-65, and the growth of the Black Power movement. Perhaps most important, Beyond Atlanta makes clear the exorbitant cost of racial oppression, in terms of hampered economic and social progress, for all Georgians.
History
A passion for justice: J. Waties Waring and civil rights
January 2003
|
Journal article
|
HISTORY
Black Protest During the 1940s: The NAACP in Georgia
January 2001
|
Chapter
|
The Civil Rights Movement Revisited: Critical Perspectives on the Struggle for Racial Equality in the United States
This collection of original essays by both European and American scholars includes close analyses of literature and film, historical studies of significant themes and events from the turn-of-the century to the movement years, and ...