African American Studies Commons^™

The Integration Of African Americans In The Civilian Conservation Corps In Massachusetts, Caitlin E. Pinkham

Graduate Masters Theses

The Civilian Conservation Corps employed young white and black men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. In 1935 Robert Fechner, the Director of the Civilian Conservation Corps, ordered the segregation of Corps camps across the country. Massachusetts’ camps remained integrated due in large part to low funding and a small African American population. The experiences of Massachusetts’ African American population present a new general narrative of the Civilian Conservation Corps. The Federal government imposed a three percent African American quota, ensuring that African Americans participated in Massachusetts as the Civilian Conservation Corps expanded. This quota represents a Federal acknowledgement …

The Emancipated Century: A Staged Reading Series, Robert Lublin, Clifford Odle, Barbara Lewis

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

A coordinated series of dramatic staged readings of the plays of August Wilson in theatres throughout greater Boston. This project aims to pay tribute to the 150th anniversary of the Emancipated Proclamation with a full presentation of August Wilson’s monumental 10-play cycle on African American life in each decade of the twentieth century. The accompanying Re-Visioning Tomorrow Forums explored ongoing themes in urban communities.

Stop And Frisk: From Slave-Catchers To Nypd, A Legal Commentary, Gloria J. Browne-Marshall

Trotter Review

Today’s “stop and frisk” practices stem from centuries of legal control of Africans in America. Colonial laws were drafted specifically to control Africans, enslaved and free. Slave catchers culled the woods in search of those Africans who dared escape. After slavery ended, “Black Codes” or criminal laws were enacted to ensnare African Americans, including the sinister convict-lease system that existed well into the twentieth century. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled to extend police authority to stop and frisk during the Civil Rights Movement.

Police abuse of stop and frisk has led to tens of millions of people detained and searched …

Black Church Politics And The Million Man March, William E. Nelson Jr.

Trotter Review

October 16, 1995 will be recorded as one of the most important days in the political history of African Americans in the United States. This day witnessed the largest mass political demonstration in the history of this nation—the assemblage of more than 1.2 million African-American men in Washington, D.C. under the banner of the Million Man March. Both the size and the overt political objectives of the march set it firmly apart from the pallid, feeble demonstrations in Washington led by the NAACP in the 1980s; in its size and character, the march echoed the focus on power and system …

The Church And Negro Progress, George E. Haynes

Trotter Review

The marked progress of the Negro in America in which the church has been a factor has been of three general types. The first is intra-group advancement in such phases of life as education and wealth. The second is inter-group adjustments between the Negro population and the white population in such matters as economic relationships, citizenship rights and privileges, interracial contacts and fellowship. There is a third type of progress which touches both the internal and external life of the Negro group such as the cultural contributions of Negroes which have gradually been incorporated into our common life. There are, …

Burning Hate: The Torching Of Black Churches, Salim Muwakkil

Trotter Review

Nearly 100 predominantly Black churches have been torched since 1990, their congregations forced to watch in horror as the very centers of their communities were consumed by the flames of racial hatred. Americans of all races have recoiled in shock—and often with genuine shame—as the attacks have escalated in past months. But despite President Clinton's call for interracial solidarity and the belated appeals of white evangelical Christian leaders for racial reconciliation, many African Americans are left wondering whether white America grasps the meaning and significance of this reign of terror.

Revisiting The Question Of Reparations, James Jennings

Trotter Review

Recent congressional action to award Japanese Americans "reparations" for their internment during World War II, as well as the Florida state legislature's act to award $150,000 to black survivors of a white riot rampage of Rosewood, a black town, in 1923, has contributed to a re-emergence of the call for black reparations. Several black state and local politicians and leaders across the United States have called for legislative action that would compensate blacks for three and one half centuries of racial enslavement. The awarding of reparations to Japanese Americans is not the only precedent for indemnity to a group of …

The African-American Business Tradition In Boston, Robert C. Hayden

Trotter Review

African Americans in Boston have been exhibiting their interest and talents in business for a long time. Those in business today are continuing a tradition that goes back to the African culture of preslavery days. Enslaved Africans who were brought to America came from a business tradition, from a culture of great traders, merchants, and craftsmen. Many enslaved blacks, in fact, purchased their freedom by marketing their skilled services and handmade products.

African Americans And The Persian Gulf Crisis, Jacquelin Howard-Matthews

Trotter Review

This article addresses two issues: the African-American response to United States involvement in the 1990-91 Persian Gulf war and interrelated factors explaining the nature of that response. Despite the historical symbolism associated with African-American participation and disproportionate representation in the military, African Americans composed the most consistently identifiable strata either opposed to or suspicious of the deployment of U.S. troops and military equipment in the Gulf. The pattern of African-American response to the Gulf War is remarkably similar to its underlying reactions to military conflicts taking place in the recent past, including the Vietnam War and Laos invasion of the …

Stratification And Subordination: Change And Continuity In Race Relations, E. Yvonne Moss, Wornie L. Reed

Trotter Review

One of the measures used to gauge progress made by African-Americans in gaining equal opportunity has been to compare and contrast the status of black Americans to that of white Americans using various social indices. Historically, the status of blacks relative to whites has been one of subordination; race has been a primary factor in determining social stratification and political status. Relations between white and black Americans were established during slavery and the Jim Crow era of segregation. In the infamous Dred Scott (1856) decison, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Taney articulated the fundamental nature of this system of racial …

Tri-Racial Enculturation: Red, White, And Black In The South, Rhett S. Jones

Trotter Review

In an essay published in The Western Journal of Black Studies (1977) I pointed out that while for many years the study of relations between blacks and Native Americans had been neglected by historians and other scholars, recent studies had acknowledged that red folk and black often influenced one another. What I did not point out was that, for the United States. studies of tri-racial contact were almost nonexistent. Things were quite different in studies of Latin America where the realities of social and sexual contact among all three races were reflected not only in works by historians but in …

Black New England: Building On The Work Of Lorenzo Johnston Greene, Rhett S. Jones

Trotter Review

With the death this spring of Dr. Lorenzo J. Greene, Professor Emeritus of History at Lincoln University (Missouri), historians of blacks in New England have lost one of their pioneers, a man who continued to support the scholarly study of Afro-Americans in the region throughout his life. Dr. Greene, who was 89 at his death, was best known as the author of The Negro in Colonial New England, 1620-1776 (1942). Benjamin Quarles wrote of the book, “To it we are indebted for three things, if not more—for filling a gap in the literature of American colonial history, for portraying a …