African American Studies Commons^™

0875: Mike Jones President Barack Obama Media Collection, 2008-2013, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

This collection is predominantly newspapers from 2008-2011 and magazines from the same time period. Other items include campaign paraphernalia such as a t-shirt, campaign signs (one covered in anti-Obama graffiti), campaign buttons, bumper stickers, and an advertisement for the coverage of the 2008 election by Arizona Daily Star, and VHS recordings of the election, inauguration of President Obama, and President Obama’s first 100 days in office

Review Of Liberia, South Carolina: An African American Appalachian Community, By John M. Coggeshall, Cicero Fain

History Faculty Research

Examining 150 years of history of a small, rural African American community, John M. Coggeshall’s Liberia, South Carolina: An African American Appalachian Community, contributes to recent studies elevating Black Appalachian voices, perspectives, and cultures previously historically elided. Located in Pickens County in the Blue Ridge region of western South Carolina, Liberia, like a lot of rural communities, exists less “as a legally defined entity and more a culturally defined area of recognized neighborly ties.”

Woodson’S Black History Blueprint Laid Out Ideals, Burnis R. Morris

SOJMC Faculty Research

On the eve of Negro History Week in 1938, Carter G. Woodson was lecturing all who would listen about the proper way to celebrate. His stern, sharply-worded message, read now at the start of the 2020 Black History Month, seems like a gift — a study guide — for future generations.

“One of the important things to be done during Negro History Week, beginning on February 6, is to take an inventory of what we have achieved,” Woodson wrote in a newspaper column published in the Norfolk (Virginia) Journal and Guide and other newspapers. “From the past we must learn …

0859: Mr. And Mrs. Paul R. Cooley Sr. Civil Rights Era Newspaper Collection, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

This collection contains six newspapers from West Virginia, Virginia, and New York documenting historic events that occurred during the Civil Rights Movement, specifically during the March on Washington on August 29, 1963 and the events that occurred after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968.

What I’M Reading: Harper Lee’S 2 Novels, Jerome A. Gilbert

President's Research and Writings

Last fall, shortly after it was published, I read Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, and this summer I reread her classic To Kill a Mockingbird. The controversy around Watchman intrigued me. I saw the differences in the books mainly as the change between the perspectives of the young Scout and the adult Scout (aka Jean Louise). Unlike some, I saw the Watchman as an honest book reflecting the complicated reality of white America in the Jim Crow era.

Buffalo Soldier, Deserter, Criminal: The Remarkably Complicated Life Of Charles Ringo, Cicero Fain

History Faculty Research

This case study chronicles the remarkably complicated life of Charles Ringo who served nearly two enlistments as a Buffalo Soldier before deserting and embarking on a life of petty crime. It details his military service, his nomadic occupational life, his marriage, his acquittal of two sets of murders--one of his stepsons in West Virginia, the other of a white married couple in Illinois, and the assistance of white authorities who intervened to save and protect Ringo from the predations of angry mobs and racist courts. It situates Ringo’s exploits within the oppositional/alternative nature of African American working-class life, the failure …

0817: Rikki Miller Collection, 2012-2014, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

This collection consists of research materials gathered by Rikki Miller while doing research on the Colored Orphan's Home and the Barnett Hospital and Nursing School, an African American hospital, in Huntington, West Virginia. Materials are primarily photocopies of articles, photographs, surveys, and reports from various sources. Also included is Miller’s final presentation titled, “Case Study: An Appalachian ‘Black Hospital’”

The African American Experience In Antebellum Cabell County, Virginia/West Virginia, 1810-1865, Cicero Fain

History Faculty Research

Located on the Ohio River in western Virginia, adjacent to southeastern Ohio and eastern Kentucky, antebellum Cabell County lay at the fulcrum of east and west, north and south, freedom and slavery. Possessed of a bountiful countryside—replete with wildlife, timber, pristine streams and creeks, and rich river-bottom soil along the navigable Ohio and Guyandotte rivers—it held great potential for settlers who sought to put down roots. Drawn by its promising location and cheap, arable land, migrants settled in the county in increasing numbers in the early 1800s, and many settlers took their slaves with them. Yet like most counties on …

Early Black Migration And The Post-Emancipation Black Community In Cabell County, West Virginia, 1865-1871, Cicero Fain

History Faculty Research

West Virginia’s formation divided many groups within the new state. Grievances born of secession inflamed questions of taxation, political representation, and constitutional change, and greatly complicated black aspirations during the state’s formative years. Moreover, long-standing attitudes on race and slavery held great sway throughout Appalachia. Thus, the quest by the state’s black residents to achieve the full measure of freedom in the immediate post-Civil War years faced formidable challenges. To meet the mandates for statehood recognition established by President Lincoln, the state’s legislators were forced to rectify a particularly troublesome conundrum: how to grant citizenship to the state’s black residents …

Teaching Texts Materially: The Ends Of Nella Larsen’S Passing, John K. Young

English Faculty Research

The author suggests that attending to the publishing history of Larsen’s novel and the resulting indeterminacy of its ending(s) offers a concrete example of a materially oriented pedagogy that can illuminate the racial politics behind textual production and its relation to particular historical and cultural moments. He suggests that such a pedagogy offers both another way of understanding the textual contingency emphasized in contemporary theory and a way of further opening up questions of textuality and meaning for students.

Toni Morrison, Oprah Winfrey, And Postmodern Popular Audiences, John K. Young

English Faculty Research

In this essay the author examines the "Oprah Effect" on the career of Toni Morrison, who after three appearances on "Oprah's Book Club" has become the most dramatic example of postmodernism's merger between Morrison's canonical status and Winfrey's commercial power has superseded the publishing industry's field of normative whiteness, enabling Morrison to reach a broad, popular audience while being marketed as artistically important.

0690: James Wilson Papers, 1842-1854, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

This collection contains a color copy of a bill of sale (1842) for two slaves and receipt (1854) for one slave, livestock, and other purchases by James Wilson, Cabell Couny, Virginia (now West Virginia) farmer. Individuals mentioned in the collection include Thomas M. Shelton, John M. Rece, and James C. Wilson, Celia (no age listed, 1854 document), Minerva (18 years old?, 1842 document), and Edmund (13 years old, 1854 document).

0691: Carl Burrowes Papers, 1988-1997, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

This collection contains files related to the organization of the West Virginia Black History Conference and the Alliance for the Collection, Preservation, and Dissemination of WV’s Black History, as well as other items related to African American history in West Virginia. Material includes notes on presenters and topics as well as clippings, newsletters, and correspondence. The collection is divided into three series: Series I, Conference Materials; Series II, Additional Black History Material; and Series III, Alliance for the Collection, Preservation, and Dissemination of WV’s Black History.