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Full-Text Articles in African American Studies

Desperate Choices: Why Black Women Join The U.S. Military At Higher Rates Than Men And All Other Racial And Ethnic Groups, Julia Melin Feb 2016

Desperate Choices: Why Black Women Join The U.S. Military At Higher Rates Than Men And All Other Racial And Ethnic Groups, Julia Melin

New England Journal of Public Policy

The enlistment of black women in the U.S. military has been a persistent and growing demographic trend over the past three decades. Black women now constitute nearly one-third of all women in the U.S. military. At around 30 percent, this number is twice their representation in the civilian population and higher than that of men or women of any other racial or ethnic group. This article analyzes the changing economic, social, and political landscape in the United States to identify what has motivated this cohort to enlist at such high rates. Based on this analysis, a case can be made …


Unhealed Cultural Memories: Styron’S Nat Turner, Shaun O'Connell Feb 2016

Unhealed Cultural Memories: Styron’S Nat Turner, Shaun O'Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner, a novel about the leader of a slave rebellion in Virginia in 1831, was highly praised after its publication in 1967. Then African American essayists in William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond took issue with the novel and rejected Styron’s asserted right to reimagine Nat Turner’s life and to assume his voice, claiming their rights of racial heritage and historical accuracy to castigate Styron for his offensive presumption. That distant argument of unshared assumptions and crossed purposes between high-minded and hypersensitive artists and intellectuals of another day may throw refracted …


Black Women In Durham Politics, 1950-1996: From Grassroots To Electoral Politics, Grace Walton Mar 2000

Black Women In Durham Politics, 1950-1996: From Grassroots To Electoral Politics, Grace Walton

New England Journal of Public Policy

Based on the author's senior thesis in African-American history; this article about black women by a black woman was conceived to educate Americans about a different kind of history. It illustrates the silent political struggles of black women in Durham, North Carolina, and their gradual acceptance into American politics from 1950 to 1996. The oral history design demonstrates that black women's political activity underwent a transformation from grassroots politics to full electoral participation, which brought them to the forefront of Durham politics. Through both types of political activity, the unique political consciousness of black women continues to have a great …


Teaching African-American Children: The Legacy Of Slavery, Harold Horton Jun 1994

Teaching African-American Children: The Legacy Of Slavery, Harold Horton

New England Journal of Public Policy

The pathetic state of urban public school education offered to African-American children stems from slavery, when it was against the law to educate slaves, who were regarded as chattel. This article traces the history of the blighting of their minds by stripping those slaves of their African culture, and its effect on African-American children, as well as other children of color, today. Horton offers suggestions for coping with the problems of modern schools as related to respecting and teaching these children, pointing out that the system is the problem, not the children.