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Full-Text Articles in African American Studies

Finding A New Home In Harlem: Alice Childress And The Committee For The Negro In The Arts, Judith E. Smith May 2017

Finding A New Home In Harlem: Alice Childress And The Committee For The Negro In The Arts, Judith E. Smith

American Studies Faculty Publication Series

Alice Childress’s performing career in the 1940s was primarily associated with the American Negro Theater, a collectively run professional theater company with a mission to nurture black talent and create compelling theater for Harlem audiences; as Childress would later comment, “We thought we were Harlem’s theater.” ANT made use of all available resources to accomplish this mission; producing plays written by black and white playwrights, hiring white teachers, and accepting white actors and technicians committed to its goals.


Civil Rights Gone Wrong: Racial Nostalgia, Historical Memory, And The Boston Busing Crisis In Contemporary Children’S Literature, Lynnell L. Thomas Jan 2017

Civil Rights Gone Wrong: Racial Nostalgia, Historical Memory, And The Boston Busing Crisis In Contemporary Children’S Literature, Lynnell L. Thomas

American Studies Faculty Publication Series

On May 14, 2014, three white Boston city councilors refused to vote to approve a resolution honoring the sixtieth anniversary of Brown v. the Board of Education because, as one remarked, “I didn’t want to get into a debate regarding forced busing in Boston.” Against the recent national proliferation of celebrations of civil rights milestones and legislation, the controversy surrounding the fortieth anniversary of the court decision that mandated busing to desegregate Boston public schools speaks volumes about the historical memory of Boston’s civil rights movement. Two highly acclaimed contemporary works of children’s literature set during or inspired by Boston’s …