African American Studies Commons^™

Studies On Religion And Recidivism: Focus On Roxbury, Dorchester, And Mattapan, George Walters-Sleyon

Trotter Review

This research article raises the question of whether religion can be considered a viable partner in the reduction of the high rate of recidivism associated with the increasing mass incarceration in the United States. Can sustainable transformation in the life of a prisoner or former prisoner as a result of religious conversion be subjected to evidenced-based practices to derive impartial conclusions about the value of religion in their lives? With a particular focus on three neighborhoods of Boston—Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan—this study examines the relevance of religion and faith-based organizations in lowering the high rate of recidivism associated with incarceration …

The Personal And Family Challenges Of Reentry: Interview With Helen Credle, Kenneth J. Cooper

Trotter Review

For 40 years, Helen Credle has worked with prison inmates and exoffenders in Massachusetts, from inside or outside the state corrections system. The Boston native, who grew up in Roxbury, did not set out to become an advocate for prisoners and their families. Oddly, it was music that first took her inside prison walls and into that role. As director of community services for the New England Conservatory of Music, Credle organized concerts by bluesman B.B. King and balladeer Bobby Womack in state prisons. Her involvement grew deeper when the conservatory’s administrators and faculty members decided to teach inmates to …

Gray Matters Behind Bars, Howard Manly

Trotter Review

Forty years ago, the nation got tough on crime. It is now paying the price as the skyrocketing cost of incarcerating aging inmates is haunting state and federal prison budgets.

Life After Prison: A Different Kind Of Sentence?, A Forum At The Boston Center For The Arts, Andrea J. Cabral, Daniel Cordon, Lyn Levy, Gary Little, Janet Rodriguez

Trotter Review

In September 2012, the Boston Center for the Arts (BCA) hosted a forum on life after prison as part of its series, Dialogue: Social Issues Examined Through the Playwright’s Pen. The forum coincided with performances at the Boston Center for the Arts of The MotherF**ker with the Hat, a play by Stephen Andy Guirgis about prisoner reentry.

Andrea J. Cabral, then sheriff of Suffolk County and secretary of public safety in Massachusetts, moderated the forum in BCA’s Calderwood Pavilion, the same theater where SpeakEasy Stage Company was putting on the play. The four panelists work for nonprofit organizations primarily …

Inside/Outside: A Model For Social Support And Rehabilitation Of Young Black Men, Harold Adams, Castellano Turner

Trotter Review

This paper first identifies some of the most important problems facing incarcerated young black males. Next, we present an historical analysis that pinpoints the War on Drugs as the primary origin of mass incarceration of that group. Then we describe the major consequences for prisoners as well as collateral problems for their families, friends, and communities. We then outline the types of programs created to address these problems. We summarize research that shows the key to solving high recidivism rates is social support during incarceration and after release. We describe in particular a Boston-based organization, the Committee of Friends and …

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 …

Introduction, Barbara Lewis

Trotter Review

What is the political valence of blackness at the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century; has it waxed or waned? Is it headed to greater potency or back into the dark days of the past when complexion determined the worth of character? Major political advances have been achieved nationally in the last ten years, most significantly in the election of the nation’s first African American president. Yet a resistant status quo remains. The push to unseat President Obama is virulent, and it is hard to imagine that all of the motivation to do so is tied only …

From In Lincoln’S Shadow: The 1908 Race Riot In Springfield, Illinois, Roberta Senechal

Trotter Review

“In Lincoln’s Shadow” refers to a powerful and enduring symbolic
connection between the riot and the city’s most famous former resident:
Abraham Lincoln. After the Civil War, northern whites generally assumed
that violence against African Americans was a southern problem—and part
of the South’s moral inferiority. The Springfield riot shattered this assumption.

Oral Histories Of The Springfield, Illinois, Riot Of 1908, Edith Carpenter, Albert Harris, Nathan L. Cohn, Mattie Hale, Sharlottie Carr

Trotter Review

Most daily newspapers published at the turn of the twentieth century carried little news of the lives of African Americans, let alone their perspectives. That was indeed the case with the coverage of dailies in Springfield, Illinois, about the riot of August 1908 in which whites intentionally tracked, harmed, and killed blacks. Thanks to the foresight of oral historians working in the 1970s and the diligence of college librarians in preserving their interviews, a record exists of the varied responses of African-American residents to the violence of the roaming white mob. Some fled. Some hid. Others took up arms to …

The Brownsville, Texas, Disturbance Of 1906 And The Politics Of Justice, Garna L. Christian

Trotter Review

An acrimonious civilian-military conflict reached into the halls of Congress and the White House when residents of Brownsville, Texas accused the First Battalion, 25th Infantry, of attacking the town from Fort Brown around midnight on August 12, 1906, claiming the life of one townsman and injuring two others.

The disputed episode took place against the background of deteriorating racial relations in the state and region, an enhanced selfconfidence of black soldiers following heroic achievements in the Spanish-American War and the Philippine insurrection, and the economic decline of the South Texas town bordering the Rio Grande. Texas, like other southern states, …

Veterans In The Fight For Equal Rights: From The Civil War To Today, Ron E. Armstead

Trotter Review

When a man puts his life at the disposal of the nation, that man has earned the rights of a citizen. So the black man owes it to himself and to his advancement to heed the call of war. That is what Frederick Douglass thought, and he gave voice to that opinion in his last autobiography, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881): “I … urged every man who could to enlist to get an eagle on his button, a musket on his shoulder, and the star-spangled banner over his hand.” History has proven him wrong. black men and black …

African-American Activist Mary Church Terrell And The Brownsville Disturbance, Debra Newman Ham

Trotter Review

Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954) demonstrated the philosophy of calm courage many times in a long life of activism. In the middle of her life, when three companies of African-American soldiers in Brownsville, Texas, were dismissed without honor and without a hearing in 1906, she readily came to their defense. Their dismissals followed a racial disturbance during which one white man was killed and several others wounded in Brownsville. Terrell, at the urging of some African-American leaders, went to see Secretary of War William Howard Taft to request that the action against the black troops be rescinded until they received a …

Commentary, Kenneth J. Cooper

Trotter Review

Barack Obama has made history by dispatching to the dustbin another usage for the tiresome phrase “first black.” As president, he is also going to make the future, both during his term and long after. The country’s racial-ethnic landscape, with its dangerous crevices and sheer mountains, is about to change in monumental ways.

His presence in the White House will promote more interracial dialogue, for one, and for the good of the country. This will not be a small change. The novelist Richard Wright once explained that he chose exile in Paris in the 1940s because he could not have …

The Naacp Is Born (Excerpts From >The Broadax)

Trotter Review

The black press appears not to have anticipated the NAACP would emerge as the nation’s largest and most enduring civil rights organization. The initial meeting on May 30, 1909, of the National Conference on the Status of the American Negro, renamed a year later the NAACP, received indifferent or skeptical treatment in half of the black newspapers whose copies survive. The historic gathering in New York was overshadowed by two other meetings in the same city, of the Tuskegee Negro Conference and the National American Negro Political League, and by President William Howard Taft’s commencement address at Howard University in …

The Houston Mutiny Of 1917, Garna L. Christian

Trotter Review

One of the deadliest race riots in the strife-ridden World War I period, the Houston Mutiny, otherwise known as the Camp Logan riot, resulted in more than twenty deaths and the largest number of executions in the history of the United States military.

The mutiny occurred on the night of August 23, 1917, less than a month after the Third Battalion of the African-American 24th Infantry arrived in Houston, Texas. Companies I, K, L, and M, consisting of 645 enlisted men and seven officers under the command of Col. William Newman, and later Maj. Kneeland S. Snow, drew the assignment …

The Naacp In The Twenty-First Century, Dianne M. Pinderhughes

Trotter Review

“The leadership was overly concerned with recognition from whites, a concern that helped prevent the organization from taking a confrontational stance. The program overly oriented to a middle-class agenda and not nearly strong enough to the kinds of economic issues that mean most to workingclass black people. [And] the organization [was] too centralized.”

These views of the problems of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People are not those of a present-day critic, reflecting on the Association’s recent woes. They were formed by Ella Baker during her years as the NAACP’s assistant field secretary in 1941 and as …

The Racial History Of Juvenile Justice, Geoff K. Ward

Trotter Review

In October 2007, the Boston chapter of the NAACP hosted a roundtable on the Niagara Movement. In honor of the Niagara Movement meeting in Boston in 1907, the NAACP and the Trotter Institute collaborated on a series of events marking the centennial of the gathering Niagara men and women in Boston, the largest of five annual meetings of the Niagara Movement and the first to include women as voting delegates. The roundtable, like the 1907 Niagara Movement meeting, was held in Faneuil Hall. The inclusion of women as full participants in the Niagara Movement speaks to the force and significance …

A Historical Overview Of Poverty Among Blacks In Boston, 1950-1990, Robert C. Hayden

Trotter Review

Like most nineteenth-century residents of Boston, blacks worked hard to maintain their homes and families. Even before the Civil War, both enslaved and free blacks in "freedom's birthplace" worked long and arduous hours. Those who migrated to Boston from the South in the 1800s had come to secure higher wages, mobility, and opportunity for themselves and their families. Boston's black population grew from 2,000 in 1850 to 8,125 in 1890, and to 11,591 by 1900. In 1900, 39 percent of black Bostonians were northern-born (New England, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania), and 53 percent were southern-born.

Residential segregation for …

Race In Feminism: Critiques Of Bodily Self-Determination In Ida B. Wells And Anna Julia Cooper, Stephanie Athey

Trotter Review

If, as Angela Davis has argued, "the last decade of the nineteenth century was a critical moment in the development of modern racism," the same can be said of the development of modern feminism. Late nineteenth-century feminism, like institutional racism, saw "major institutional supports and ideological justifications" take shape across this period. Organizations of American women, both black and white, were shaping political arguments and crafting activist agendas in a post-Reconstruction America increasingly enamored of hereditary science, prone to lynching, and possessed of a virulent nationalism. This essay takes a historical view of "womanhood," bodily self-determination and well-being, concepts now …

The Dream Of Diversity And The Cycle Of Exclusion, Stephanie M. Wildman

Trotter Review

The racial transformation of society envisioned in Martin Luther King's dream has been an emotional and powerful ideal. That vision has gone through its own transformation: it was first described as "integration," then "affirmative action," and then "diversity" and "multiculturalism." As each of these phrases acquired negative connotation from reactionary, conservative backlashes, a new phrase has had to be invented to carry forward that transformative vision. Yet the cycle of exclusion that gives privileges to the dominant cultural status quo continues.

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 …

Religious Institutions And Black Political Activism, Frederick C. Harris

Trotter Review

During the modern Civil Rights Movement religious institutions provided critical organizational resources for protest mobilization. As Aldon Morris' extensive study of the southern Civil Rights Movement noted, the Black Church served as the "organizational hub of Black life," providing the resources that fostered—along with other indigenous groups and institutions—collective protest against a system of white domination in the South.

The Black Church: The 'Cocoon' For The Black 'Butterfly' And The African-American Music Idiom, Hubert Walters

Trotter Review

An interesting phenomenon takes place in the world of nature when the larvae of the Monarch butterfly goes through the period of metamorphosis in the protective cover of the cocoon, and emerges as one of the most beautiful butterflies in North America. This phenomenon seems to be an appropriate metaphor to use in our discussion of the African-American Music Idiom. This idiom was developed and nurtured in the "cocoon" of the Black Church, while undergoing the "metamorphosis" of slavery, second-class citizenship, and segregation and emerge as the beautiful Black musical, "Butterfly," which stands at the very foundation of the only …

Building On A Radical Foundation: The Work Of Theologian Howard Thurman Continues, Stephanie Athey

Trotter Review

Howard Thurman (1900-1981), whose life spanned most of this century, was a prodigious intellect and a pioneering theologian; his persistent effort, especially over the period of 1930s-1960s, to grapple with racism and classism within American Christianity paved the way for intellectual, political and religious leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, including Martin Luther King, Jr. Through his contact with Mahatma Gandhi, Thurman became convinced that African Americans might bring the "unadulterated message of non-violence to all people everywhere." Determined to find a moral and practical method to unite the concerns of the human spirit and the immediate material and social …

The Sacred As The Basis For Human Creativity And Agency In The Black Church, Cheryl Townsend Gilkes

Trotter Review

Religion is, I believe, the most important site for human creativity, innovation, and agency. In the world of the sacred in any social context, one is able to find the widest variety of human constructions of meaning. Indeed, the true understanding of human diversity may be found in the study of religion and the processes through which people sustain and renew their religious organizations and their religious world views. It is important, I think, to apply these new insights to the study of the African-American religious experience. The Black church, or the collective experience of African-American Christians in the United …

The Substance Of Things Hoped For: A Memoir Of African-American Faith By Samuel Dewitt Proctor: A Review Essay, Donald Cunnigen

Trotter Review

The following article is a review of The Substance of Things Hoped For: A Memoir of African-American Faith by Samuel DeWitt Proctor, written by Donald Cunnigen.

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.

Black Immigrant Community Of Washington, D.C.: A Public History Approach, Portia James

Trotter Review

In the Washington, D.C. area contemporary Black community life has been shaped in large part by a pattern of migration and settlement of African Americans from southern states. But international immigration has also made its mark on the local Black community. Today, Washington and its suburbs in Virginia and Maryland are home to significant populations of Black people from Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. This international movement of people has resulted in the broadening of Black community life and the development of a multicultural and multi-ethnic Black population in the area.

Signs, Symbols, And Slave Culture: Representations In Black Thunder, Sandra M. Grayson

Trotter Review

Black Thunder (1936), by Arna Bontemps, is a historical novel that recreates Gabriel Prosser's 1800 slave revolt. This novel is useful in reviewing some of the historical and cultural linkages between Black slaves in the U.S. and African cultures. Thematically, Black Thunder does more than represent Black people's self-assertion through revolt, it also shows their assertion of identity through practicing Atlantic (or western) African traditions, especially those of the Kongo. This is a topic that continues to be significant in light of greater contemporary political and economic linkages between U.S. Blacks and Africans, as well as increasing African immigration into …