African American Studies Commons^™

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

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 …

Introduction: Lynching, Incarceration’S Cousin: From Till To Trayvon, Barbara Lewis

Trotter Review

The wholesale criminalizing of the black male has been much in the news, put there by the Trayvon Martin case and the Florida verdict. (Incidentally, even though we don’t often think of it, Florida was where the first African slaves were installed in America, back in the 1500s in the city of St. Augustine.) As an academic, which, loosely translated means that I often bury my head between the covers of a book trying to figure out one thing or another, I am thought of as someone who is cautious and circumspect in what I think and write, but I …

Spirituality As A Viable Resource In Responding To Racial Microaggressions: An Exploratory Study Of Black Males Who Attended A Community College, Lloyd Sheldon Johnson

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

Upon entering college, Black males must negotiate a system that assumes they are in need of academic remediation and are lacking in higher-order critical thinking skills (Washington, 1996; Brown II, 2002; Harper, 2012). The low enrollment levels of Black males in college and their disenchantment with their college experiences has increased the likelihood that they will not be in classrooms with a diverse student population and a climate where they could feel comfortable (NSSE, 2008; Harper, 2006A; Harper, 2012). Black males who have enrolled in college must shoulder the stresses that accompany perceptions and stereotypes on campus about who they …

Meanings And Typologies Of Duboisian Double Consciousness Within 20th Century United States Racial Dynamics, Marc E. Black

Graduate Masters Theses

Americans still have more work ahead before we can come together and laugh together as a race-conscious people. This thesis is about the sad and painful work we need to do so we can heal and rejoice as a truly free and equal partnership of all our various communities. To tie ourselves together through and after our healing of our racial conflicts, we will share a special intimacy, a human connection, where our shared culture, our partnership, (overlapping with our primary cultures) includes our high proficiency at understanding how we appear to each other. This new cultural understanding and partnership …

'People Want To See What Happened': Treme, Televisual Tourism, And The Racial Remapping Of Post-Katrina New Orleans, Lynnell L. Thomas

American Studies Faculty Publication Series

Occupying the space between cultural reproduction and theatrical production, the HBO series Treme offers an important vantage point from which to analyze the intersection of race, class, culture, and media representation animating New Orleans’s post-Katrina tourist identity. Treme illustrates the tension between the welcome recognition and celebration of New Orleans black expressive culture and its spectacularization and commodification. The resuscitation of tourist tropes and an emphasis on jazz and heritage music in the series often render the city’s history of racial conflict and injustice invisible or subordinate to new narratives of cross-racial unity among Katrina survivors and paternalistic actions by …

Civil Rights, Labor, And Sexual Politics On Screen In Nothing But A Man (1964), Judith E. Smith

American Studies Faculty Publication Series

The independently made 1964 film Nothing But a Man is one of a handful of films whose production coincided with the civil rights insurgency and benefited from input from activists. Commonly listed in 1970s surveys of black film, the film lacks sustained critical attention in film studies or in-depth historical analysis given its significance as a landmark text of the 1960s. Documentary-like, but not a documentary, it offers a complex representation of black life, but it was scripted, directed, and filmed by two white men, Michael Roemer and Robert Young.

This essay argues that the film’s unusual attention to labor …

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 …

Governor Deval Patrick And The Representation Of Massachusetts’ Black Interests, Ravi K. Perry

Trotter Review

This article examines the rhetorical strategies and legislative initiatives of Deval Patrick and his efforts to represent black interests in Massachusetts. Utilizing speech content analysis, census data, interview data, and archives of executive and legislative actions, the article identifies that Massachusetts’ only black governor has been able to advance policies and programs designed to represent black interests. The results indicate that when black interest policy actions are framed utilizing a targeted universalistic rhetorical strategy, Patrick advanced black interests as he detailed how his proposed initiatives benefited all citizens. At the state level, the finding exposes the limits of the deracialization …

Considered A Foreign Policy Neophyte, Barack Obama Emerges As One Of The Nation’S Most Competent Commanders In Chief, Howard Manly

Trotter Review

During the 2008 presidential campaign, the main criticism against Barack Obama was that he was too green to lead America’s foreign policy and military.

It was a charge that Republican conservatives made against Democratic candidates with predictable frequency and had become a proven winning strategy after Ronald Reagan steamrolled perceived military bumbler Jimmy Carter in 1980. Conventional wisdom suggested that strategy would work even better against Obama.

In a move that foreshadowed his military decision-making, Obama authorized within the first four months of his administration the military rescue of Richard Phillips, the American sea captain taken hostage by pirates in …

Denver And Boston: Why One City Elects Black Mayors And The Other Has Not, Kenneth J. Cooper

Trotter Review

Denver’s population is only 10 percent black, and has never been above 12 percent in any Census, yet in July 2011 the city elected a black mayor. Michael Hancock, a former city councilman, is actually the second African-American mayor of Denver. Wellington Webb served the limit of three terms through 2003. Three of the city’s last four mayors have been of color. Federico Peña, a Mexican American, became the first in 1983.

At 24 percent, Boston’s black population is twice as large as Denver’s and has been so throughout the three decades during which Denver has sent two African Americans …

The Failure Of The Free World: Anarchy In Uncle Tom’S Cabin, Andy Cerrone

Interdisciplinary Perspectives: a Graduate Student Research Showcase

Harriett Beecher Stowe is often identified as an advocate for Christianity, woman's suffrage, autonomy, and the abolishment of slavery.  However, inviting the reader to view her work through an anarchist lens, her magnum opus—Uncle Tom’s Cabin— offers the reader the opportunity to reconstruct her politics with immense implication.  Critics regard Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as a sermon devised with the intention to inflate the nation with the righteous spirit of God, offering to the reader the opportunity to partake in the message of her religious vision.  While Stowe's absolute faith in her Christian profile of God is present, she invariably …

Beef, Mutton, Pork, And A Taste Of Turtle: Zooarchaeology And Nineteenth-Century African American Foodways At The Boston-Higginbotham House, Nantucket, Massachusetts, Michael Andrew Way

Graduate Masters Theses

In 1774, nearly ten years before slavery was abolished in Massachusetts, an emancipated African American weaver named Seneca Boston purchased a tract of land in the Newtown section of Nantucket, Massachusetts. It is here that over the next thirty years Seneca Boston and his Wampanoag wife, Thankful Micah, would build a house, now known as the Boston-Higginbotham House, and raise six children. The Boston-Higginbotham House was home to the descendents of Seneca Boston and Thankful Micah for over one hundred years. Throughout the 19th century a vibrant and active African American community was developing in Newtown, and several generations of …

Introduction, Barbara Lewis Ph.D.

Trotter Review

Introduction to Trotter Review Volume 19, Number 1 (Winter/Spring 2010) by Barbara Lewis, Ph.D., Director, Trotter Review.

Commentary, Kenneth J. Cooper

Trotter Review

It’s an explanation often heard around Boston. Why hasn’t the city ever elected a black mayor? Because the black community is “too small.” Why can’t the community sustain an FM radio station? And why does it have difficulty keeping afloat a weekly newspaper, even a soul food restaurant? Again, the answer comes: the community is too small. The irreconcilable flaw of this line of reasoning is exposed when it is expanded to the whole country. Black mayors have been elected in any number of cities with smaller black populations, proportionally, than the 25 percent in Boston—Los Angeles, San Francisco, and …

Forgotten Migrations From The United States To Hispaniola, Ryan Mann-Hamilton

Trotter Review

At the first Hamilton family reunion, held in Samaná, Dominican Republic, in 2002, I took the opportunity to question my aunts and uncles about our family’s history and to share the story of our migration to the town with the mass of youngsters gathered for the event. Most of my cousins were amazed by the intricate details of movement, displacement, and transformation because they had never heard these stories before. The reaction that stood out came from a younger cousin brought up in Brooklyn. With a disconcerted look, he asked innocently, “So we’re black?” It had never dawned upon him, …

The State Of Black Boston: A Select Demographic And Community Profile, James Jennings

William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications

This research report provides an overview of select social, demographic, and economic characteristics and trends associated with Boston’s Black population. It presents a snapshot of population characteristics associated with Blacks residing in Boston. While policy or programmatic recommendations does not represent the intent of this report, it is hoped that the information and data included can serve as a basis for such dialogues.

The racial categories used in this report include Black, Latino/a, White, and Asian persons. It should be emphasized, however, that these racial categories can include a range of ethnicity and ancestry. There may be differences among ethnic …

'Roots Run Deep Here': The Construction Of Black New Orleans In Post-Katrina Tourism Narratives, Lynnell L. Thomas

American Studies Faculty Publication Series

This article explores the emergent post-Katrina tourism narrative and its ambivalent racialization of the city. Tourism officials are compelled to acknowledge a New Orleans outside the traditional tourist boundaries – primarily black, often poor, and still largely neglected by the city and national governments. On the other hand, tourism promoters do not relinquish (and do not allow tourists to relinquish) the myths of racial exoticism and white supremacist desire for a construction of blacks as artistically talented but socially inferior.

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 …

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, …

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 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 …

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.

Front Matter: Trotter Review, Vol. 18, Issue 1

Trotter Review

Front Matter for Trotter Review, Vol. 18, Issue 1

Her Thirteen Black Soldiers, Archibald H. Grimké

Trotter Review

This poem was first published in 1919 in The Messenger, a monthly magazine
founded and coedited by black labor leader A. Philip Randolph.