African American Studies Commons^™

Mills, Gloria Smalls, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Mrs. Gloria Smalls Mills is a lifelong resident of the Bronx, first living in Morrisiania. Her grandparents were immigrants from Antigua and moved to Dawson Street in the Bronx. Her mother graduated High School in the 1930’s from James Monroe High School and never worked before she got married and had children. Her father is from Charleston, South Carolina.

A few years later, her family moved to Kelly Street. There were many Italians and Jewish people living in her building. However, once more African-Americans began moving into the neighborhood, they whites began leaving. Also, there was an unspoken segregation among …

This Column Began Last Month With A Hopeful Call For Our Community To Energize And Understand That Black Votes Matter, Preston Love Jr.

Black Studies Faculty Publications

This column began last month with a hopeful call for our community to energize and understand that Black Votes Matter. We have celebrated the 50th anniversary of the important 1965 Voting Rights Act and the one-year anniversary of the tragedy of Ferguson, Mo which includes a total lack of voter recognition that Black Votes Matter in a city with 67% Black population.

Jones, Geraldine, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewer: Mark Naison

Interviewee: Geraldine Jones

Summarized By: Eddie Mikus

Geraldine Jones is a Bronx community activist who resided in the borough since the Morrisania burnouts. Her involvement in community affairs began as a direct result of the burnouts. Therefore, her story depicts a struggle that was all too common amongst African-American Bronx residents during the 1960s.

Jones’ first adverse experience living in the Bronx came during the Tremont blackout of 1977. She recalls that she had been partying with some friends of hers, and that her building was looted as a direct result of the blackout.. Furthermore, she recalls …

Johnson, Olga, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewee: Ms. Olga Johnson

Interviewer: Dr. Mark Naison

Summarized by Alice Stryker

Olga Johnson is a long time resident of the Bronx and mother to the Bronx Attorney Robert Johnson. She moved to the Bronx with her family when she was younger fromManhattan. Her parents were originally from theWest Indies. They moved to many different apartment buildings when she was growing up. Close to the time she graduated high school, her family moved into a private home onJackson Avenue. She remembers this being a safe neighborhood. Her father was an elevator operator and her mother was a seamstress and a …

“Bound To Them By A Common Sorrow”: African American Women, Higher Education, And Collective Advancement, Linda M. Perkins

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

This essay examines African American women’s access to higher education in the United States before and after the founding of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) in 1915. The efforts of leading educated African American women to ensure their sisters were provided more educational opportunities will be examined, as well as their roles in the leadership of African American higher education. Utilizing the black feminist theory of intersectionality focusing on race, gender, and class, the emphasis in this essay is on the purposes and the types of secondary and higher education African American women obtained …

Who Can Afford To Improvise? James Baldwin And Black Music, The Lyric And The Listeners [Table Of Contents], Ed Pavlic

Literature

More than a quarter-century after his death, James Baldwin remains an unparalleled figure in American literature and African American cultural politics. In Who Can Afford to Improvise? Ed Pavlić offers an unconventional, lyrical, and accessible meditation on the life, writings, and legacy of James Baldwin and their relationship to the lyric tradition in black music, from gospel and blues to jazz and R&B. Based on unprecedented access to private correspondence, unpublished manuscripts and attuned to a musically inclined poet’s skill in close listening, Who Can Afford to Improvise? frames a new narrative of James Baldwin’s work and life.

The route …

Introduction: The 1970s, Shelly J. Eversley, Michelle Habell-Pallán

Publications and Research

Introduction to special issue, "The 1970s," of WSQ (Women's Studies Quarterly), edited by Shelly Eversley and Michelle Habell-Pallán.

The Understanding Of A Single Story: Identities Amongst Black Students At Predominately White Institutions, Jonathan A. Franklin

Student Scholarship

This paper examines the structure of identities amongst Black students at predominately white institutions – particularly focusing on Wofford College. Extensive focus groups were conducted with members of the Black student body to further progress research. Racism regarding Black students and their social identity in addition to how it has structured the social identity amongst students are introduced in along with the identities of students on Wofford’s campus. Discrimination on campus has had the effect of narrowing Black students’ options for creating social identity and participating in campus community life. Black students regularly face a very confining choice to either …

Hanson, Avis Interview 2, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewee: Avis Hanson 2^nd Interview

Interviewer: Dr. Mark Naison, Natasha Lightfoot, Patricia Wright

Summarized by Alice Stryker

She begins by talking about her West Indian heritage. Her mother came from Antigua and her father came from Jamaica. Her mother and father met in New York City and got married shortly there after. The family moved to the Bronx, which she discussed in the first interview. When Avis was young, her mother sent for her aunt to live with them. However, they did not have good relations with the rest of her extended family. Her father’s Jamaican family did not …

Gumbs, Robert Interview 1, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewer: Mark Naison

Interviewee: Robert Gumbs

Summarized By: Eddie Mikus

Robert Gumbs is a resident of the Bronx who grew up in the Morrisania neighborhood. During his life, he has experienced many significant social changes that have occurred in the borough.

Gumbs was born in 1941 on Union Avenue, with his parents relocating to Lyman Place after a doctor suggested that there was cleaner air there. For his schooling, Gumbs attended PS 54, PS 40 for junior high, and the School of Industrial Art for high school. In his early childhood, Gumbs said that the vast majority of his neighborhood …

Dukes, Nathan, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

In the interview granted by Nathan Dukes to AAHP, the interviewee discusses the community life style in the Patterson Houses during 50s, social issues such as drugs, numbers runners, religion, racism within the African American community in Patterson Houses.

In the first part of the interview, Nathan Dukes talked about the closely relationship of all families living in Paterson Houses and the kind of economy that the community was involved at the specific time he covered all the occupations that young people, fathers, and mothers that were tenants of the Paterson Houses were involved. According to him, while the kids …

Fox, Hetty, Bronx African American History Project, Mark Naison

Oral Histories

Interviewee: Hetty Fox

Interviewers: Mark Naison, Richard Richardson, Mark C. Smith

Date Of Interview: N/A

Summarized By: Eddie Mikus

Hetty Fox is a former professor who spent much of her youth in the Bronx. As a resident of the borough, she has witnessed many of the social changes that have taken place over the past few decades.

Fox was born in Harlem, but moved to the Bronx at the age of 3. Her family was the first African-American family to reside on the block where she lived. As a child, Fox started school at P.S. 54, but eventually transferred to …

Evans, Howie, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Howie Evans is a sportswriter and basketball coach who grew up in the Bronx. As a resident of the borough, he has witnessed the effects of racially-based communities. However, his story also depicts the role that basketball has played in the Bronx African-American community.

During his childhood, Evans lived in the Hunts Point neighborhood in buildings where his father served as a superintended. In the early years of his life, Evans said that he played on a regular basis with white children; however, these interracial friendships often broke down by the time he reached adolescence. Additionally, he also said that …

The "Unfinished Work:" The Civil War Centennial And The Civil Rights Movement, Megan A. Sutter

Student Publications

The Civil War Centennial celebrations fell short of a great opportunity in which Americans could reflect on the legacy of the Civil War through the racial crisis erupting in their nation. Different groups exploited the Centennial for their own purposes, but only the African Americans and civil rights activists tried to emphasize the importance of emancipation and slavery to the memory of the war. Southerners asserted states’ rights in resistance to what they saw as a black rebellion in their area. Northerners reflected back on the theme of reconciliation, prevalent in the seventy-fifth anniversary of the war. Unfortunately, those who …

Residential Segregation In Norfolk, Virginia: How The Federal Government Reinforced Racial Division In A Southern City, 1914-1959, Kevin Lang Ringelstein

History Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines how Norfolk, Virginia maintained residential segregation between the years 1914, when the city passed its first segregation ordinance, and 1959, when it received the All-America City Award for its massive slum clearance projects. By focusing on federal government initiatives in Norfolk, it shows that Norfolk’s leaders used the federal government’s assistance to map, analyze, and remove the city’s African American slums. Ultimately, it highlights the central role the federal government played in perpetuating residential segregation in Norfolk and how it opened a space for Norfolk’s leaders to act on their prejudice.

This thesis demonstrates that in the …

The Black Church : Responding To The Drug-Related Mass Incarceration Of Young Black Males : "If You Had Been Here My Brother Would Not Have Died!", Sharon E. Moore, A. Christson Adedoyin, Michael A. Robinson, Daniel A. Boamah

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

The mass incarceration of young Black males for drug-related offences is a social issue that has broad implications. Some scholars have described this as a new form of racism that needs to be addressed through the concerted effort of various institutions, including the Black Church. In this paper the authors will elucidate the past and current roles of the Black Church, discuss the utilization of the social work Theory of Empowerment and Black Church theology to address the disproportionality of drug-related mass incarceration of young Black males, focus on initiatives undertaken by the Black Church to address this issue and …

The Heterotopia Of Flight: Resisting The Domestic, Sarah Elizabeth Davis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The familiar image of a woman fleeing danger is a well-worn convention of heroine-centered fiction, a plot device inevitably resolved when the heroine returns safely to her home and family. This dissertation proposes a new reading of that narrative by asserting that rather than serving as a space of protection, the home poses the greatest threat to an individual's autonomy. If we understand the domestic as a space in which bodies are ordered and, more specifically, gendered, classed, and raced, the trope of flight from the domestic can be read as an act of resistance to subjugation. This act is …

"The Planet Is The Way It Is Because Of The Scheme Of Words": Sun Ra And The Performance Of Reckoning, Maryam Ivette Parhizkar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This constellatory essay is a study of the African American sound experimentalist, thinker and self-proclaimed extraterrestrial Sun Ra (1914-1993) through samplings of his wide, interdisciplinary archive: photographs, film excerpts, selected recordings, and various interviews and anecdotes. In composing this essay, I particularly consider how these fragments resonate against each other, offering insight into how Ra radically subverts the restraints imposed upon him as a black man in the United States and thus transfigures his racial alienness into a liberatory, literally alien performance. This self-transfiguration allows Ra to transform such impossible restraints into a condition of possibility for reckoning. I …

More Than A Game: The Legacy Of Black Baseball, Tara Moriarty

Kaleidoscope

Out of a segregated and persecuted black society, the Negro Leagues arose to provide a form of business, entertainment, and charity. The leagues served as a form of uplift within the race and as a tool to bring blacks together within their communities. In 1945, with the signing of Jackie Robinson to Montreal, baseball became a vehicle for integration. While Robinson broke the color line in professional baseball, he simultaneously broke the Negro Leagues. Black fans abandoned black baseball and turned to the Major Leagues to watch Robinson. Although the integration of baseball was the first major victory for integration …

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 91, No. 11, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news.

• Harney, Lashana. Enrollment Numbers Drop 0.2 Percent - Registrar
• Henderson, Andrew. Board of Regents Committees Hold September Meeting
• Wright, Samantha. Board of Regents Committee Approves New Physical Therapy Department – Curriculum
• Mayo, Marcel. MajorRedz to Host First Ever Talent Show
• Shaffer, Hannah. Cigarette Butts Pose Beautification Problem on Campus – Smoking, Tobacco
• Freeman, Shane. The Green Inferno – Movie Review
• Editorial Cartoon Lips are Sealed on Sexual Assault
• Lips Sealed: WKU’s Response to Sexual Assault Needs to Change
• Hardin, Scout. Dressing to Impress: First Date Do’s & Don’ts for …

Norman, Gene, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Gene Norman’s family first moved to Clairemount Parkway and Third Avenue in the Bronx. He was an only child and his father was not living with him. His mother worked as a housemaid and later as a nurse. The neighborhood was predominately African-American and he attended PS 23 and PS 9. These grade schools had tracked ability levels, which were determined by standardized testing. He was always in the “1” classes and noticed that there were significantly less African-Americans in those classes. He attended Junior High School 52 and noticed a change in the makeup of the student body. Students …

Orange, Joseph, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Joseph Orange’s family moved to the Bronx in 1941 from Harlem, he is the youngest of 8. Orange grew up in the Morrissina section. Orange explained that the Bronx represented upward mobility to many African Americans at the time.

There were a number of musicians in his family. Orange’s uncle, J.C Higgenbotham was a popular trombone player in the 30’s and 40’s. He went on to play with Louis Armstrong and other famous jazz musicians. Orange was surrounded by music growing up. Neighbors would play music that could be heard on the street. Music stores would play music out the …

Payne, Patricia And Russell, Marilyn, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Patricia Payne and Marilyn Russell are both college professors who grew up in the Patterson Houses – a housing project. As a child in the 1950s, Marilyn moved there from Harlem with her family: her mother, a stay-at-home mom, her father, a shipping clerk, and her siblings. Her parents were from the South, and she recalls the housing projects as very safe and clean, as well as very diverse.

Both Marilyn remember attending after school programs at their public schools, being supervised by tutors of the same sex, as well as having librarians read to children at the library. Meanwhile, …

Pita, Dorothy, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Dr. Dorothy Pita was born and raised in the Bronx. She worked as a teacher in the South Bronx starting in 1950 at PS39 and later at PS18. She mostly taught Latino and African American kindergarten students of low-income. She remembers parents not being involved in their children’s education, but the students were also well-dressed and not malnourished

While she was a teacher, the Patterson Houses and other housing projects opened, and at the time it was seen in a positive light. The school had after school programs as well, and throughout the 50s she doesn’t recall any racial tensions, …

Ua12/2/1 Topper Extra, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

Special edition of the College Heights Herald featuring football:

• Rutledge, Billy. D’Andre Ferby Steps Into Starring Role for Hilltopper Offense
• Rutledge, Billy. Hilltoppers With Higher Aspirations for Second Conference USA Year
• Phillips, Jonah. Hilltoppers Will Look to Rebound Against 1-2 Miami

Crier, Arthur, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

Interviewee: Arthur Crier

Interviewer: Mark Naison

Summarized by Concetta Gleason

Crier is an organizer of the Morissania Review and a leading figure in Doo-Wop and Rhythm and Blues in the Morrisania community. Crier was born in 1935 in Harlem, but raised on Prospect Ave in the Bronx. His mother was from the South, specifically North Carolina, which is where he currently resides. He attended a mixed elementary school and also played street games with the other children on the block. The schools were very good and teachers genuinely cared for their students. The neighborhood was safe and the families looked …

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 91, No. 10, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news.

• Hederson, Andrew & Samantha Wright. Gary Ransdell Offers Insight Into Confucius Institute
• Sullivan, Tommy. Pearce-Ford Tower Loses Nine Resident Assistants – Housing & Residence Life
• Wright, Samantha. Faculty, Staff Salaries Could See A Boost Soon – Budget
• Mayo, Marcel. Student Government Association Disapproves Confucius Institute Building Process
• Henderson, Andrew. U.S. Bancorp CEO Lectures Students on Leadership – Richard Davis
• Henderson, Andrew. Housing & Residence Life Director Steve Briggs Resigns
• Pettway, Shantel. Student Presents Research at Atlanta Conference – Marcus Stubbs, Association for the Study of African American Life & …

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 91, No. 9, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news.

• Sullivan, Tommy. Event Kicks Off Campus Fire Safety Month – Environmental Health & Safety
• Shaffer, Hannah. Forensics Team Hosts Season Opener
• Wright, Samantha. WKU Recognized for Campus Landscape – National Wildlife Federation
• Brown, Monica. WKU Offers Nursing Program on Farmers’ Health – Agriculture
• Shaffer, Hannah. Student Government Association Delays Contract With Transport Company Uber
• Henderson, Andrew. Gary Ransdell Addresses University Senate Meeting
• Crowe, Shawn. Letter to the Editor – Campus Landscape
• King, Jennifer. Editorial Cartoon Black Lives Matter
• Black Lives Matter Kept Alive at WKU
• Hardin, Scout. New York …

Burbridge, Richard And Doris Interview 2, Bronx African American History Project

Oral Histories

INTERVIEWER: Mark Naison, Natasha Lightfoot, Brian Purnell

INTERVIEWEE: Richard Burbridge, Doris Burbridge

SUMMARY BY: Patrick O’Donnell

Richard and Doris Burbridge conduct genealogical research in order to find out more about their respective families’ history. Richard’s mother was from New Orleans and his father was from Biloxi, Mississippi. The couple met in Biloxi, and moved to New York, where Richard and his two siblings were born. Upon taking a genealogy class at the Queens Public Library in 1992, Richard decided to conduct some research on his own roots. He soon found out that his family also had roots in Kentucky: his …

Pruitt, James - Interview 10, Bronx African American History Project, Mark Naison

Oral Histories

Interviewee: Jim Pruitt

Interviewer: Mark Naison

No Date of Interview

Summarized by Alice Stryker

Pruitt’s family moved from Harlem to the Bronx in 1932. Both of his parents were southern and met through his mother’s brother. About 5 years after the couple was married, they moved to Prospect Ave between Home and 168^th street. When they moved to the Bronx, his father was working for the post office and for a tailor as a presser. Many of the Black men living in this neighborhood worked for the post office. Although the family and their neighbors lived in the Bronx, …