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Americans live in a culture resistant to much talk about the evils in their past; they prefer to think about the future. But like the descendants of victims of evil in Germany and South Africa, some living Americans are not about to forget the evil past. Prominent among them are African Americans. This chapter explores the stubborn persistence of racism in America, the work of a growing number of citizens to remember the pains of racism past and present, and to express that memory in public ways. Local illustrations of public repentance include Richmond, Virginia; Rosewood, Florida; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Salem, Oregon; and Selma, Alabama. After a “tour” of high school history books of 1960-2000, the chapter ends with some summary answers to the question, “Can the past be repaired?” as well as arguments for and against reparations for slavery.

For more than twenty years, West African Muslims from the Muridiyya order, a Sufi brotherhood based in Senegal, have organized the annual Cheikh Amadou Bamba Day parade in New York City. It is a religious procession that allows them to redefine their African identities, cope with the stigma of Blackness, and counteract accusations of Islamic terrorism. But the march is not merely an event for members, because its banners often challenge common notions of Black history, and African American paraders follow a slightly different course. This chapter explores the way Murids, followers of Muridiyya, and other West African Muslims such as the Malinke and the Fulani create religious activities, networks, stores, and institutions that transform Harlem into a sacred city. It is a sacred space, however, that includes the long-standing Nation of Islam and other African American Muslim orientations.

This chapter situates Ebony’s evolving black history content within the broader struggle for black-centred education and the ‘Black Revolution’ on campus during the late 1960s and early 1970s. During this period, Ebony’s historical content presented a militant and, at times, heavily gendered interpretation of the African American past. On an individual level, Bennett’s developing relationship with organisations such as Northwestern University and the Institute of the Black World underscored the uniqueness of his role as Ebony’s in-house historian, and the complexity of his position as both a magazine editor and a black public intellectual.

What role does “Black history” play in community development? This chapter discusses how Black and Asian minority ethnic (BAME) communities have been excluded from contributing to national and local histories, depriving them of resources that would enable them to develop different futures in the context of a British historical narrative dominated by whiteness. It focuses on the intersection of history and community development and how community-based organisations have worked in collaboration with the University of Huddersfield (in West Yorkshire in the north of England). The chapter suggests that there are advantages in the co-production of historical knowledge, one of which is that a collaborative approach enables greater inclusion and diversity of views, especially as there is a lack of ethnic diversity amongst academic staff at British universities.

This chapter charts Ebony’s initial response to the ‘mainstreaming’ of black history in American popular and political culture during the 1970s, focused around the magazine’s discussion of, and engagement with, the American Bicentennial in 1976. As a whole, Ebony’s coverage of the Bicentennial reflected a shift away from a more activist-oriented depiction of black history and an embrace of less political and more commemorative editorial perspective. Yet even as this shift occurred, Bennett pushed for a rejection of the Bicentennial as an ‘affront to truth and freedom.’

Woodson was not the first black historian, but his research and advocacy were transformational in bringing about recognition of black history and including it within the American way of life. After his death, knowledge of Woodson’s partnership with the press was lost, but black history became so popular (and commercial) that the week he founded to commemorate black contributions in history now takes a month. Mainstream media have taken ownership of Black History Week/Black History Month, amid claims it has been commercialized.

Continuing a television studies analysis of Perry, Artel Great argues in Chapter Eight that from both a critical and an industrial perspective, the sitcom Tyler Perry’s House of Payne(TBS, 2006-2012) represents acomplex but no less problematic contribution to the history of Black televisual authorship. Precisely because there has been a pronounced dearth of Black representation on television, Great demonstrates that the politics of thirst best characterize how Black audiences engage the few existing images of televisual blackness. Despite several unprecedented industrial achievements (such as surpassing The Jeffersons[CBS, 1975-1985] as the longest running Black sitcom), when considered within the context of the history and formal structure of the Black sitcom, House of Payne digresses as itrejuvenates the narrative conventions and visual cues of uncritical Black minstrelsy. Rife with missed opportunities for teaching complex lessons about Black subjectivity, esteem, and interiority, Perry’s sitcom succeeded, then, mostly because of the continued omission of blackness on television.

This chapter connects newspaper history and Woodson's partnership with the black press, including his merger of the Black History Movement with interests of the black newspapers. They were suitable allies during the period of this study, 1915 to 1950, because of their support for education, civil rights and other issues and the impact of the Great Migration of blacks to urban areas. The migration, especially in northern cities, increased the size of black newspaper markets and made them a mass medium.

This chapter situates the early development of Ebony within a longer history of black press engagement with black history and the evolution of the black history movement in the United States. It demonstrates that black history education was an important, if often overlooked feature of Ebony from its creation in 1945 and demonstrates how coalescing civil rights activism pushed the magazine towards a more substantive engagement with both black history and black activism.

This chapter covers the revival of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” within the context of the rise of the Black Power movement and the attendant institutional life. It reads Black Power in terms of both the failed promises of civil rights, and the idea of return and recovery of Black traditions.

The introduction establishes the critical and historical basis for the idea of a Black Scotland, beginning with a brief history of Black life in territorial Scotland and in the ‘Scottish Empire’, both crucial to a post-imperial national consciousness. The introduction also reads selected examples of Blackness in Scottish literature and criticism, including some of the ways Black history has been analysed in comparison to Scottish culture. It outlines critical definitions of racialisation and of Blackness specifically: its discursive character and its relationship to the literary imagination. Defining ‘devolutionary’ as a distinct phase in the political and cultural history of Scotland, the introduction also establishes the evolving critical field of Black literary studies as it has emerged in post-war Britain, up to the multicultural moment of New Labour, and situates Scotland within and against that historical trajectory.

The authors of this chapter, a Black Deaf scholar immigrant from South Africa and a Black Deaf academic from the South Side of Chicago, highlight the limited scholarly exploration of Black Deaf lives within the context of the Deaf community. They present what they could extract from existing literature on Black Deaf historical perspectives, the influence of Black American Sign Language, and what it means to be Black and Deaf. In addition, considering the scarcity of research on non-White Deaf communities, they contribute their personal experiences to highlight the transnational identity issues of Black Deaf immigrants and the identity issues of Black Deaf individuals within the context of the United States. This chapter provides a thought-provoking treatise on what it means to be Black and Deaf with unique backgrounds in the United States.

This chapter describes the work of Gay Men of African Descent (GMAD), the leaders of which argued that Black gay men suffered from low self-esteem due to both racism and homophobia, which made them more likely to put themselves at risk for HIV through drugs and unprotected sex. As a remedy, GMAD offered up affirming images of Black gay men, often looking to the past to do so. Discussion topics frequently included homosexuality and queer identity in African and African American history, including Egyptian and Yoruba culture, the Harlem Renaissance, and the life of gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. At other times, the group highlighted literary and artistic work by luminaries in the Black gay renaissance, such as Joseph Beam, Essex Hemphill, and Marlon Riggs. The group also sought to claim a place for Black gay men within Afrocentric ideology, at one point collaborating with the Black Leadership Commission on AIDS to produce an AIDS education and prevention program based on Kwanzaa principles. GMAD leaders argued that these interventions helped equip members with the self-esteem necessary to protect themselves from HIV by practicing safer sex.

This chapter focuses on the publication of Ebony’s first major “Negro History” series during the early 1960s, a feature which helped to formalise its role as an outlet for popular black history and signalled the emergence of Lerone Bennett, Jr. as a popular historian and public intellectual. The diverse ways in which Ebony’s audience and external critics engaged with the magazine’s series reveals the importance of Ebony’s role as a ‘history book’, but also how this role was contested by other black history outlets and organisations

The black Britons Robert Wedderburn and William Davidson played a prominent role in London ultra-radicalism. Davidson was executed for his part in the Cato Street Conspiracy, and Wedderburn encouraged violent resistance to tyranny and slavery. This chapter unearths important new biographical information about these two men, and applies this to the development of their political ideas.