President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty did more than offer aid to needy Americans; in some cities, it also sparked both racial conflict and cooperation. "Race and the War on Poverty" examines the African American and Mexican American community organizations in Los Angeles that emerged to implement War on Poverty programs. It explores how organizers applied democratic vision and political savvy to community action, and how the ongoing African American, Chicano, and feminist movements in turn shaped the contours of the War on Poverty's goals, programs, and cultural identity.
Robert...
President Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty did more than offer aid to needy Americans; in some cities, it also sparked both racial conflict and coop...
Indian freedmen and their descendants have garnered much public and scholarly attention, but women's roles have largely been absent from that discussion. Now a scholar who gained an insider's perspective into the Black Seminole community in Texas and Mexico offers a rare and vivid picture of these women and their contributions. In Dreaming with the Ancestors, Shirley Boteler Mock explores the role that Black Seminole women have played in shaping and perpetuating a culture born of African roots and shaped by southeastern Native American and Mexican influences.
Indian freedmen and their descendants have garnered much public and scholarly attention, but women's roles have largely been absent from that discussi...
The general store in late-nineteenth-century America was often the economic heart of a small town. Merchants sold goods necessary for residents daily survival and extended credit to many of their customers; cash-poor farmers relied on merchants for their economic well-being just as the retailers needed customers to purchase their wares. But there was more to this mutual dependence than economics. Store owners often helped found churches and other institutions, and they and their customers worshiped together, sent their children to the same schools, and in times of crisis, came to one...
The general store in late-nineteenth-century America was often the economic heart of a small town. Merchants sold goods necessary for residents dai...
In the late 1960s, African American protests and Black Power demonstrations in California's Santa Clara County--including what's now called Silicon Valley--took many observers by surprise. After all, as far back as the 1890s, the California constitution had legally abolished most forms of racial discrimination, and subsequent legal reform had surely taken care of the rest. White Americans might even have wondered where the black activists in the late sixties were coming from--because, beginning with the writings of Fredrick Jackson Turner, the most influential histories of the American West...
In the late 1960s, African American protests and Black Power demonstrations in California's Santa Clara County--including what's now called Silicon Va...
The westward migration of nearly half a million Americans in the mid-nineteenth century looms large in U.S. history. Classic images of rugged Euro-Americans traversing the plains in their prairie schooners still stir the popular imagination. But this traditional narrative, no matter how alluring, falls short of the actual--and far more complex--reality of the overland trails. Among the diverse peoples who converged on the western frontier were African American pioneers--men, women, and children. Whether enslaved or free, they too were involved in this transformative movement. Sweet...
The westward migration of nearly half a million Americans in the mid-nineteenth century looms large in U.S. history. Classic images of rugged E...
Pushed out of the South as Reconstruction ended and as white landowners, employers, and "Redeemer" governments sought to reestablish the constraints of slavery, thousands of African Americans migrated west in search of better opportunities. As the first well-known all-black community on the plains, Nicodemus, Kansas, became a national exemplar of black self-improvement. But Nicodemus also embodied many of the problems facing African Americans during this time. Diverging philosophies within the community, Charlotte Hinger argues, foretold the differences that continue to divide black...
Pushed out of the South as Reconstruction ended and as white landowners, employers, and "Redeemer" governments sought to reestablish the constr...
In 1981, decades before mainstream America elected Barack Obama, James Chase became the first African American mayor of Spokane, Washington, with the overwhelming support of a majority-white electorate. Chase s win failed to capture the attention of historians as had the century-long evolution of the black community in Spokane. In "Black Spokane: The Civil Rights Struggle in the Inland Northwest," Dwayne A. Mack corrects this oversight and recovers a crucial chapter in the history of race relations and civil rights in America. As early as the 1880s, Spokane was a destination for black...
In 1981, decades before mainstream America elected Barack Obama, James Chase became the first African American mayor of Spokane, Washington, with the ...
In the South after the Civil War, the reassertion of white supremacy tended to pit white against black. In the West, by contrast, a radically different drama emerged, particularly in multiracial, multiethnic California. State elections in California to ratify Reconstruction-era amendments to the U.S. Constitution raised the question of whether extending suffrage to black Californians might also lead to the political participation of thousands of Chinese immigrants.
As historian D. Michael Bottoms shows in "An Aristocracy of Color," many white Californians saw in this and other...
In the South after the Civil War, the reassertion of white supremacy tended to pit white against black. In the West, by contrast, a radically diffe...
Everybody in the bar had to drop a quarter in the jukebox or be shamed by "Momo" Villarreal. It wasn't about the money, Mary Ann Villarreal's grandmother insisted. It was about the music--more songs for all the patrons of the Pecan Lounge in Tivoli, Texas. But for Mary Ann, whose schoolbooks those quarters bought, the money didn't hurt.
When as an adult Villarreal began to wonder how the few recordings of women singers made their way into that jukebox, questions about the money seemed inseparable from those about the music. In Listening to Rosita, Villarreal seeks...
Everybody in the bar had to drop a quarter in the jukebox or be shamed by "Momo" Villarreal. It wasn't about the money, Mary Ann Villarreal's g...
