The Colour of Suffering: Hermeneutics, Hope, and the Theology of James Henry Harris

Thinking Problems

Objective Humanities, Reflexive Humanities

Aim/Purpose: This paper examines the experiences of African American students in a doctor of education program at a comprehensive university in Southern California. Background: Qualitative case study methodology and critical race theory is used to highlight asset rather than deficit narratives of the participants, illuminating another aspect of commonly understood experiences for underrepresented students in education. Methodology: Qualitative case study methodology was used for a sample of 14 African American doctoral students in the Southern California area. Critical race theory provided a framework through which to support data analysis and subsequent findings. Contribution: The original contribution of this paper is the asset-narrative of African American doctoral students at an institution that is not research-driven. Findings: Findings assert that (1) asset narratives of African American students need to be highlighted, (2) action-research as an option for dissertation completion is important for Ed.D. programs, and (3) racial identity of African Americans is complex, therefore broader understandings of black identity are needed, and must be coupled with anti-deficit ideology. Recommendations for Practitioners: Recommendations for practitioners include expanding understandings of African American identity coupled with anti-deficit ideology to enhance student interactions with both faculty and peers throughout doctoral education. Recommendation for Researchers: It is suggested that future research continue to focus on doctoral student experiences in institutions that are not research intensive. Impact on Society: This research provides an original contribution by furthering understandings of the complexity of the African American experience with identity, research, and doctoral education experiences. Future Research: Future research should focus on other underrepresented populations in doctoral education at universities that are not research-intensive.

INTRODUCTION The Place of the Bible in the Paradox of America Biblical Archetypes and the Idea of 'America' How the Bible is Interpreted What is the Bible? Criteria for Selection Overview of the Chapters CHAPTER ONE: SPREADING THE WORD Missionizing Production and Distribution Translation The Book among books? John Eliot's Brief Narrative Charter of College of William and Mary Jonathan Edwards, 'A Divine and Supernatural Light' Continental Congress Authorizes Bible Printing The Jefferson Bible The American Bible Society Liberal Responses to Calvinism The Student Volunteer Movement Isaac Leeser and the Translation of Hebrew Scripture Francis Kenrick's Translation of the Pentateuch The Jewish Publication Society Dei Verbum The New American Bible The Gullah Bible The Green Bible Biblezines CHAPTER TWO: THE BIBLE AND THE REPUBLIC Settlement and God's Providence The First Charter of Virginia John Winthrop, 'A Model of Christian Charity' Fundamental Orders of Connecticut Dissent Among the Dissenters: The Bible and the Challenges of Colonial Governance The Examination of Anne Hutchinson at the Court at Newton The Massachusetts Witchcraft Trials Cotton Mather, from Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions Samuel Parris, 'Christ Knows How Many Devils There Are' John Hale, 'A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft' Quaker Pennsylvania and 'The Keithian Schism' Founding the Republic Prayer Before the First Continental Congress The Prayer of Rev. Duche Before the Continental Congress The Call to War, the Challenge of Peace Patrick Henry's Call for Revolution Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address Franklin D. Roosevelt as the Nation's Pastor Congress Declares the Bible 'the Word of God' Public Display of Religion Abington v. Schempp The Ten Commandments in the Alabama Courthouse Legal Responses Sporting Events and Religious Expression Verses in Eye Black CHAPTER THREE: THE BIBLE AND AMERICA'S GREAT DEBATES Slavery and Abolitionism: Pro-Slavery Arguments The Sin of Ham Slavery and the New Testament Slave Owners' Publications A Slave Catechism After Emancipation Slavery and Abolitionism: Anti-Slavery Arguments The Barnes Hypothesis Theodore Dwight Weld The Spirit of the Scriptures Biblical Typology Experiences of African Americans Resistance and Revolt in Charleston Frederick Douglass Women's Public Role and the Vote Sarah Grimke Sojourner Truth Preaching the Bible and Women's Equality Anna Julia Cooper Women and Social Reform The Woman's Bible Anti-Suffrage Arguments and Scripture Horace Bushnell James Cardinal Gibbons Debating the Bible's Authority: The Higher Criticism Controversy William Newton Clarke Inspiration: The 'Princeton Doctrine' The Briggs Case Debating the Bible's Authority: The Modernist/Fundamentalist Showdown The Fundamentals Curtis Lee Laws Harry Emerson Fosdick Debating the Bible's Authority: Evolution and Creationism T. DeWitt Talmage Henry Ward Beecher John Zahm William Jennings Bryan The Scopes Trial Reforming Society The Social Gospel The City as Menace Labor Unions Temperance The Women's Christian Temperance Union The Struggle for Civil Rights Anticipating the Movement Support for Segregation Martin Luther King, Jr. Fannie Lou Hamer Black Liberation Theology Inclusion of Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transexual Persons Paul's Statements in Romans 1 Another Interpretation of Romans 1 CHAPTER FOUR: READING IN THE MARGINS Identity and Textual Interpretation Jarena Lee The Bible as Patriarchal African American Women's Experience The Text Interprets Itself The Prophetic Corrective A 'Hermeneutics of Suspicion' A Gay Theology of Liberation The Bible as Intimate Friend Experience and the Authority of Spirit The Holiness Movement The Azusa Street Revival Letter from Bro. Parham Speaking in Tongues Catholic Charismatic Renewal Imagining Babylon and Thy Kingdom Come The Shakers 'I, Nephi,...': The Book of Mormon William Miller Ellen G. White on 'The Book of Books' Charles Taze Russell, 'Earth's Night of Sin to Terminate in a Morning of Joy' Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science Elijah Muhammad, 'What is Islam? What is a Muslim?' Jim Jones, 'The Letter Killeth' Message from the Apostle David Koresh and the Seven Seals CHAPTER FIVE: THE BIBLE AND ARTISTIC EXPRESSION Art Edward Hicks, Peacable Kingdom Harriet Powers' Bible Quilt Edmonia Lewis Bessie Harvey Tobi Kahn Poetry Phillis Wheatley Emily Dickinson Robert Lowell Samuel Menashe Musical Lyric 'There is a Balm in Gilead' 'My Mother's Bible' 'The Greatest Story Ever Told' 'Hallelujah' Lauryn Hill, 'Forgive Them Father' The Novel Herman Melville, selection from Moby Dick James Baldwin, selection from Go Tell It on the Mountain

This anthology explores African American lived experiences and their representations through cinema and literary forms in the twentieth century. By mapping literary and filmic texts produced for African Americans based on their lived experiences, narratives, and aesthetics within larger historical, cultural dynamics, and material contexts, Intersecting Aesthetics aims to illuminate uncovered patterns in literary, cinematic, and social history. The authors of Intersecting Aesthetics position their work in contrast to preceding scholarly ideas and expand the scope of research on African American film adaptations. Through challenging the perspectives that frame discussions on Black filmic representations and adaptations tractable to Sara Martín's survey published in Literature/Film Quarterly (1999), this volume seeks to move beyond the insights of studies of adaptations around and from canonical texts that feature reliance on whiteness and prestige art (5). Adaptation scholarship on Black films that oftentimes get published as isolated case studies and incoherent chapters is criticized as a problematic academic trend (9). This volume enriches the long-seated overlook of the unique experiences and expressions of African American artists in literature and film while including non-canonical material sources. Underexplored fields of Black film adaptations, such as political censorship and cultural circulations are included in the contributors' reflection on how race-inflicted normality is manifested and intertextualized in literary and cinematic representations. Asking a central research question, “What insights about society, cinema, and literary works become visible when the scholarship concentrates on film adaptations involving Black writers, directors, or stories?” (4), the authors navigate a fundamental departure from traditional methods of analysis that often view literary sources and film adaptations in separation. The contributors' unconventional adoption of non-canonical source materials informs this methodology carried away with their exploratory, rather than “evaluative” analytic approach. For instance, archival records and firsthand interviews are employed to better facilitate understanding of censorship, marketing, and press coverage of African American film adaptations that affect and shape the audience's reception and interpretation of Black narrative (5). Studio-era and post-studio film directors and writers' negotiations with cultural normality in writing, studio productions, and indie filmmaking are also addressed. The contributors of the volume insisted that literary sources and film adaptations cannot be analyzed without being drawn together and grounded in a comprehensive understanding of the social, cultural, and material contexts of Black narratives (3). The book examines how African American artists, such as Walter Mosley and Carl Franklin in Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), use the aesthetic tools of their art forms to reveal the realities that allow white Americans to ignore the incommensurable humanity of African Americans and remain indifferent to the racism permeated in society. This analysis successfully highlights the power of art to potentially challenge racial prejudices and cultural normativity (66). The authors also discuss the character Bigger in writer Richard Wright's Native Son, exploring the critique of Bigger and how views are historically varied. They argue that Wright's portrayal of Bigger was not so much a capitulation to a racist culture, but an exposé of how literary characters are shaped by the cultural and social embeddedness of racism. This argument is supported by the viewpoint of Alain Locke, who defended Wright's depiction of Bigger as socially and historically constructed (12). The volume also delves into the sociological and ethical aspects of Devil in a Blue Dress (1995). It examines the narrative techniques used to explore the protagonist Easy Rawlins' conscience and his reflection on the shared experiences of Black men in white-dominated America. This analysis aligns the novel and film with a literary-historical tradition that includes works such as Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, which manifests the social and moral considerations in Mosley's work (30–31). Intersecting Aesthetics poised itself as an innovative and comprehensive work that offers significant contributions to the field of Black literary and film adaptations. Its methodological and analytic ingenuity enables new insights and helps critics challenge existing academic paradigms restrained by white norms in contemporary adaptation studies. This anthology demonstrates that racialized social discourses serve as a central factor that affects the creation, distribution, and reception of Black literature and cinematic adaptations. By combining incisive insights from various disciplines such as film and media studies, comparative literature, and African American studies, this volume enriches the scholarship on film adaptation, Black artistry, and African American experiences. The authors present literature and films as reflective, negotiating, and challenging racialized social hierarchies and cultural orders demised by whiteness. Despite a more in-depth comparison of Black films and literature with mainstream or white-centered narratives that could be conducted to further highlight the distinctiveness of Black artists' contributions, this volume discovered patterns in literary, cinematic, and social history that have been overlooked or underrepresented in traditional accounts of film studies.

Midwestern Studies Meets Critical Race TheoryNotes on Imagining the Heartland Jon K. Lauck Britt E. Halvorson and Joshua O. Reno, Imagining the Heartland: White Supremacy and the American Midwest. Oakland: University of California Press, 2022. 218 pp. $85.00 (hardcover), $29.95 (paper). As readers of this journal know better than anyone, the last decade has witnessed a concerted effort to promote and revive Midwestern studies. As consumers of the news in recent years know, the ideas underpinning Critical Race Theory have increasingly been debated in the public square after years of mostly percolating underground in the academy and adjacent institutions. Now comes a direct meeting of the worlds of Midwestern studies and Critical Race Theory in the form of a book published by the University of California Press, which is based in Oakland, California. It is titled Imagining the Heartland: White Supremacy and the American Midwest and was authored by two anthropologists, one at Colby College in Maine and the other at Binghamton University in New York. In a bit of stage-setting, the University of California Press announces in the book that it "publishes bold progressive books … with a focus on social justice issues—that inspire thought and action among readers worldwide."1 Imagining the Heartland affords an opportunity to consider whether Critical Theory generally, and Critical Race Theory (CRT) in particular, can help us understand the Midwest more completely and accurately or if the reverse is true. At this stage of the discussion, the CRT approach to the study of the Midwest, if this book is a reliable guide, suffers from weaknesses that will cloud our ability to see the region in its fullness and complexity. It serves as a broader warning about the problems associated with Critical Theory more generally and should be a reminder of the importance of relying on more [End Page 126] fruitful ways of examining the history of the Midwest. These include, most importantly, a dedication to collecting and examining the particular facts on the ground when interpreting the Midwestern past and placing them in historical and comparative context with limited use of theories which can predetermine conclusions. At a minimum, before it is widely adopted, CRT and its application in Midwestern studies should be the subject of a robust discussion which can begin in this journal. This discussion will continue in future issues. It should be explained up front that Imagining the Heartland does not rely on original research nor the kind of ethnographic study once-common to anthropology. The book relies on secondary publications, from academic studies to media reports to aspects of popular culture, and analyzes them through the lens of Critical Theory and seeks to explain and critique how other writers and artists have imagined or talked about the Midwest. Critical Theory is not the same as thinking critically about evidence when interpreting the past, an exercise we should all embrace.2 Critical Theory, for the uninitiated, was primarily developed by the Marxists who organized the Frankfurt School of social analysis in Germany in the early twentieth-century and who later, to escape the Nazis, moved its operations to the United States.3 During the last third of the twentieth century, Critical Theory in its various forms became highly influential in humanities and social science departments at American universities. From the general debates and ideas within Critical Theory emerged the more focused CRT, which was made prominent by Derrick Bell at Harvard Law School, in addition to other law professors. Bell and his allies promoted activism and, for them, CRT recognized that "revolutionizing a culture begins with a radical assessment of it" and predicted that "scholarly resistance will lay the groundwork for wide-scale resistance."4 A deep background in the adoption and development of Critical Theory in the academy and an understanding of these goals are helpful when reading this book because that is the source of its ideas and language. This grounding in Critical Theory is important to understand when delving into Imagining the Heartland because the book is quite distinct from some of the research that takes place in Midwestern studies. A good deal of the work in Midwestern history is grounded in studying...

Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) scholars have recently drawn on critical race theory (CRT) to critique and understand the propagation of Whiteness as a norm associated with native English speakers. However, the area of language studies, more broadly defined, has yet to develop the same link with CRT. To this end, this article proposes and introduces an emerging theoretical and analytical framework called LangCrit, or Critical Language and Race Theory. LangCrit puts the intersection of the subject-as-heard and the subject-as-seen at the forefront of interpretation and analysis. This article urges language studies scholars, both within the field of English language teaching and beyond, to continue to look for ways in which race, racism, and racialization intersect with issues of language, belonging, and identity.

Race plays a major role in the lived experiences of African Americans. Consequently, race significantly impacts the identities and educational experiences of African American college students—many of whom require developmental reading courses. These courses, which are gateway courses in higher education, should address race along with reading skill development to increase engagement and success among African American students. This study investigates developmental reading curriculum, as exemplified by developmental reading textbooks, to determine how African Americans and their experiences related to race are represented and framed. Using Critical Race Theory as the theoretical framework, I conducted a qualitative content analysis of reading selections in a sample of five of the most recently published, top-selling developmental reading textbooks. Along with the findings of this study, the implications for developmental reading pedagogy and African American student engagement and success are discussed.

Since former President Trump’s 2020 Executive Order banning critical race theory, the scholarship has been at the center of an international moral panic. Right-wing American, British, and French commentators invented a conspiracy theory version of critical race scholarship (Marxism! Black supremacy!). Once constructed, conspiracists blamed critical race theory for several alleged social ills, including making white kids uncomfortable and destroying nationalist sentiment. Although the acute stage of this moral panic may be receding, critical race theory’s reputation as a body of scholarship aimed at diagnosing and curing racial inequality is tarnished. Scholars concerned about racial inequality—for intellectual and ethical reasons—should be worried, as it will likely take time to reverse the damage. Answering objections from academic and lay opponents of critical race theory, Ali Meghji’s The Racialized Social System: Critical Race Theory as Social Theory shows what recovering from this moral panic will look like. Contra academic detractors who claim that critical race theory does not provide a coherent analytical framework, Meghji contextualizes the development of critical race theory in legal studies in relation to the broader set of critical theories of race and racism that were bubbling up in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The theoretical imprimatur of these currents runs deep, as these intellectual movements were part of a long lineage of radical thought from racially marginalized scholars such as Oliver Cromwell Cox, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Joyce Ladner. For lay readers (and I’m sure this book will draw interested non-specialists), Meghji provides an accessible overview showing critical race theory’s explanatory power across the social sciences.

Foreword: The Evolving Role of Critical Race Theory in Educational Scholarship Gloria Ladson-Billings Introduction: All God's Children Got a Song Section I: Critical Race Theory and Education in Context 1. Toward a Critical Race Theory of Education Gloria Ladson-Billings and William F. Tate, IV 2. And We Are Still Not Saved: Critical Race Theory in Education Ten Years Later Adrienne Dixson and Celia Rousseau Section II: Critical Race Theory Constructs 3. The First Day of School: A CRT Story Celia Rousseau and Adrienne Dixson 4. Peddling Cackwards: Reflections of Plessy and Brown in the Rockford Public Schools De Jure Desegregation Efforts Thandeka Chapman 5. 'Proving Your Skin is White, You Can Have Everything': Race, Racial Identity and the Property Rights in Whiteness in the Supreme Court Case of Josephine DeCuir Jessica DeCuir-Gunby 6. Keeping it Real: Race and Education in Memphis Celia Rousseau 7. Critical Race Perspectives on Desegregation: The Forgotten Voices of Black Educators Jerome Morris 8. Parent(s): The Biggest Influences in the Education of African American Football Student-Athletes Jamel Donnor Section III: The Interdisciplinary Nature of Critical Race Theory 9. Whose Culture has Capital? A Critical Race Theory Discussion of Community Cultural Wealth Tara J. Yosso 10. Critical Race Ethnography in Education: Narrative, Inequality, and the Problem of Epistemology Garret Duncan 11. The Fire This Time: Jazz, Research and Critical Race Theory Adrienne Dixson Section IV: Critical Race Theory in US Classrooms and Internationally 12. Where the Rubber Hits the Road: CRT Goes to High School David Stovall 13. Critical Race Theory Beyond North America: Towards a Trans-Atlantic Dialogue on Racism and Antiracism in Educational Theory and Praxis David Gillborn Conclusion 14. Ethics, Engineering, and the Challenge of Racial Reform in Education William F. Tate, IV

Foreword Introduction Part One: Critical Race Theory in Education 1. Just What Is Critical Race Theory and What's It Doing in a Nice Field Like Education? Gloria Ladson-Billings 2. Who's Afraid of Critical Race Theory? Derrick Bell 3. Education Policy as an Act of White Supremacy: Whiteness, Critical Race Theory, and Education Reform, David Gillborn Part Two: History and evolution 4. Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest Convergence Dilemma, Derrick Bell 5. Desegregation as a Cold War Imperative, Mary L. Dudziak Part Three: Affirmative Action 6. The We've Done Enough Theory of School Desegration, Mark v. Tushnet 7. Affirmative Action as a Majoritarian Device: Or, Do You Really Want to Be a Role Model? Richard Delgado 8. Critical Race Theory and Interest Convergence in the Backlash Against Affirmative Action: Washington State and Initiative 200, Edward Taylor Part Four: Critical Race Research Methology in Education 9. Critical Race Methodology: Counter Story-Telling as an Analytical Framework for Educational Research, Daniel G. Solorzano and Tara J. Yosso 10. What's Race Got to Do With It? Critical Race Theory's Conflicts With and Connections to Qualitative Research Methodology and Epistemology, Lawrence Parker and Marvin Lynn Part Five: Race in the Classroom 11. A Threat in the Air: How Stereotypes Shape Intellectual Identity and Performance, Claude M. Steele 12. Peer Networks of African American Students in Independent Schools: Affirming Academic Success and Racial Identity, Amanda Datnow and Robert Cooper Part Six: Intersections: Gender, Class, and Culture 13. Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color, Kimberle Williams Crenshaw 14. Ain't I a Woman? Revisiting Intersectionality, Avtar Brah and Ann Phoenix Part Seven: Intersections: White Supremacy and White Allies 15. The Color of Supremacy: Beyond the Discourse of 'White Privilege', Zeus Leonardo 16. Teaching White Students About Racism: The Search for Whites Allies and the Restoration of Hope, Beverly Daniel Tatum Part Eight: Critiques of Critical Race Theory 17. Some Critical Thoughts on Critical Race Theory, Douglas E. Litowitz 18. Telling Stories Out of school: An Essay on Legal Narratives, Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry 19. On Telling Stores in School: A Reply to Farber and Sherry, Richard Delgado

Preface African American Migration and Urbanization by Arvarh E. Strickland and Robert E. Weems, Jr. The African American Worker in Slavery and Freedom by Joe William Trotter, Jr. African American Families: Historically Resilient by Aaron Thompson African American Women by Wilma King The African American Educational Experience by Carolyn A. Dorsey The African American Literary Tradition by Clenora Hudson-Weems The African American Musical Experience by John A. Taylor African American Intellectual/Political Thought by Robert L. Harris, Jr. The African American Political Experience by Sharon D. Wright and Minion K.C. Morrison The African American Press by Julius E. Thompson African Americans in the Military of the United States by John F. Marszalek and Horace D. Nash The African American Athletic Experience by David K. Wiggins Constructing an Historiography of African American Business by Juliet E. K. Walker Sexuality and Race by Stanley O. Gaines, Jr. African American Consumerism by Robert E. Weems, Jr. The Civil Rights Movement by John Dittmer African American Religion in the United States by Charles H. Long

The movement of African Americans from the South to the North following the Civil War and culminating with the mass migrations that followed World Wars I and II changed the American urban landscape. Moreover, U.S. African Americans subsequently changed from a largely rural to an urban population. This urban-based population was critical in the success of the 20th century reform movements for social justice, and as a result African American communities gained unprecedented political power. The migration and settlement of African Americans in cities has led to some of the most exciting research in the field of African American history. During the 1960s and 1970s historians of the African American urban experience took their clues from the sociologists. The studies that emerged emphasized racial segregation and the so-called tangle of pathology that resulted when African Americans migrated to cities. In this conceptualization families and communities were impacted negatively by the increase in the black population. Most of these studies were conducted in the major cities of the North and scholars contended that the migrants suffered from anomie, disease, poverty, and weakened family ties. This view held that solving the immediate problems of food, shelter, and making a livelihood sapped most of the migrants' energies. These studies focused upon the formation of the black ghetto in northern cities, the physical and institutional development of black residential areas. Invariably, African Americans' experiences were perceived as deleterious to the maintenance of their culture and to their goals of self-determination. Racism was the key to understanding African American communities according to this view, and African Americans were passive in the process. (1) Yet this paradigm limited our understanding of the intricacies of the migration, resettlement, and their meaning for African Americans. Historian John W. Blassingame, writing in 1973, noted that African American communities also were centers of black life and culture and questioned the emphasis on relations. He observed that 19th century Savannah, Georgia, provided African Americans with a large arena to develop a variety of social, intellectual, and creative talents and to build [a] community infrastructure.... (2) Blassingame highlighted the limitations of the race relations model and challenged scholars to raise new questions when examining African Americans in urban America. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a new wave of publications that bore such titles as Life Is What We Make It and In Their Own Interests. (3) These cultural and political studies focused on African American agency during the important post-World War I migration era. (4) Scholars extended the case study genre into other regions of the country, including the South and the West. (5) Some also began an examination of African American urban experiences in communities with small black populations. Myra Young Armstead's Lord, Please Don't Take Me in August: African Americans in Newport and Saratoga Springs, 1870-1930 offers a refreshing comparative examination of two small African American communities in the resort towns of Saratoga Springs, New York, and Newport, Rhode Island. (6) Armstead argues that the black populations of these towns exhibited the same strengths and characteristics as those who resided in the major metropolises. This phenomenon was fueled, in part, by chain migration and a continued support system from African Americans in other nearby towns. James Borchert and Allen Ballard had described the importance of chain migration, as well as the return to their homelands to attend family celebrations in maintaining their culture, in promoting economic relations within the African American communities of Washington, DC, and Philadelphia. (7) In my book Strangers in the Land of Paradise, I provided a detailed analysis of the impact of migration, and the economic circumstances surrounding the development of Buffalo's African American community, and found that southern black family traditions, far from having a debilitating effect on the community of newcomers, actually provided the armor that migrants needed to challenge their difficult social and economic situation. …

This qualitative study explored the experiences of African Americans as they pursued and transitioned into senior administrative roles at four-year predominantly white institutions (PWIs). Insights were drawn from eight participants who held or had held positions such as president, vice president, provost, assistant vice president/provost, and dean. From in-depth interviews with participants, their experiences were categorized into the overarching themes of career navigation, racial adversity, professional development, and voices of experience, all of which were deeply interconnected through their respective subthemes. In career navigation, subthemes such as empowered by belief and purposeful positioning emphasized the importance of self-confidence, strategic timing, and decision-making in professional roles. These ideas were reinforced by pacing for progress, which underscored the need for knowing when to stay in or transition between roles for career advancement. In contrast, the theme of racial adversity addressed the challenges African Americans faced, including the subthemes of systemic racism and stereotypes, tokenism, and being undermined, all of which complicated their leadership journeys. Meanwhile, navigating relatability and accountability reflected the unique pressures on African American leaders to maintain both authenticity and effectiveness. Professional development complemented these themes by highlighting the subthemes and importance of engagement in leadership programs, mentorship, and networking, which provided essential tools for success. The theme of voices of experience offered insights from seasoned African American administrators, emphasizing subthemes of authentic leadership, advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and the need for self-awareness and reflection while offering practical advice, such as establishing financial safety measures, to prepare future leaders for long-term success. Together, these themes and subthemes provided a holistic view of the complex and multifaceted experiences of African Americans pursuing and transitioning into senior administrative roles at four-year PWIs. Utilizing thematic analysis within the frameworks of resiliency theory and critical race theory, the study revealed key themes that contributed to understanding the challenges and successes encountered by these professionals. The findings, synthesized with existing literature, offered recommendations for enhancing African American representation and creating more inclusive environments in higher education senior administrative leadership, while also highlighting areas for future research and consideration of theoretical and practical implications.

This study examines the experiences of black African Americans within a white-dominated society while focusing on double consciousness, racial micro-aggressions, the historical implications of the slave trade, and systemic suppression. The primary aim of this study is to highlight the harsh realities of enslavement and the enduring struggle to preserve African heritage. Racism, a socially constructed phenomenon, subjects black individuals to frequent racial discrimination. This research aims to raise awareness and challenge the facade of superiority maintained by the white-dominated society. The selected novel explores the various forms of racial discrimination against African Americans, shedding light on the subtle attacks they face while striving to preserve their identity. Additionally, the study investigates the issues of identity and freedom by analyzing the relationship between the two sisters in the novel under disquisition. Through the lens of Critical Race Theory, this research analyzes the portrayal of black lives and their resilience against white supremacy through Domingo’s novel Breaking The Maafa Chain, a piercing and sensitive representation of suppressed or marginalized Afro-Americans. Critical Race Theory serves as a framework to address the issues of racial discrimination. The research methodology employed in this study is purely qualitative, analytical, and descriptive, and it involves a close textual analysis of the novel within the domain of critical race theory.