Activity In America Research Articles

Susan L. Smith. <italic>Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Black Women's Health Activism in America, 1890–1950</italic>. (Studies in Health, Illness, and Caregiving.) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1995. Pp. xi, 247. Cloth $34.95, paper $16.95

Journal Article Susan L. Smith. Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Black Women's Health Activism in America, 1890–1950. (Studies in Health, Illness, and Caregiving.) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1995. Pp. xi, 247. Cloth $34.95, paper $16.95 Get access Smith Susan L.. Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Black Women's Health Activism in America, 1890–1950. (Studies in Health, Illness, and Caregiving.) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1995. Pp. xi, 247. Cloth $34.95, paper $16.95. Susan M. Reverby Susan M. Reverby Wellesley College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 102, Issue 2, April 1997, Pages 535–536, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/102.2.535 Published: 01 April 1997

Sick and Tired of being Sick and Tired: Black Women's Health Activism in America, 1890-1950.

Sick and Tired of being Sick and Tired: Black Women's Health Activism in America, 1890-1950.

Book Reviews : Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Black Women's Health Activism in America, 1890-1950. By Susan L. Smith. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995, 288 pp. $34.95 (hardbound), $16.95 (paper

Book Reviews : Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Black Women's Health Activism in America, 1890-1950. By Susan L. Smith. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995, 288 pp. $34.95 (hardbound), $16.95 (paper

Shapers of American Jewish Music: Mailamm and the Jewish Music Forum, 1931-62

Although there have been 300 years of productive Jewish musical activities in America, the tragedy of the European Holocaust underscores the significance of American Jewish music achievements, particularly during the second half of the twentieth century. Over those decades, emigre and native-born Jews were engaged in scholarly research projects, collection and archiving of resources, academic endeavors, and a broad range of publications treating Judaic as well as general music topics. They initiated activities that enriched secular as well as religious life for American Jewry, activities that also served to enhance the culturally pluralistic nature of what is now distinctively recognized world-wide as American music. The impetus and the seminal leadership for many of those fruitful contributions originated with two Jewish music organizations, and it thrived because of the efforts of their rosters of dedicated members.

Sick and tired of being sick and tired: black women's health activism in America, 1890-1950

Black health activism in the United States emerged at a time when the American welfare state was expanding and black rights were decreasing. From 1890 to 1950, a period of legalized segregation, many African Americans saw their struggle for improved health conditions as part of a political agenda for black rights, especially the right to equal access to government resources. Although it was difficult for a group with little influence on government to affect public policy, black activists struggled to draw federal attention to black health issues. They tried to make the health needs of black America a legitimate political concern for the nation. With great caution they entered the debate on the role of the state in the care of its citizens. Black health reform was gendered to the extent that held most of the formal leadership positions and women did most of the grassroots organizing. Much like the black civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, men led, but women organized. 1 Black played an important role in the black health movement as doctors,ministers,journalists, businessmen, and educators. Yet, men's leadership often came and went, while women's grassroots activity persisted.

Book Reviews

Journal Article Book Reviews Get access SUSAN L. SMITH. Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Black Women's Health Activism in America, 1890–1950. Studies in Health, Illness, and Caregiving. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. xi, 247 pp., illus. $34.95 (cloth), $16.95 (paper) EDWARD T. MORMAN, PH.D., EDWARD T. MORMAN, PH.D., Curator, Historical Collections, Institute for the History of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins University1900 East Monument Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21205–2169 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Volume 51, Issue 2, April 1996, Pages 240–241, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/51.2.240 Published: 01 April 1996

Neither Victim nor Villain: Nurse Eunice Rivers, the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, and Public Health Work

Project MUSE - Journal of Women's History - Neither Victim nor Villain: Nurse Eunice Rivers, the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, and Public Health Work Project MUSE Journals Journal of Women's History Volume 8, Number 1, Spring 1996 Neither Victim nor Villain: Nurse Eunice Rivers, the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, and Public Health Work Journal of Women's History Volume 8, Number 1, Spring 1996 E-ISSN: 1527-2036 Print ISSN: 1042-7961 Neither Victim nor Villain:Nurse Eunice Rivers, the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, and Public Health Work Susan L. Smith Susan L. Smith Susan L. Smith is assistant professor of history and women's studies at the University of Alberta. She is the author of Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Black Women's Health Activism in America, 1890-1950 (1995). Acknowledgement I thank the following for their comments on earlier versions: Andrea Friedman, Vanessa Northington Gamble, Linda Gordon, Susan Hamilton, Darlene Clark Hine, Judith Walzer Leavitt, Gerda Lerner, Donald Macnab, Leslie Reagan, Leslie Schwalm, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Women's History Dissertators' Group, the audience at the Ninth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women at Vassar College, New York, June 1993, and my students at the University of Alberta. This research was supported by a Women's Studies Research Grant and a Rural Policy Fellowship, both from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. I also thank archivists Aloha South, at the...

Factors Influencing African American Leisure Time Utilization of Museums

Visiting museums is a common leisure time activity in America.(1) A recent American Association of Museums report (1992) estimated that 565.8 million people visited museums in 1988. Some people visit museum-like settings frequently (4 or more times per year); many people visit occasionally (once or twice per year); and many others not at all (Gudykunst, Morra, Kantor & Parker, 1981; Hood, 1983; Pollock, Finn, Garfield, Snyder & Pfenning, 1983; Balling & Cornell, 1985; Robinson, Keegan, Karth & Triplett, 1986; DiMaggio & Ostrower, 1990). A number of studies suggest that most African Americans fall into one of the two latter groups (Robinson, et al., 1986; DiMaggio & Ostrower, 1990; Birney, 1990; Doering & Black, 1989; ASTC-AAAS, 1987; American Museum of Natural History, 1977, 1986; Kaplan & Talbot, 1988; Bickford, Doering & Smith, 1992; Horn & Finney, 1994). This study represented an effort to better understand the factors that influence African American use or non-use of museums as leisure resources.Factors Influencing Museum Going BehaviorNumerous settings for leisure exist and these are perceived by the public as affording a range of non-equivalent benefits. Four major factors can be defined which contribute to museum going being selected as a leisure time experience by the public: socio-economic; institutional; cultural/ethnic and regional.Socio-Economic FactorsGudykunst, Morra, Kantor & Parker (1981) determined that museum going appealed to those individuals seeking a or intellectual orientation in a leisure setting; an orientation strongly associated with higher levels of education and occupation. Several investigators have linked leisure activities to social and educational class (e.g., Mather, 1941; Clarke, 1956; Cicchetti, 1972; Cunningham, Montoye, Metzner & Kelly, 1970; Dixon, Courtney & Bailey, 1974; Burdge, 1969; DiMaggio & Ostrower, 1990). Studies at a variety of museums have determined that museum visitors were of higher than average education and income level (Cheek, et al, 1976; Balling & Cornell, 1985; Hood, 1988; Doering & Fronville, 1988; Doering & Black, 1989; Bickford, Doering & Smith, 1992). The 1985 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (Robinson, et al., 1986) found strong correlations between art museum attendance and education and income -- the higher the education and income, the greater the level of visitation.There are data, though, that tend to suggest education and income may not be the only factors at work. Marketing research carried out by American Visions magazine showed that well educated, affluent African Americans were less likely than comparably educated and affluent white Americans to support cultural activities (Puckrein, 1991). A number of leisure researchers have openly disputed the importance of socio-economic variables in influencing leisure behavior (Kelly, 1974; 1978; Edwards, 1981).Institutional FactorsMuseums are not passive institutions; their actions and the public's perceptions of those actions, influence who visits and who does not visit. At the most basic level, museums contain differing types of information and objects; zoos afford different learning opportunities than art museums and hence attract or repel different types of visitors (cf., Falk & Dierking, 1992; Falk, 1993). Less obvious though, is the fact that historical and present day policies, including such seemingly benign policies as operating hours and pricing and such not-so-benign policies as (historical) segregation and exclusion, overtly or covertly influence who visits (West, 1989; Wicks & Crompton, 1990; Jones, 1983). In some cases, it is not necessarily the institution itself, but the neighborhood in which the museum is located which influences utilization (T. Washington, personal communication, April 1991).Another critical institutional variable determining museum visitation is how individuals learn about the institution. …

Refuse to Stand Silently By: An Oral History of Grass Roots Social Activism in America, 1921-64.

Refuse to Stand Silently By: An Oral History of Grass Roots Social Activism in America, 1921-64.

Refuse to Stand Silently By: An Oral History of Social Activism in America, 1921-1964. Eliot Wigginton

<i>Refuse to Stand Silently By: An Oral History of Social Activism in America, 1921-1964</i>. Eliot Wigginton

JAMAICAN POSSES: A NEW FORM OF ORGANIZED CRIME

ABSTRACT Jamaican organized crime activities have dramatically increased over the past two decades in the United States. These criminals organized into groups called posses initially trafficked in marijuana. However, posses have recently moved into the lucrative cocaine trade and now dominate the street- level marketing of crack cocaine in many American urban areas. This paper examines the rise of posse activity in America. The economic, social, and political situation in Jamaica is analyzed because these factors led to emigration and settlement in this country. Posse members from Jamaica migrated to this country and formed crime groups in various cities. Jamaican posses are also compared to traditional organized crime groups. A research agenda on posses is also outlined.

'Women's Bitterest Enemy': The Uses of the Psychology of Fashion

In 1950S America the psychologist was king; his diagnosis and his cure were sought for all manner of contemporary social ills from juvenile delinquency to marital infidelity, and fashion was seen in some quarters to take its place amongst these social problems, typical of a psychologically troubled, affluent society. This certainly was the view held by Edmund Bergler, author of Fashion and the Unconscious, published in 1953.1 Bergler's previous books, which include Frigidity in Women, 1953, Psychic Impotence in Men, 1937, Unhappy Marriage and Divorce, 1946, Divorce Won't Help, 1948, Conflicts in Marriage, 1949, Money and Emotional Conflicts, 1951, clearly mark out the territory and world view of the writer. The intended readership for such titles can be presumed to be a broad and popular one although he also maintained an academic and professional publishing record.2 Two of his later books, Homosexuality: Disease or Way of Life?, 1956, and One Thousand Homosexuals, 1958, and his vigorous contestation of the Kinsey Report's claims of the previously unrecognized level of homosexual activity in America, also indicate a colouring to the ideas developed in Fashion and the Unconscious. Whilst Bergler has occasionally been cited in the literature of fashion history and theory, this book has not to my knowledge received any detailed study.3 My purpose here is twofold: firstly to reveal the hazards of psychological perspectives of fashion when they are detached from any recognition of the complex particularities of social and historical patterns. But secondly I hope to show how this psychoanalytic approach, far from maintaining any position of scientific objectivity, in fact reflects disguised misogynistic and homophobic currents of thought, prevalent within a given social ideology. Fashion has throughout history been exposed to a constant didactic of disapproval. Indeed the emergence of fashion as a topic for comment in the first place seems to have arisen from the desire to censure it. Whether the complaint is against excessive show of wealth or against sexual immodesty, whether the appeal emanates from the values of Christianity or Humanism, the sins of pride and lust (note the church Latin for lust is 'luxuria') are accusations which are inextricably woven into the history of fashion. So it is perhaps not so surprising, then, that psychology should be drawn into collusion with the puritanical and patriarchal aims of post-Second World War American ideology, in supplying a more modern basis for constraining self-expression in terms of fashion and personal appearance, by marginalizing fashion as potentially deviant and dangerous. It is not Bergler's method to establish a tightly constructed new theory of fashion; he respects some aspects of J. C. Flugel's arguments for example,4 but often departs from him on matters of Freudian interpretation. Elsewhere, he draws on anthropological findings, but rather indiscriminately, and generally from early material such as the writings of J. G. Frazer. Rarely are his deductions shaped in any way by historical specificity and much of his discussion draws illustrative examples from nineteenth-century French Romantic and Symbolist literature, which he is ready to transpose to post-Second World War America without any apparent need of modification. His main theoretical position is concerned with challenging sociological arguments by centring the understanding of fashion in terms of a widespread pattern of psychological complexes. But despite the relative denial of historical method in his own working procedures, Bergler was a man of a certain time-he was born in Austria in 1899, worked at the Freud clinic in Vienna from 1927 to 1937, and moved to New York in 1938 where he practised; he died in 1961-and one can assume that his ideas reflect a considerable area of widely held male attitudes in both Europe and the USA during that period, especially since he enjoyed some success as a popular writer on psychology and much of his data is based on case studies of his patients under analysis.

Three books for perspective on religious public relations

The three volumes reviewed here provide further perspectives on the nature of religion in society and the role of public relations in religious activity in America. Dr. Badaracco is an assistant professor of communication at Marquette University and guest editor of this issue of Public Relations Review.

An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era.

An American Ordeal is a comprehensive interpretive history that covers the anti-war movement in the USA throughout the entire Vietnam era. This study offers a narrative of the struggle that took place on the home front, even as the war itself was being waged in South-east Asia. Portraying the movement as a social force that energized people culturally yet failed to develop enduring political strength, the authors view the war as part of the long tradition of peace activism in America, as well as a process that ultimately spurred citizens to take decisive action against their government's policy. Beginning with the rise of a liberal peace movement against atmospheric nuclear testing from 1955 to 1963, the authors describe the emergence of radical pacifists and politically motivated groups who eventually created a diverse coalition against the Vietnam War. They examine how extremist elements came to dominate the movement in the late 1960s, to be supplanted by a larger consensus of liberal and pacifist groups in the early 1970s.

Visions of the New World in the Drama of Lope de Vega

This study examines Lope de Vega's three extant plays concerning Spain's activity in America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the intention of revealing the dramatist's thought concerning his nation's overseas enterprise and his attitudes toward the conquerors and natives of America. To determine Lope's opinions, the author has compared each play with its sources, showing where the dramatist has followed his sources and where he has departed from them. Lope's attitudes are most probably perceived when he departs from information offered by his sources.

Religion and Radical Labor Unionism: American States in the 1920's

Some social scientists have suspected that participation in radical movements satisfies human yearnings for transcendence just as does religious involvement. Accordingly, they have claimed that a pronounced though inverse relationship ought to exist between political extremism and commitment to traditional religion. Aggregate data support this position. Whole geographical regions such as the American West seem both to repel incursion by the institutional church and to spawn and nurture extreme politics. Others like the South sustain a conservative religious culture and seemingly drive away attempts at political innovation. This study evaluates the purported relationship between religion and politics in the historical context of the 1920's. Multiple regression analyses employing church membership totals by state are used to predict levels of activity in America's most radical labor movement of the period, the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.). In turn, numbers of I.W.W. branches are compared with levels of church membership in those same states at a later date. The findings indicate that, even after controlling for population size, industrialization, and region of the country, religion and radical unionism exerted a negative effect on one another. States in which church membership was relatively high before the 1920's proved immune to the spread of labor radicalism, while places where the I.W.W. was already established had difficulty promoting church membership.

Sparing the Rod: Discipline and Fiction in Antebellum America

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT HAS BEEN one of the most perennially vexed of questions in American cultural history. Discipline performed on the body became an issue in America as early as the importation of Lockean educational thought in the eighteenth century. Since then, attitudes toward the practice have remained both passionate and sharply divergent, and the issue of the corporal continues to be reignited through the frictions of local cultural conflict. (The Supreme Court was adjudicating one such conflict when it ruled in 1977 that corporal correction as practiced in Florida schools is not an unconstitutional form of cruel and unusual punishment.)' But if the issue of the corporal is by no means confined to one period, it is still fair to say that it has its historical center of gravity in America in the antebellum decades. In the 1830s, then even more prominently in the 1840s and early 1850s, the picturing of scenes of physical correction emerges as a major form of imaginative activity in America, and arguing the merits of such discipline becomes a major item on the American public agenda. Noting this fact, we might ask: What is at issue in corporal punishment when it is most intensely at issue in American cultural history? What is being thought when the lash becomes a figure of thought in the antebellum years? The antislavery movement is one obvious headquarters for the antebellum imagination of the lash. Frederick Douglass's searing accounts of whippings witnessed and endured in his Narrative (1845); the other slave narratives of the 1840s and 1850s that, like Douglass's, make whipping notjust a memorably experienced scene but specifically the scene of initiation into slavery itself; Theodore Dwight Weld's compendium of documentary horror stories American Slavery As It Is (1839), in which whipping scenes are multiplied with truly Boschian iteration: such examples remind us how compulsively the scene of corporal correction is repeated in American antislavery writing, and how central it is made to the image of slavery that writing constructs.2 We could analyze the particular contours that these picturings give to their subject-could note how they foreground the embodiedness of whipping, the bodily enacted and bodily received nature of its

British Military Theatre in New York in 1780–81

From October 20, 1774, when the Continental Congress passed a resolution outlawing theatrical activities in America, until the formation of the Lindsay-Wall troupe that began performing illegally in Maryland in 1781 and, under the management of Dennis Ryan, shifted its base of operations to New York in 1783, the theatre in America was in a near-dormant state. The only significant exceptions to this condition were the productions of the occupying British military in various American localities, and a few productions by American military officers given in response.

Black Activists: Ten Years Later

1960s was a turbulent decade for the political socialization of college youth. protests by black students against southern segregation mushroomed rapidly and drew harsh reaction from white southerners, resulting in new laws and ordinances, physical abuse, and large scale arrests. These actions in turn fanned the flames of militancy, and the civil rights movement which up to that time had been led by middle-class black adults was rejuvenated.1 empirical research on the black student movement2 focuses on the causal antecedents in order to explain the structural conditions and socialization characteristics of students who are most likely to participate in the student movement. There are no published studies tracing the effects of the movement on the early black activists. One of the most extensive studies on blacks in politics did, however, predict that black student activists of this period would become a militant leadership class in the following decades.3 Matthews and Prothro found that black student activists *Work on this paper was supported in part by a National Institute of Education Grant NEG 00-3-0312 and a National Institute of Mental Health Special Fellowship 1-F03-MH 58378-01X1. authors thank Vernetta Young for her data gathering assistance and the Institute for Quantitative Studies in the Social Sciences, University of Washington, for programming assistance. lAnthony M. Orum, Students in (Washington, D.C.: American Sociological Association, 1973). 2See: E. C. Harrison, Unrest on the Campus, Journal of Education, XLI (Spring, 1972), 113-120; Durward Long, Black Protest, in J. Foster and D. Long (eds.), Protest! Student Activism in America (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1970); G. A. Lowe, Jr., and S. F. McDowell, Participation-Nonparticipation Differences in the Howard University Student Protest, Journal of Education, XL (Winter, 1971), 81-90; Donald Matthews and James Prothro, Negroes and the New Southern Politics (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966); Joan M. Orbell, Protest Participation Among Southern College Students, American Political Science Review, LXI (June, 1967), 446-456; Orum, op. cit.; Ruth Searles and J. Allen Williams, Jr., Negro College Students' Participation in Sit-ins, Social Forces, XL (March, 1962), 215-219; and Charles U. Smith, The Sit-ins and the New Student, Journal of Intergroup Relations, II (Summer 1961), 223-229. Smith also discusses earlier protest activities in Activism, Benign and Scholarly Irresponsibility, Florida A & M University Bulletin, 20 (September, 1974), 65-76. 3Mathews and Prothro, op. cit.

Student Politics in America: A Historical Analysis. By Philip G. Altbach. (New York: McGraw Hill Book Co., 1974. Pp. 249. $6.95, cloth; $3.95, paper.)

Students have periodically played an important role in campus political life as well as in societal politics. Students were active in the anti-slavery movement; they rebelled against military service in the Civil War; they staged demonstrations during the Depression; and they were vocal during the 1960s. While activism has subsided somewhat in the past three decades, students continue to be involved in significant political issues. Student Politics in America is the first book to chronicle the entire history of student political activism in America--dealing not only with the periods when students were dramatically involved in politics, but also focusing on less active periods. This book provides a sense of the entire history of political involvement and the evolution of student organizations and attitudes toward politics. Student religious organizations that have been involved in social activism are discussed, as are student government organizations, which are generally ignored in analyses of campus life. Altbach shows that, at least since the 1930s, there is an ideological trend toward liberal and radical activism, yet at the same time conservative student organizations have also been influential. Politics on the campus is a multifaceted phenomenon, and Altbach handles the complexity of student political life in a carefully nuanced manner. In a new preface, the author discusses his reasons and motivation for originally writing Student Politics in America. In his new introduction, he brings the history of student activism, and the lack thereof, up to date. Student Politics in America provides a unique historical perspective on the political activities of college and university students in the United States and will be an important contribution to the personal libraries of educators, university administrators, students, political scientists, and historians.