African American History Research Articles

The Long Life and History of the Ebony Test Kitchens

In 2022, the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) acquired the Ebony Test Kitchen—the space used to test and style recipes for the iconic magazine, Ebony, from 1972 to 2010. Noted for its eye-popping colors and technological advances, the kitchen was designed by William Raiser and Arthur Elrod and located in Chicago-based Johnson Publications Company’s headquarters. The Ebony Test Kitchen has garnered significant attention since being saved from demolition in 2017, placed on display in the Museum of Food and Drink’s 2021 exhibition African/American: Making the Nation’s Table, and acquired by the NMAAHC. Public excitement about the NMAACH’s shrouded plans for it remains high. This article examines the long life of the kitchen, from its functional origins to its grassroots rescue from demolition to its transformation into a cultural and museum-made object. It also explores the importance of the kitchen as a counternarrative to ideas about food and race that devalue and have stigmatized Black culinary contributions in American kitchens. JPC has been lauded as the company that “revolutionized how Black Americans saw themselves.” This article will illustrate how the Ebony Test Kitchen and its functions transformed the image of Black Americans and food.

Marissa H. Baker. Review of "The Art of Remembering: Essays on African American Art and History" by Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw.

Marissa H. Baker. Review of "The Art of Remembering: Essays on African American Art and History" by Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw.

Review: Black Lives in Alaska: A History of African Americans in the Far Northwest, by Ian C. Hartman and David Reamer

Review: <i>Black Lives in Alaska: A History of African Americans in the Far Northwest</i>, by Ian C. Hartman and David Reamer

IDENTITY CONFUSION IN DOROTHY WEST’S THE LIVING IS EASY

Literature is a media for conveying the authors’ ideas and feelings to the payers, or it is a mean of relief for them to bare their souls. In this context, literature involves an enormous place in human life. In this regard, African American literature has an important place in American literature and culture. It is also one of the strongest pillars of the literature produced by black writers in the United States of America. African American literature goes and continues in the course of history as oral literature from generation to generation. Since African Americans’ place changes gradually in the USA- due to racism in particular- their viewpoint of literature changes, too. African American history predates the foundation of the United States of America as an independent country, so their literature has deep roots, consisting of rich oral culture in poetry, including gospel music, blues, rap, and spirituals along with written poetry, and slave narrations. Although African Americans come from slave ancestors, they have been able to leave a deep effect on the literature of the United States when they are brought to the continent of America. African American literature is mainly based on autobiographical spiritual narratives, and before the American Civil War African Americans’ literature consists of memoirs of people who escape from slavery. So, African American literature has witnessed the problem of racial discrimination in its existential aspect. But in the progress of time, black writers go deep into verbal literature and perform their own experiences. Dorothy West, in her novel Living is Easy criticizes the blacks who mimes the whites. When we scrutinize, it is possible to penetrate that the writer wants to reflect her own experiences via narration and criticizes her own past. Writing is a kind of purgation for West since she writes about herself. In this study, we aim to point out the impulses that foster Dorothy West’s narration from a Freudian point of view.

Understanding admixture fractions: theory and estimation of gene-flow.

Estimation of admixture proportions has become one of the most commonly used computational tools in population genomics. However, there is remarkably little population genetic theory on statistical properties of these variables. We develop theoretical results that can accurately predict means and variances of admixture proportions within a population using models with recombination and genetic drift. Based on established theory on measures of multilocus disequilibrium, we show that there is a set of recurrence relations that can be used to derive expectations for higher moments of the admixture proportions distribution. We obtain closed form solutions for some special cases. Using these results, we develop a method for estimating admixture parameters from estimated admixture proportions obtained from programs such as Structure or Admixture. We apply this method to HapMap 3 data and find that the population history of African Americans, as expected, is not best explained by a single admixture event between people of European and African ancestry. The model of constant gene flow starting at 8 generations and ending at 2 generations before present gives the best fit.

The Reflection of African American History and Culture in African American Literature

This paper explores the intricate relationship between African American history, culture, and literature, highlighting how African American literary works serve as a profound reflection of the community's historical and cultural journey. By examining significant historical periods such as slavery, Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement, and contemporary issues, the paper delves into the impact of these events on African American identity and cultural expression. Additionally, it analyzes the representation of African American cultural elements like music, oral traditions, and religious practices in literature. Through a detailed examination of selected literary works, the paper reveals how African American authors articulate the complexities of their experiences, capturing themes of resilience, resistance, and identity. This study underscores the importance of literature in preserving and conveying the rich history and culture of African Americans, offering a deeper understanding of their enduring struggle for justice and equality.

Recipes for Life: Black Women, Cooking, and Memory

In African American history, food has functioned as expression of colonial power and control, and as a source of Black celebration and liberation. Cookbooks written by Black women from the mid-eighteenth century to late twentieth century reflect the long history of the development of African American cuisine. These texts are practical and instructional, while also offering insights into the transnational development of food as an expression of cultural history through African, Indigenous, and European influences. African Americans, and more specifically Black women, have contributed to the food history of the Southern United States by developing a distinct African American cuisine and creating the texts by which to publicly declare their knowledge and ensure its survival. By analyzing the cookbooks of Malinda Russell, Edna Lewis, Vertamae Smith-Grosvenor, and Carole and Norma Jean Darden, a timeline of cookbooks from the Civil War to the Black Power Movement can be established. Their commonalities, including the use of cookbooks as autobiographies, community memoirs, and genealogical records, are features that resonated with the Civil Rights Movement in the latter half of the twentieth century. Food is more than a means of survival. It is a constantly evolving expression of culture, people, and celebration.

Reclaiming History: The Role of Memory in Afro-American Literature

This research explores the pivotal role of memory in Afro-American literature, focusing on its multifaceted functions as a tool of resistance, cultural preservation, and historical reinterpretation. Memory in Afro-American literature emerges as a dynamic force that not only documents personal and collective experiences but also challenges dominant narratives of oppression and erasure. Through a nuanced examination of literary works spanning from slave narratives such as Frederick Douglass' "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave" (1845) to contemporary novels like Toni Morrison's "Beloved" (1987), this study illuminates how memory serves as a means of reclaiming agency and identity amidst historical trauma.The research discusses critiques of relying on memory in literature, acknowledging concerns about subjectivity and historical accuracy. It argues that memory in Afro-American literature transcends mere recollection, offering profound insights into the complexities of African American experiences and histories. By exploring examples such as Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" (1937) and James Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time" (1963), the study demonstrates how Afro-American authors use memory to confront systemic injustices, preserve cultural heritage, and inspire social activism.Ultimately, Afro-American literature's enduring legacy lies in its ability to reshape historical narratives through the transformative power of memory. By interrogating memory's intersections with literature and activism, this research invites readers to engage critically with the past and envision a future grounded in truth, empathy, and reconciliation. Through its exploration of memory's role in shaping identity, justice, and cultural resilience, Afro-American literature continues to provoke thought and inspire meaningful dialogue on the enduring legacies of slavery, segregation, and the ongoing quest for equality.

Sister Gertrude Morgan: A Ministry of Divergence—Exhibit review

AbstractThe discourse around Black History in Florida's public schools and public spaces has been notably controversial and in high demand in recent years. Black museums are few in the Tampa Bay area, making the Woodson African American History Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, a community treasure. The Woodson Museum partnered with the Montague Collection, launching Women's History Month in March 2024 by featuring the “Sister Gertrude Morgan: A Ministry of Divergence” exhibition. This exhibit centers on religion, rhythms, and artistry. Sister Gertrude Morgan was an African American, New Orleans‐based, multidisciplinary artist and street evangelist from the late 1950s to the mid‐1970s. Morgan repurposed the streets into her muse, medium, pulpit, and exhibition space in a way that can serve as a Black museum praxis framework.

The economics behind Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series

In the early 1940s, Black artist Jacob Lawrence painted a series of 60 panels that are now collectively called The Migration Series. The panels tell the story of how Black Americans migrated from the South to the North, beginning with World War I. The panels provide an uncommon example of the intersection of economics, Black American history, and art that can be used in a variety of economics classes. The artist and the subject allow instructors to easily address diversity and inclusion in their classrooms. This article’s author provides background on Jacob Lawrence and the Great Migration and insights into the economics found in the panels themselves. Finally, suggestions on how to use The Migration Series in a variety of classes are discussed.

The Problem and the Solution: Centering Taxation in the History of Civil Rights

When African-American history is done well, it allows us to see the places where inequality hides. Scholars in the areas of the history of capitalism, African-American history, and urban studies have popularized the language of historical phenomena such as white flight, redlining, and privatization, in the process of explaining the origins of contemporary challenges. A reasonably educated person understands that deindustrialization at mid-century led to job losses. Every May, pundits write essays about the failure to equalize schools as the nation memorializes the anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Popular journalists Ta-Nehisi Coates and Nicole Hannah-Jones owe their careers to their study of historical work in order to leverage public-facing conversations from reparations for slavery to the politicization of the teaching of civil rights. Essentially, good history helps us search for the state practices and policies that soften the blow of inequality, assault human dignity, and normalize poverty. In his deeply researched and thoughtfully written book The Black Tax, Andrew Kahrl addresses another obscure mechanism that has historically worked to dispossess and disadvantage African Americans across regions and generations, and has ensnarled both landowners and tenants. Kahrl's book forces readers and scholars to think about the ways that a lack of federal authority and will to protect Black citizens allowed states and municipalities to assess, tax, and place liens on Black property—from vacant plots to farm land to family homes.

Re-membering Blackness: Digital Archives, Collective Memory, and a University’s Black History

abstract: The Re-membering Blackness Digital Archive at the University of Scranton shares the university’s racial story as part of a campus-wide initiative devoted to reconciliation and collective memory. By bringing together archival records on Black history in a thematic digital collection, the project presents a corrective lens through which the university community transformed its understanding of the historical Black experience on campus and considered how this history reverberates in the present. The initiative contributes to a growing collection of institutional research projects on African American history and the legacies of slavery and racism in higher education. This article considers the metaphor of archives as memory within critical archival literature, and it examines the relationship between archives and collective memory in the context of the University of Scranton’s initiative to recover Black memory.

Michael Ra-Shon Hall, Freedom Beyond Confinement: Travel and the Imagination in African American Cultural History and Letters

Michael Ra-Shon Hall, <i>Freedom Beyond Confinement: Travel and the Imagination in African American Cultural History and Letters</i>

Empowering African‐American museums: The vital role of black museum anthropologists in grantmaking

AbstractMany African American museums face financial constraints and need resources to preserve their collections, create exhibits, and offer educational programs. Grant funding is crucial for the sustainability of these museums. Black anthropologists are essential in grant writing because they provide their extensive knowledge of African American history and culture to help museums develop compelling narratives that resonate with grant funders. Additionally, Black anthropologists are needed as reviewers of grant proposals. By leveraging their unique insights from professional training and personal experiences, Black anthropologists can champion the cause of these museums in the grant‐making process. Their expertise allows them to assess proposals from a culturally sensitive perspective, considering the unique needs, goals, and challenges African American museums face. This essay highlights the significant contributions of Black anthropologists who have advocated for and strengthened grant applications from African American museums, ensuring that they align with the mission and vision of the grant‐making institutions. By helping African American museums secure grant support, Black anthropologists also convey the significance and value of other African American museums.

African American History: A Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Scott Holloway (review)

African American History: A Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Scott Holloway (review)

Sitting Beside the Sit-In: Art Museum Dining and Gastrocuratorial Politics in the Age of Dei

ABSTRACT: This essay challenges the persistent idealizing of art museum restaurants as spaces of diversity and togetherness and instead proposes a more expansive framework of gastrocuratorial politics to confront the colonialist and anti-Black somatic aesthetics manifest within the commissions, designs, and management of eateries in white-dominated collecting art museums. To build this argument, I cross-examine the social politics of dining environments differently but relatedly negotiated within the Tate Britain’s Rex Whistler; The Modern at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; In Situ at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Sweet Home Café at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. By better understanding gastrocuratorial relations of power and how they undermine antioppressive structural change, museums might begin to confront racial gustatory inheritances more intentionally and divest more effectively from white supremacist notions of “happy diversity” at work within hospitality protocols and foodism culture.

Walker’s Appeal... is the main manifesto of radical African-American abolitionism

This work is about one of the key episodes of African-American history and the history of American abolitionism associated with the publication in September 1829 in Boston of Walker’s Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World. The appearance of this “revolutionary appeal” undoubtedly marked a new milestone in the development of the anti-slavery movement and the actual emergence of such a trend as radical African-American abolitionism. The reaction to the release of this document by the authorities of the Southern States can be called unprecedented in its scale and consequences. It found expression in the adoption of a number of repressive laws, which, in turn, marked the beginning of a period of prolonged reaction in the American South, which would end only after the end of the Civil War of 1861–1865. The significance of this event is difficult to overestimate. After almost two centuries, the figure of David Walker and his Appeal still arouse increased interest from Western researchers and not only. However, no serious works on this topic have been published in Russian historiography up to the present moment. This study aims to identify and examine the causes and circumstances of the writing of the Walker’s Appeal…, to analyze the main provisions of this document and the consequences caused by its dissemination. In addition, the author pays special attention to the review of the historiography of this issue. The source base is newspaper publications, letters and bills of the period under review, as well as the text of the Appeal. The methodological basis of the research consists of causal, historical-descriptive, historical-genetic, historical-typological, retrospective, and comparative-historical methods. The materialistic dialectic plays the main role, showing the development of the abolitionist movement in dynamics and the influence of related factors. The author concludes that Walker’s Appeal… became an expression of the most important trend in the development of American abolitionism at the end of the first third of the nineteenth century. The appearance of this document clearly demonstrated the radicalization of the African-American community itself and its willingness to join the struggle for the abolition of slavery and its rights.

A Brief Moment in the Sun: Francis Cardozo and Reconstruction in South Carolina

Neil Kinghan offers an intriguing biography of Francis Cardozo, the first African American to hold statewide office after the Civil War. As secretary of state, and later treasurer of South Carolina, Kinghan reevaluates Cardozo’s historical significance as an instrumental figure in the postwar reconstruction of the state. The primary aim of this book is to “give [Cardozo] the recognition he deserves and restore his place in African American history of the nineteenth century.” In so doing, Kinghan addresses the “still inadequate recognition of the achievements of the period and almost none of the contribution of Francis Cardozo.” The author uses Cardozo’s achievements as minister, educator, and politician to critique the understanding – popularized after Redemption – of Reconstruction as a “tragic era.” Far from a period of failure, he emphasizes Cardozo’s tangible contributions to the enduring successes that African Americans could carry forward after Reconstruction’s demise, and into Jim Crow.

Harriet Tubman's Deep Voice

Abstract The authors suggest that national investment in the educational utility of automated software comes at an enormous cost, a price paid by the very students that technology aims to convert to history as a lively and accessible field. This “high-tech mimicry” pretends to incarnate the past but instead silences the inflections of time, gender, region, race, or other vocalic variables. Further, the perception that technology is objective or unbiased conceals the vulnerabilities of language models. The authors argue that the illusions of authenticity these bots produce does not bode well for teaching African American history.

W.E.B. Du Bois' Autobiographical Legacy: Impact on African American Literature and Civil Rights

This research paper explores the autobiographical legacy of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, commonly known as W.E.B. Du Bois, and its profound influence on African American literature and the Civil Rights Movement. Du Bois, a prominent African American scholar, writer, and civil rights activist, penned a series of autobiographical works that not only documented his own life experiences but also played a pivotal role in shaping the narrative of the African American struggle for civil rights and equality. This paper examines Du Bois' autobiographical writings, including "The Souls of Black Folk," "Dusk of Dawn," and "The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois," and their impact on the broader African American literary tradition and the Civil Rights Movement of the 20th century. By analyzing Du Bois' life and his written accounts, this paper illustrates how his autobiographical legacy contributed to the intellectual and social fabric of African American history.