Black History Research Articles

Recent gay Black history in the UK

Recent gay Black history in the UK

Disentangling the Knots of Diasporic Identity through the Prism of Postpositivist Realism in Caryl Phillips’ Crossing the River

Crossing the River (1993) holds within itself a whole history of the Black Diaspora. This history churned through the memories of various characters unfolds before the reader the experience of exile, disillusionment, and loneliness and depicts the diasporic ambivalence and hegemony of the Whites. Through a story of three black people during different time periods and on different continents as they struggle with separation from their native Africa, the novelist invites readers to see how individual stories are intertwined in the wider tapestry of collective memory. Phillips is interested in how narratives of slavery inform the contemporary migrant condition. Phillips explores the myriad associations and connecting points within black history on the imaginative terra firma of his fiction. He calls upon the reader to delve deeper into the ‘visible and obvious’ and to see how the present identities acquired their shape and characteristics; how the cauldron of collective memories, narratives, and stories produced enduring tales of affirmation and resilience. The novel acquires new contours when seen in the light of the Postpositivist realist approach. The theoretical approach enriches the thematic understanding of the novel and substantiates the idea that the concept of identity necessitates a valid epistemological inquiry.

Imagining black feminist geographies of Johannesburg through Senzeni Marasela’s creative (un/re)mapping of Johannesburg’s mine slopes

ABSTRACT Part of the project of philosophy is to problematise how the world is known, including destabilising geography as one of the dominant imperialist discourses. In the Afropolis, legacies of colonialism and Apartheid still work to uphold spatial inequality within urban spaces in ways that are both racialised and gendered. Black feminist scholar, Katherine McKittrick, provides a fruitful theoretical foundation to consider postcolonial cities from a renewed epistemological perspective. In the 2006 book Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle, McKittrick works alongside and across traditional geographies through critical black geographies that centre a black feminist sense of place. In considering ‘a black sense of place’, McKittrick demonstrates how transatlantic slavery enforced and naturalised the connection between blackness and placelessness. She writes to document black women geographies and provides a narrative that locates and draws on black histories and black subjects to ‘make visible social lives which are often displaced, rendered ungeographic’. This paper places McKittrick in conversation with the work of South African artist Senzeni Marasela through their selected literary and artistic works to explore alternative feminist geographies of Johannesburg’s decommissioned mine slopes/dumps, and to emphasise the liberatory potential of a black feminist point of departure in relation to the mining–industrial complex. The argument is not merely that Johannesburg needs to become more inclusive to black feminist understandings of place, but rather that the centring of black feminist geographical knowledges has the subversive ability to reshape how the city is known in the first place. In doing so, this paper hopes to ‘raise questions about the ground beneath our feet, and how we are all implicated in the production of space’.

We've been here before: Reactions to the murder of George Floyd and subsequent protests for justice.

This study assessed differences in Black and White Americans' reactions to the murder of George Floyd and the presence of White Americans at the subsequent protests for justice. Black and White Americans (N = 290) took part in an online study in which they responded to questions regarding their reactions to the murder of George Floyd, the subsequent protests for justice, and critical knowledge (e.g., previous experiences with police and broad knowledge of Black history). Results of a preregistered study showed that Black (relative to White) Americans were more surprised by the extent of White participation in protests for justice. Also, Black Americans were more alarmed (i.e., emotionally jarred) by Floyd's murder. These differences in reactions were explained by Black (relative to White) Americans having more negative experiences with police brutality, both personally and among close others. This suggests that reactions to police brutality are experientially rooted, joining long-standing calls to center the lived experiences of Black Americans in psychological research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

“That Fight Still Goes On”: Narratives of Integration and Activism

Discussions of Black history and school desegregation in many K-12 schools have been narrowed to a few heroic figures and moments. Historic representations are currently challenged by a nationwide movement to uphold White supremacy and deny the violent history of racism in the US. The revisionist claims are challenged in this qualitative narrative research project that presents stories gathered from 10 Black educators in Augusta, Georgia, who recount their stories of desegregating schools and institutions as students or educators. This oral history narrative project imagines these stories as the basis for engaging K-12 teachers and students in creating new curricula.

Curating Virality: Exploring Curated Logics Within #BlackLivesMatter on Twitter/X

This study examines what types of messages users posted and spread about #Black/Blue/AllLivesMatter during the Black History Month of 2022. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, about one million tweets were analyzed to test if different levels of opinion leaders tend to spread different kinds of messages related to the context. Using the curation logic of Thorson and Well and Lakoff’s semantic theory as theoretical lenses, we offer some observations about the differences in logics (incentives and norms) that opinion leaders in our dataset might face. We find that different levels of opinion leaders shared different types of messages. The implications of this study call for strategies that foster meaningful discussions on social movements amid polarized views. The study also advocates for refining platform design to encourage the dissemination of factual information over contentious arguments and reaching a societal consensus on critical social issues, such as racial inequality and police brutality. This research contributes to updating the theory of curation logics, virality, and opinion leaders, as well as provides empirical data for the discussions of the #BlackLivesMatter social movement and its related discussions of #AllLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter.

Building the Black History and Visual Culture collection at Penn State University Libraries

The Penn State University Libraries recently published the Black History and Visual Culture digital collection — a curated selection of photographs, poster art, pamphlets and audiovisual materials documenting Black student life at Penn State, as well as Black political and social movements throughout the 20th century. The conception and development of the collection is highly collaborative, involving contributions from Special Collections Library curators, technical service specialists and the digital collections development team. Public programming in support of the collection and use of the collection in outreach and instruction are key parts of its ongoing stewardship. This paper analyses the initial development of the collection, the digitisation process and future plans for collection development.

Vibrant Africa

This feature covers the recent Art After Dark: Museum Nights event hosted on February 8th at the Harn Museum. Titled "Vibrant Africa," the event encouraged families to commemorate Black History Month through an evening of art, music, food, and celebration.

KNOw Your History KNOw Yourself: Fugitive Praxes of Black Joy During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Set against the backdrop of anti-Blackness and the COVID-19 pandemic, this study explored the context and emergence of Black Joy as a group of Black elders and youth co-designed and implemented a social studies curriculum rooted in the exploration of Black history in their local community. The co-authors utilized kitchen table talk methodologies to illuminate the ideological, pedagogical, curricular, and spatial praxes of several youth and elders who designed and taught the curriculum. Findings from this study reveal the ways that Black Joy functions as ideological rememberance of social movements, pedagogical and curricular praxes rooted in transformation, and spatial contextualizations of education that embody love, community, and the imagination. The co-authors conclude with recommendations for K-12 educators to utilize the conceptualization of Black Joy put forth in this study to (a) learn from and integrate Black social movements into their praxes and (b) develop intergenerational relationships with Black storytellers and their stories.

35th Anniversary and Black History Month

35th Anniversary and Black History Month

Celebrating Black History Month, Inspiring Our Young People.

Celebrating Black History Month, Inspiring Our Young People.

The Dot: Statistics, Society, and Graphic Design, c. 1830–1970

Abstract This article takes Chermayeff & Geismar Associates’ cover designs for a paperback reprint series, “Studies in American Negro Life” (1968–c. 1972), as a starting point for investigating the history of the dot as a tool for social-statistical visualization. It first situates the series—which re-issued texts on Black history, sociology, and literature—within the context of 1960s urban unrest in the United States and shows how the arrangements of dots on each cover relate to contemporaneous experiments in urban cartography. It then traces a longer genealogy, considering the dot in relation to the 19th-century emergence of “society” and “the social” as novel epistemic concepts that came to serve as the primary objects of study for the modern social sciences in the 20th century. I address the integral role of statistics in this history, demonstrating how the logic of aggregation that undergirds statistical thinking has been habitually visualized through the dot. The article concludes by returning to the book series, addressing some of the individual covers and arguing that by evoking the visual vocabulary of the social sciences, the cover designs frame the series as a social scientific project overall.

Poetry: Teaching Black History in Black History Month in the Era of Better Not Teach History

Poetry: Teaching Black History in Black History Month in the Era of Better Not Teach History

A History of Black Psychologists: Interview With Rihana Mason, PhD

This Black History Month, you’re invited to learn about important Black pioneers in psychology and some of their meaningful contributions to the field. Returning guest Dr. Rihana Mason unpacks notable leaders, power couples, HBCUs, and more. Brought to you by Psi Chi.

Intersectionality of Race, Class, and Politics in Tayari Jones's Leaving Atlanta

Tayari Jones's first novel Leaving Atlanta (2002) portrays the focus the African-American encounters in the Southern United States, particularly the ways in which their lives are affected by the inequitable structures in which they reside. Jones’s writing is a performance of her desire to bring the marginalized history of Blacks to the center and others to the margin. Leaving Atlanta is a narrative with three distinct voices that explores the process of maturing and highlights the government's failure to protect the black population in Atlanta during the Atlanta Child Murders of 1979-81. Jones brings in all the historical past within the framework of ‘intersectionality’ to express the tragic incidents in a wider view. The objective of the paper is to delve into the interconnectedness between age, race, class, gender, and politics in the backdrop of the Atlanta Child Murders to provide justice for the traumatizing events that happened to innocent children. Jones opted to employ the viewpoints of youngsters in her novel in order to document the experiences of those young individuals who lacked the cognitive capacity to comprehend the intricate social and political milieu of Atlanta.

Gabriel's Failed Revolution of 1800: Causes and Prerequisites

This work is devoted to a very little-studied topic of the Virginia Slave Conspiracy led by Gabriel and is the first study of this issue in Russian historiography. The present article analyzes in detail the causes and prerequisites of the failed uprising of 1800. At the same time, the author relies on the published materials of the trial and the works of leading Western researchers. 
 The first part is devoted directly to the history of studying this issue. Using historical-genetic and retrospective methods, the author traces the influence of foreign policy, domestic political, social, economic, demographic, socio-cultural factors on the formation of a socially explosive situation in Virginia by 1800, and
 also identifies a number of subjective reasons and prerequisites for a slave conspiracy, such as: motives of personal revenge and banal miscalculations of the authorities who did not take proper measures. At the same time, the main emphasis is on comparing approaches and substantiating the complex of causes and
 prerequisites in Western historiography.
 As a result, the author comes to the conclusion that in the case of Gabriel's conspiracy, it is not just about a failed uprising, but about the emergence in Virginia of the late XVIII – early XIX centuries of a real revolutionary situation, the formation of which was facilitated by a combination of interrelated factors.
 The results of the research conducted in this article can be used in research and teaching activities related to the study of American history and the history of the African-American people (Black History).

“Coming Together Educationally Creates a Bond Like No Other”: Exploring How Families Engage in Black History Home Learning

Black home learning environments during the COVID-19 pandemic may have played a significant role in children’s learning. We piloted Brilliant Joy in a Box, caregiver-child Black history home learning boxes, with a sample of 100 families in a predominantly Black, midwestern city. Families received boxes for six months and completed whole family activities during virtual “unboxings.” In the current study, we explored caregivers’ ( n = 57) open-ended responses to a mid-program survey about their experiences utilizing the boxes. Eighty eight percent of families endorsed using the family activity sheets ( n = 51) and eighty four percent endorsed that they read and received the text messages ( n = 49). Using the rapid and rigorous qualitative data analysis technique, we found three main themes: (a) eliciting children’s joy, (b) cultivating Black history home learning, and (c) promoting family cohesion. The Brilliant Joy in a Box project seemed to positively contribute to family joy, serve as a catalyst for celebrating Black history, and provide an opportunity for families to continue or increase their role in their children’s learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Deconstructing dread: Teaching through Black histories

Some Black histories are absolutely dreadful. When we consider enslavement, racial violence, the terrors in the lynching of Emmett Till, the destruction of Tulsa during the Race Massacre, and the intergenerational traumas these events left behind, the residues of dread are made visible. Black histories are in a contentious social-political moment that often eradicates them from instructional programming or discounts their inclusion to simple stories that privilege educators’ comfort over students’ critical engagement (Jones, 2022). Years of miseducation (Woodson, 1933) document horrors done in the name of Black histories that require a revival through curricular pedagogical resuscitation or CPR (Johnson & Nicol, 2020), using strategies to move beyond the dread. This paper examines the experiences of educators deconstructing and moving beyond the “dread” through engagement with (1) spirit, (2) contextualized histories, and (3) otherworldly and beyond human means to show possibilities of moving through dread to center Black humanity. The discussion illuminates examples of teaching beyond the “dread” while outlining suggestions for anyone teaching Black histories.

Loyalty, Subjecthood, and Violence: Veracruz’s Afro-descendants in the Early Mexican War of Independence, 1812–1813

Abstract: This article is centered around the experiences of Afro-descendant men in the 1812–1813 period of the Mexican War of Independence as it occurred in the port-city of Veracruz and it Sotavento (Leeward) hinterland. It argues that Black men had complex, active, and essential roles in providing the backbone of regional royalist and insurgent armies. It pieces together the fragmented military and political agency of Veracruz’s Afro-descendant men as reflected in published and unknown archival sources of the colonial and national archive, such as military reports and correspondence, constitutions, decrees, 19th Century published accounts, and a lengthy court case. This article sheds light on how Afro-descendant men were pushed to participate by their individual and collective needs, reacting to localized, and transatlantic, conditions that promised, or excluded them from, social, economic, and political advancement. By centering Veracruz’s Afro-descendant men as instrumental players of the war, even in leadership roles, this article seeks to problematize traditional narratives of the struggle that negate and erase Black History in the Mexican struggle for liberation. This article also places their experiences within the backdrops of Atlantic World politics during the Age of Revolutions. It examines the ways by which they reacted to limiting frameworks of citizenship influenced by localized, and transatlantic, Anti-Black stereotypes and fears, along with the adoption of the 1812 Cádiz Charter. This article argues that these men found themselves amidst the paradox of being militarily wanted but politically rejected by nineteenth century Spanish colonialism. This led Afro-descendant men to seek new opportunities of belonging and empowerment, joining the insurgency to improve their sociopolitical status. This article seeks to humanize voiceless Afro-descendant historical actors placing them as essential players of Veracruz’s, and the Greater Caribbean’s, early-nineteenth century regional dynamics.

Blackening the Frame: Kerry James Marshall's Rythm Mastr

ABSTRACTThis essay argues Marshall is “blackening the frame” with his African‐centric comic series Rythm Mastr. The series is a corrective to the overwhelming whiteness of canonical comics and the silencing and erasure of Black people in American popular culture and fine art. Through the incorporation of Yoruba figures within the superhero genre, Marshall explores Black history and reframes American popular culture towards an African‐oriented future as part of a broader insurgence among Black comic creators.