Black History Research Articles

Rehistoricizing Black Masculinity in The Wonder Years Reboot

Popular entertainment remains one of the last places where Black history lives on despite the recent political erasure of U.S. Black struggles. The 2021 reboot of The Wonder Years, reframing Black masculinity through the young eyes of main character Dean Williams, rehistoricizes modern notions of Black families in the post-Civil Rights Movement. The purpose of this study is to explore Black masculinity media representations within reboot culture as a means to rehistoricize Black struggle and civil rights. Based on discourse analysis, the authors found the following three discourses: Reimagining Black Excellence, Recontextualizing Black Masculinity, and Revisiting Respectability Politics.

Celebrating the contributions of Black nurses to nursing's history.

Kandace Chimbiri, based in London, is the author of several Black history books for children.

Discrimination and health outcomes in England's black communities amid the cost-of-living crisis: evaluating the role of inflation and Bank Rates

ABSTRACT This study utilised longitudinal data from Black History Month events in London from 2021 to 2023. Novel findings revealed that increased inflation and Bank Rates, related to the cost-of-living crisis, were associated with greater discrimination and deteriorations in both general and mental health for Black individuals. Moreover, it was found that during the cost-of-living crisis period, i.e. 2022–2023, discrimination was more adversely related to general and mental health deterioration compared to the period before the cost-of-living crisis, i.e. 2021. In addition, women, non-native individuals, non-heterosexual individuals, the unemployed, economically inactive individuals, those with lower educational attainment, and older individuals experienced higher levels of discrimination and reduced general and mental health compared to reference groups. The findings of the study contribute to the literature by demonstrating the intertwined associations of macroeconomic deteriorations and discrimination with the health of the Black community, and its subgroup differences, providing a basis for targeted policies.

THE TYBEE ISLAND, GEORGIA BLACK HISTORY TRAIL: A COMMUNITY APPROACH to BLACK GEOGRAPHIES

ABSTRACT Tybee Island, Georgia, was a colonial borderland between Spanish and British America before evolving into a middle-class, seaside resort in the 1800s. It continued as a popular vacation spot in the twentieth century. However, research has highlighted the island’s troubling history of racial segregation, particularly surrounding events like the Orange Crush Beach Party. Previous studies also underscored the Historical Society ignoring the island’s Black history in its exhibits. Building on this, a collaborative project emerged in 2021 involving a Georgia Southern University faculty member and undergraduate student, Tybee MLK Human Rights Organization, and Tybee Island Historical Society. The goal was to create a Black History Trail highlighting a rich yet ignored Black history and culture on the island and addressing the exclusion of Tybee’s Black population from museums and markers. This project integrates community geography, focusing on resolving problems like social exclusion, and exploring spatialities of Black life, social oppressions, and resistance. Utilizing archival research, oral history interviews, and ArcGIS, the project developed a 13-stop virtual tour using ESRI Story Maps. We conclude our paper by highlighting the lessons learned during the trail’s development, the multitude of ways the trail embodies the theory of Black geographies in practice, and the broader challenges in honoring Tybee’s Black geographies. Keywords: community geography, Black geographies, Tybee Island, tourism, memory

Moody and Clarke: College members in focus for Black History Month

Moody and Clarke: College members in focus for Black History Month

Mending the Red-Black Thread: Marxism, the Black Radical Tradition, and the Robinson Thesis

Cedric Robinson's increasingly popular and influential work Black Marxism is best understood as a project of post-Marxist critique. Robinson's book, now regarded as a classic, asks a series of important questions of Marxism, but each of its major arguments marks a fundamental departure from the theoretical perspectives of both European and Black Marxists. The book exists in a historical moment of crisis for the left and intellectual retreat from Marxism; Robinson's relationship with Marxism and his place in the political tradition to which he gave a name, the Black Radical Tradition, suggests three main arguments. First, Robinson's critiques of the classical Marxist tradition — focused on its apparent economism and Eurocentrism — are based on a flattening of this tradition and a marked break from Marxist methodology. Second, Robinson's critique does not neatly align with the perspectives of the radical Black intellectuals whom he discusses, and indeed his conclusions are frequently in conflict with them. Third, the emancipatory project of Black Studies and the research programs convened under Robinson's influence will be best served by cautious and critical engagements with Robinson's seminal work. The generative questions that Robinson asks will be better answered through a materialist account of Black history, a syncretic understanding of Black culture, and a nonreductive, revolutionary Marxism providing the guide for political action.

The meaning of Black history: Development and validation of the Scale of Black History Consciousness.

This article describes the development and validation for a measure designed to assess the importance and meaning of Black history-the Scale of Black History Consciousness (SBHC)-in two independently recruited samples of African descent adults. After iterative exploratory (n = 350) and confirmatory (n = 366) factor analytic procedures, a 12-item measure, with scores of two internally consistent factors (sociopolitical beliefs and empowerment beliefs), emerged as the most parsimonious and psychometrically sound. An assessment of scalar measurement invariance using multiple indicators multiple causes modeling indicated that SBHC factors did not differ across racial-ethnic identification or generational status. Validity evidence was established through an examination of bivariate correlations of the SBHC factors with race centrality and impression management. Additionally, participants who endorsed being in environments where learning about Black history was emphasized reported higher SBHC scores than their counterparts who were not exposed to these environments demonstrating known-groups validity. These results provide initial support for the validity and reliability of the SBHC. Findings from this study advance scholarship about the psychological importance of Black history, and the SBHC can contribute to investigations of African descent adults' beliefs about the value of Black history in their lives. Recommendations for further scale development research and practice applications of the SBHC are also discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The Dark Lady’s survival in contemporary Black women’s writing

ABSTRACT This article discusses contemporary literary texts that feature the Dark Lady from Shakespeare’s sonnets as a Black woman from the past inhabiting the present: Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000), Bernadine Evaristo’s Soul Tourists (2005), and Caroline Randall Williams’s Lucy Negro, Redux (2019). The analysis draws on recent approaches to temporality that offer a critique of linear concepts of time and their function for discourses of progress and modernity as well as ‘race’. Through the figure of the Dark Lady, Smith, Evaristo, and Williams address Black history and project anachronic relations between the early modern era and the present moment, as well as between Shakespeare and the contemporary Black woman writer.

”If you do not write your history, history will write you off!” Raising Black histories in Britain

”If you do not write your history, history will write you off!” Raising Black histories in Britain

Roots: Poetry, Performance, and Photography

The editors of Voices in Urban Education (VUE) first became connected to “artivist” Divinity Nix-Sow when she submitted a series of photographs to the student art competition for our special issue focused on community healing, sustenance, and resilience at the intersections of technology, art, and social justice. Alongside her photographs, Divinity emailed us the following: Hi, my name is Divinity Nix-Sow! I’m from Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. I am a poet, natural hair stylist, model, and overall artivist! The theme of this issue really stood out to me because it represents everything I stand for. The photos I’m choosing today are from my Black History Month natural hair shoot! I’ve been a stylist since I was 15. I am self-taught and my business recently turned 5 years old! I also recently wrote a poem called Roots which inspired the entire theme of my photo shoot. I wanted to honor and pay homage to where I started and where I come from. So, I collaborated with my photographer and traveled across NYC for 2 weeks to style all of the models' hair. I shot this in my neighborhood beauty supply store, which the manager let me do free of charge! It’s truly something special when you can take one little idea from your notes app and turn it into reality.  Our editorial team was blown away by the power of Divinity’s poetry, performance, styling, and photography. We have included one of the photographs to introduce the Expressions in Urban Education section of this issue. The full collection of photographs are also included here, along with her poem, Roots, which appears in both written and video format. 

Make Me Black Music Video: A Project of DIVAS for Social Justice

The Make Me Black Music Video is a collaborative project created in 2022 by students of the STEAM for Social Change program to honor Black History Month. The initial idea for the music video was inspired when one of the STEAM for Social Change facilitators first heard the song while listening to a local Minnesota radio station, Purple Current. Also available as an internet stream, the Purple Current radio station focuses on Black music that honors the legacy of the late musician Prince Rogers Nelson. As the facilitator listened to the song Make Me Black, originally performed by Minnesotan Ashley Dubose, they saw it as a medium for teaching students the importance of seeing themselves as beautiful and joyful, while instilling pride in where they come from. Before creating their music video, students engaged in an 8-week session where they learned the history of MTV, including how the channel failed to play any artists of color until Michael Jackson’s Thriller became a global phenomenon in 1983. Students also analyzed the song lyrics, created storyboards using Polaroid cameras, and learned about the fundamentals of music video production. The original music was produced by Rich Lee and performed by Ashley DuBose. The students’ music video was filmed on location at their school sites and the DIVAS for Social Justice makerspace. It also features the artwork of educator and artist, Adam Johnson.

Revolutionary Art and the Creation of the Future: The Afrofuturist Texts of José Antonio Aponte and Martin R. Delany

Afrofuturism (an artistic perspective in which Black voices tell alternative narratives of culture, technology, and the future) and the Dark Fantastic (interrupting negative depictions of Black people through emancipatory interpretations of art) are two interrelated concepts used by Black artists in the Atlantic World to counter negative images and emphasize a story from a Black perspective. Likewise, these concepts have been used to recreate and re-narrate history with an eye towards subverting white supremacist historical narratives. By using Afrofuturism and the Dark Fantastic as lenses through which texts by authors from the African Diaspora in the Atlantic World are examined, an alternative narrative of Black histories and futures concerned with revolution, liberation, and justice can be seen. The two texts that are the subject of this research include José Antonio Aponte’s descriptions of his book of paintings under interrogation in 1812–1813, and Martin Delany’s novel Blake; or the Huts of America (1859–1862), providing images of enslavement that run counter to a white supremacist telling of history. They both imagine alternative pasts and futures for Africa and the Afro-Diaspora involving revolution and magic. These works, though produced at different times and locations in the nineteenth century, offer new ways in which to discuss liberation and freedom in the context of the artistic production of the Atlantic World.

Rewriting the Erased History of Blacks in New Orleans Urban Gardening and Farming

Urban agriculture has gained prominence over the last decade in New Orleans, but the majority of the new gardens and farms that have emerged in the city since 2010 are neither culturally nor socially connected to the vibrant history of local food provisioning in the city’s Black communities. The history is tied closely to the region’s economic boom and bust, systemic oppression and segregation, and the cultural co-optation and devaluation of Black folk foodways in the city. By relying on the oral history to complement where the official or academic documentation has failed to capture the rich history of urban gardening by Black New Orleanians, this article demonstrates that the residents of Black communities in New Orleans once grew their own food, both as a form of collective efficacy and as a way of passing on horticultural knowledge and skills.

Coca in history and the future

Purpose This study aims to question the psychiatric framework currently adopted by governments toward the traditional plants of great cultures, stigmatized by the paradigm of the unfounded psychiatric doctrine and to propose the need for a change of outlook. Design/methodology/approach Documentary research of the “black history” of coca. Documentary research on academic contributions to the revaluation of coca. Findings This brief chronicle of the coca leaf in history, duly documented, proves that its medicinal and energetic prestige was proven and praised by the naturalistic and experimental medicine of the 19th century, a precedent buried by the psychiatric pathologizing version that invented “drug addictions” without any experimental support. Research limitations/implications Psychiatry can be revealed as the authoritarian and unpunished inquisition of the 20th century, in its arbitrary pathologizing version of coca leaf consumption and in most of its professional work. A scientific revolution is taking place (Kuhn, 1962), given that the psychopathological paradigm does not respond to the facts surrounding coca leaf consumption and virtues. The medical perspective must replace the negative psychiatric perspective that the law maintains Practical implications The author concludes that the way out would be to denounce before the Social and Economic Council of the United Nations, with evidence in hand, the fraud in the 1950 UN Commission on Coca Report, due to concealment on information. Social implications Taking advantage of the hygienic and medicinal virtues of plants stigmatized by psychiatry, such as the coca leaf, would put an end to an omnipresent war and give way to peace in the producing areas. Originality/value The questioning of the psychiatric frame of reference adopted by governments to deal with coca leaf consumption has led to the “war on drugs.”

“I would be so proud of you guys and myself:” Exploring guided play learning interactions among Black caregivers and their children within a Black history home learning intervention during the COVID-19 pandemic

Existing literature on Black caregiver’s interactions with their children has overwhelmingly focused on parenting deficits and interventions designed to “fix” Black families. In utilizing the BlackCreate framework (2023), this study explores how Black caregivers intentionally crafted learning spaces for their children within the context of a six month intervention. Brilliant Joy in a Box was a six-month intervention developed in partnership with a Black woman entrepreneur that delivered caregiver-child Black history home learning boxes to families during the COVID-19 pandemic with the goal of addressing the impacts of persistent historical educational inequities for Black youth, the disproportionate impact of the pandemic Black families, and requests from community members seeking additional programming during the winter months. In the current study, we analyzed videos of 77 families interacting during a guided play activity. We found that the learning spaces created by Black families focused on four subject matters and their domains: literacy, scientific curiosity, math, and identity. We also found that Black caregivers organically utilized guided play to promote joyful interaction and learning. Findings underscore the importance of educators and school staff learning from families in order to reimagine learning and design community based interventions.

Communication Approaches to Contemporary Memory Infrastructure: Introducing Amending Our Pasts and Futures Special Issues

This essay introduces “Amending our Pasts and Future: Communication Approaches to Contemporary Memory Infrastructure” Special Issue. The essay begins with addressing the need to approach memory by identifying the infrastructure that produces it, especially investigating how the new media landscape enables and intertwines contemporary material and symbolic memory infrastructures. Following this rationale, the essay introduces the new readings by highlighting their approach and contribution. The articles included examine discourses on statues, media, popular culture, Black press, and digital productions, protests about Black history, race, indigenous people, women, and ethnic trauma in the country and around the world. The essay concludes with a reflection on memory scholarship and a call for methodological evaluation, awareness, and update to adapt to NLP and AI.

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.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) In Wound Care: An Interview With Andrew Springer, Chair, Wounds Canada

Andrew Springer is the current Chair of Wounds Canada. He is also Wounds Canada’s first BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) Chair, and has been a member of the organization since 2013, serving on the Board for approximately ten years. In recognition of Black History Month in Canada in February of this 2024, Wound Care Canada interviewed Andrew, asking him to reflect on his experiences and vision for the future.

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.