African American Studies Research Articles

The role of blood pressure control in the prevention of cardiorenal disease in patients with chronic kidney disease.

Optimal blood pressure (BP) control has been debated between two schools of thought: standard BP control to a goal of systolic BP (SBP) <140 mmHg and intensive BP control with a goal of <120 mmHg. Currently only three randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been performed to address this question, which will be included in this review: the Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes (ACCORD) Study Group (2010), the Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT; 2015) and the Strategy of Blood Pressure Intervention in the Elderly Hypertensive Patients (STEP) trial, performed in Chinese participants in 2021 [1–3]. Further insights into BP management to prevent cardiovascular disease (CVD) events in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) will also be reviewed here. Unfortunately, there is less data from RCTs for determining optimal BP levels to prevent renal disease progression. Only three studies in non-diabetic CKD—SPRINT, the Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) study and the African American Study of Kidney Disease and Hypertension (AASK)—and no studies in patients with CKD due to type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) have been performed to investigate this problem and, to date, the ideal management protocol for clinicians is lacking. In this review we will also include investigations from historically important studies focusing on control of BP and its effects in patients with CKD, including the MDRD study (1993), the AASK study (2001) and the Ramipril Efficacy In Nephropathy 2 (REIN-2) study (2005) [4–6]. The study of CKD patients in the SPRINT study [7] also provides an important perspective on the importance of more intensive BP control on cardiovascular events. It is also important to note that despite the same body of evidence from these clinical studies, guideline committees have come up with different recommendations for target BP, further complicating the question of optimal BP targets. This opinion paper is targeted towards NDT readers with an interest in kidney disease in relation to BP goals and cardiovascular outcomes.

A qualitative study of health care access among African American older adults in a socio-demographically under-resourced region during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the U.S., health inequities experienced by the African American community, specifically among those ages 65 and older, have been well-documented in research literature. Alongside the findings regarding disparities in disease prevalence and management, researchers have also highlighted disparities in health care access. Despite recent evidence of health inequities experienced by African Americans during the COVID pandemic, there is little research on the lived experience of this group in this critical time, health care access challenges that may be exacerbated by the pandemic, and the community's outlook for the future in addressing health disparities. We conducted a qualitative study of African Americans to gather their perspectives about access to health care, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Study participants consisted of African Americans, ages 50-85 years, who spoke English as their primary language, who resided in one of 17 counties in South Carolina that represent a region of the State known as the corridor of economic disadvantage. Forty-seven telephone interviews were conducted. While research has shown that certain populations experienced health care access disparities during the early COVID pandemic, these disparities did not appear to be exacerbated in our sample. However, participants noted an increase in the use of telehealth, and identified challenges to using this technology. Participants made recommendations about how to address disparities in health care access in their communities. Our qualitative approach was useful in obtaining perspectives about access to health care during the COVID-19 pandemic from African American older adults. Continued research with older African Americans, particularly those in under-resourced communities are warranted to further elucidate these findings.

Navigating Area Studies: Insiders and Outsiders in Middle Eastern and North African, South Asian and Latin American Studies

In this collaborative article, we – Anwar Mhajne and Crystal Whetstone – investigate our positionalities in diverse area studies through a critical reflection on our experiences as political science graduate students conducting fieldwork for our dissertations. We work across different area studies – the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and South Asia and Latin America – mainly as an insider (Mhajne) or simply as an outsider (Whetstone). Taking an interpretive approach and using the method of autoethnography, we critically reflect on our different fieldwork experiences undertaken as political science graduate students, relying on postcolonialism to guide us. We ask: how can our fieldwork experiences complicate the structures of insider and outsider in relation to our situatedness in different regions of area studies? We engage with a decolonial feminist framework to help unpack these experiences and to imagine how our varied experiences disrupt the colonization processes embedded within area studies. We conclude by identifying eight ways to further decolonize area studies based on our fieldwork and other scholars’ work.

Digital Connectedness in the Jackson Heart Study: Cross-sectional Study.

Although new approaches for data collection, such as mobile technology and teleresearch, have demonstrated new opportunities for the conduct of more timely and less costly surveys in community-based studies, literature on the feasibility of conducing cardiovascular disease research using mobile health (mHealth) platforms among middle-aged and older African Americans has been limited. The purpose of this study was to contribute to the knowledge regarding the penetrance of internet and mobile technologies, such as cellphones or smartphones in existing large cohort studies of cardiovascular disease. A digital connectedness survey was conducted in the Jackson Heart Study (JHS), a Mississippi-based African American cohort study, as part of the annual follow-up calls with participants from July 2017 to February 2019. Of the 4024 participants contacted, 2564 (63.7%) completed the survey. Among survey respondents, 2262 (88.2%) reported use of internet or cellphone, and 1593 (62.1%) had a smartphone. Compared to nonusers (n=302), internet or cellphone users (n=2262) were younger (mean age 80.1, SD 8.0 vs 68.2, SD 11.3 years), more likely to be affluent (n=778, 40.1% vs n=39, 15.4%), and had greater than high school education (n=1636, 72.5% vs n=85, 28.1%). Internet or cellphone users were less likely to have cardiovascular disease history compared to nonusers (136/2262, 6.6% vs 41/302, 15.8%). The prevalence of current smoking and average BMI were similar between internet or cellphone users and nonusers. Among internet or cellphone users, 1316 (58.3%) reported use of email, 504 (22.3%) reported use of apps to track or manage health, and 1269 (56.1%) expressed interest in using JHS-developed apps. Our findings suggest that it is feasible to use mHealth technologies to collect survey data among African Americans already enrolled in a longitudinal study. Our findings also highlight the need for more efforts to reduce the age and education divide in access and use of internet and smartphones for tracking health and research in African American communities.

:Anglo-Saxon(ist) Pasts, PostSaxon Futures

:<i>Anglo-Saxon(ist) Pasts, PostSaxon Futures</i>

Abstract 10769: Circulating Branched-Chain Amino Acids, Incident Cardiovascular Disease, and Mortality in the African American Study of Kidney Disease and Hypertension

Introduction: Branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs), i.e., leucine, isoleucine, and valine, are involved in glucose regulation, immunity, and cell signaling. Higher circulating BCAAs were associated with incident cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the general population which may be mediated by insulin resistance. BCAA’s role in CVD in the absence of diabetes is unclear. Hypothesis: BCAAs are associated with cardiovascular outcomes in non-diabetic chronic kidney disease (CKD), a highly prevalent condition that substantially alters circulating metabolites and elevates CVD risk. Methods: In the African American Study of Kidney Disease and Hypertension (AASK), we conducted serum metabolomic profiling and assessed associations between BCAAs and risks for incident CVD (hospitalization for nonfatal myocardial infarction, cardiac revascularization, heart failure, stroke, or cardiovascular death), cardiovascular death, and all-cause mortality using multivariable Cox regression. Results: In 962 participants (mean age 56 years, 39% women, mean glomerular filtration rate [GFR] 48 ml/min/1.73m 2 , mean fasting blood glucose 94 mg/dl, mean low density lipoprotein cholesterol [LDLc] 137 mg/dl), BCAAs were minimally correlated with GFR, proteinuria, C-reactive protein, LDLc, or blood glucose. During follow-up (median 7.4 years), there were 192 CVD events (myocardial infarction or revascularization, n=57; stroke, n=74; heart failure, n=74) and 220 deaths of which 54 were cardiovascular deaths. Adjusted for covariates, no association was found between BCAAs and incident CVD, but higher BCAAs were associated with lower cardiovascular death (per doubling BCAA, HR=0.52, 95%CI 0.31-0.87; p=0.013 for isoleucine; HR=0.30, 95%CI 0.13-0.68, p=0.004 for leucine, HR=0.39, 95%CI 0.16-0.94, p=0.04 for valine). Associations were unchanged accounting for all-cause death as competing risk using Fine-Gray modeling. Leucine and isoleucine were associated with lower all-cause mortality (HR=0.57, 95%CI 0.36-0.96, p=0.035 for leucine; HR=0.70, 95%CI 0.49-1.00, p=0.049 for isoleucine). Conclusions: In African Americans with non-diabetic CKD, higher circulating BCAAs were associated with lower cardiovascular death, lower mortality, but not incident CVD.

Integrated proteomic and metabolomic modules identified as biomarkers of mortality in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study and the African American Study of Kidney Disease and Hypertension

BackgroundProteins and metabolites are essential for many biological functions and often linked through enzymatic or transport reactions. Individual molecules have been associated with all-cause mortality. Many of these are correlated and might jointly represent pathways or endophenotypes involved in diseases.ResultsWe present an integrated analysis of proteomics and metabolomics via a local dimensionality reduction clustering method. We identified 224 modules of correlated proteins and metabolites in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study, a general population cohort of older adults (N = 4046, mean age 75.7, mean eGFR 65). Many of the modules displayed strong cross-sectional associations with demographic and clinical characteristics. In comprehensively adjusted analyses, including fasting plasma glucose, history of cardiovascular disease, systolic blood pressure and kidney function among others, 60 modules were associated with mortality. We transferred the network structure to the African American Study of Kidney Disease and Hypertension (AASK) (N = 694, mean age 54.5, mean mGFR 46) and identified mortality associated modules relevant in this disease specific cohort. The four mortality modules relevant in both the general population and CKD were all a combination of proteins and metabolites and were related to diabetes / insulin secretion, cardiovascular disease and kidney function. Key components of these modules included N-terminal (NT)-pro hormone BNP (NT-proBNP), Sushi, Von Willebrand Factor Type A, EGF And Pentraxin (SVEP1), and several kallikrein proteases.ConclusionThrough integrated biomarkers of the proteome and metabolome we identified functions of (patho-) physiologic importance related to diabetes, cardiovascular disease and kidney function.

Islamic Scholarship in Africa: New Directions and Global Contexts (edited by Ousmane Oumar Kane)

Reviewed by: Islamic Scholarship in Africa: New Directions and Global Contexts ed. by Ousmane Oumar Kane Amiri Yasin Al-Hadid Islamic Scholarship in Africa: New Directions and Global Contexts OUSMANE OUMAR KANE, ED. James Currey/Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2021, 489 pages. Ousmane Oumar Kane, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society at Harvard Divinity School and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, has edited a brilliant book entitled Islamic Scholarship in Africa: New Directions and Global Contexts. Professor Kane’s genealogy and scholarship can be traced back to early Qur’anic and Arabic instruction from his mother. His grandfather is the famous Sufi Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse, founder of a Tijaniyya Tariqa in Senegal, West Africa, with a global following of millions. The central thesis of Professor Kane’s book is this: Islamic scholarship in Bilad al-Sudan (Land of the Blacks) was equal to that in other regions of the Ummah of Prophet (pbuh) such as Al-Azhar in Kemet (Egypt) and Medina in Saudi Arabia. The University of Sankore in Timbuktu, Mali, is an excellent example of universities in Bilad al-Sudan that were competitive with the aforementioned universities. As a matter of historical record, there was always a robust exchange of commodities, gold, salt, and ideas along the trade routes between the Maghreb (North Africa from Kemet to Morocco) and Bilad al-Sudan. The book rejects the false notion of an Islam noir of divinations, libation, and ancestral veneration in sub-Saharan Africa and authentic Al-Qur’an wa Sunnah Islam in centers of learning in other parts of the Muslim Ummah (p. 19). Western orientalists place North Africa in the Middle East because it is a part of the Arabic-speaking linguistic community and Mediterranean Greco-Roman history. On the other hand, sub-Saharan Africa is separated from its classical Kemetic (ancient Egypt) and Islamic heritage and marginalized as Bilad al-Sudan (Black Africa). This cultural and historical alienation is problematic for Muslim Africa because Islam and the Arabic language have created more religious unity and cultural harmony than political disunity and social conflict. In his Philosophy of History, Hegel asserted that sub-Saharan Africa had no history worthy of serious intellectual discourse (p. 2). This book is a cutting-edge project because it attempts to reconcile the dialectical tensions between Islamic Studies, African Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies. These three disciplines or area studies have compartmentalized the canon, epistemology, and paradigm of Islam, [End Page 153] Arabic, African culture and civilization and marginalized the universality of Islamic thought and civilization in the African cultural context (p. 412). Islamic Scholarship in Africa is a major contribution to Professor Kane’s project of building a new discipline at Harvard centered on the intellectual history of Islamic scholarship in sub-Saharan Africa or Bilad al-Sudan. It is divided into four parts: “History, Movement and Islamic Scholarship,”; “Textuality, Orality and Islamic Scholarship”; “ Islamic Education”; “Ajami, Knowledge Transmission and Spirituality.” These subjects have intellectual implications for core curriculum development of the new discipline. Thematically, the edited volume is the outgrowth of a series of international conferences and workshops of scholars convened during the years 2017– 2019. In addition to the book overview introduction, each part has its own introduction that can serve as a road map to guide the reader through the scholarly landscape. Arabic religious and technical terms are used throughout the book; however, readers who are not familiar with all the Islamic terminology can refer to the glossary if definitions are needed. The book is accessible to scholars in the field as well as readers that are familiar or curious about the subject matter. There are 16 chapters arrayed across the four parts of the book. The 19 contributors included in the volume are erudite scholars in the Islamic sciences, Arabic, African languages indigenous to Bilad al-Sudan, and experts on their assigned topics. Each scholarly essay is worthy of an in-depth review; however, space will not permit this level of discussion. Therefore, representative samples will be selected from each of the four parts. The Hajj or Pilgrimage to Mecca of Mansa Musa in 1324 CE and El-Hajj...

David Williams: finding solutions for racial inequities in health

David Williams was born “in the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba”, and “raised in, at the time, the British colony of St Lucia”. His parents had not attended high school but they were, he recalls, “avid readers who had a lot of books at home” and his mother, who became a nurse aged 62 years, was a powerful source of inspiration for him. Over his influential career, Williams, who is the Norman Professor of Public Health and Chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health and Professor of African and African American Studies and of Sociology at Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA, has elucidated the ways in which racism, socioeconomic status, stress, and health behaviours impact physical and mental health.

Refashioning Diary Studies: The Tradition of Black Women’s Diaries

To read Black women’s diaries as a distinct literary tradition—a project grounded by work in feminist and African American studies—is to gain new perspectives on the diary itself. Diaries piece together narrative fragments to configure interiority, weave change into history, and speak in code to multiple audiences.

Seeing the World Through Writers’ Eyes

Seeing the World Through Writers’ Eyes

APOL1 Genotype, Proteinuria, and the Risk of Kidney Failure: A Secondary Analysis of the AASK (African American Study of Kidney Disease and Hypertension) and CRIC (Chronic Renal Insufficiency Cohort) Studies

Patients with a high-risk Apolipoprotein L1 (APOL1) genotype are more likely to develop chronic kidney disease and kidney failure. It is unclear whether this increased risk is entirely mediated by the development of proteinuria. Retrospective observational study of the African American Study of Kidney Disease and Hypertension cohort and Chronic Renal Insufficiency Cohort. Self-identified race (Black/non-Black) and presence of high-risk APOL1 genotype. The primary model was adjusted for age, sex, diabetes, estimated glomerular filtration rate, and urinary protein-creatinine ratio. Time to kidney failure defined as time to dialysis or transplantation. We used Cox proportional hazard models to study how proteinuria mediates the association between APOL1 and kidney failure. We modeled proteinuria at baseline and as a time-varying covariate. A high-risk APOL1 genotype was associated with a significantly higher risk of kidney failure, even for patients with minimal proteinuria (HR, 1.87; 95% CI, 1.23-2.84). The association was not significant among patients with high proteinuria (HR, 1.22; 95% CI, 0.93-1.61). When modeling proteinuria as a time-varying covariate, a high-risk APOL1 genotype was associated with higher kidney failure risk even among patients who never developed proteinuria (HR, 2.04; 95% CI, 1.10-3.77). Compared to non-Black patients, Black patients without the high-risk genotype did not have higher risk of kidney failure (HR, 0.96; 95% CI, 0.85-1.10). Two datasets were combined to increase statistical power. Limited generalizability beyond the study cohorts. Residual confounding common to observational studies. A high-risk APOL1 genotype is significantly associated with increased kidney failure risk, especially among patients without baseline proteinuria. Although our results suggest that the risk is partially mediated through proteinuria, higher kidney failure risk was present even among patients who never developed proteinuria. Providers should consider screening for the high-risk APOL1 genotype, especially among Black patients without proteinuria in populations with chronic kidney disease.

Testican-2 Is Associated with Reduced Risk of Incident ESKD.

Testican-2 was recently identified as a podocyte-derived protein that is released into circulation by the kidneys and is positively correlated with eGFR and eGFR slope. However, whether higher testican-2 levels are associated with lower risk of ESKD is unknown. Aptamer-based proteomics assessed blood testican-2 levels among participants in the African American Study of Kidney Disease and Hypertension (AASK, n =703), the Chronic Renal Insufficiency Cohort (CRIC) study ( n =3196), and the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study ( n =4378). We compared baseline characteristics by testican-2 tertile and used Cox proportional hazards models to study the association of testican-2 with incident ESKD. Higher testican-2 levels were associated with higher measured GFR (mGFR) in AASK, higher eGFR in the CRIC and ARIC studies, and lower albuminuria in all cohorts. Baseline testican-2 levels were significantly associated with incident ESKD in Cox proportional hazards models adjusted for age, sex, and race (model 1) and model 1+mGFR or eGFR+comorbidities (model 2). In model 3 (model 2+proteinuria), the associations between testican-2 (per SD increase) and incident ESKD were AASK (hazard ratio [HR]=0.84 [0.72 to 0.98], P =0.023), CRIC (HR=0.95 [0.89 to 1.02], P =0.14), ARIC (HR=0.54 [0.36 to 0.83], P =0.0044), and meta-analysis (HR=0.92 [0.86 to 0.98], P =0.0073). Across three cohorts spanning >8000 individuals, testican-2 is associated with kidney health and prognosis, with higher levels associated with reduced risk of ESKD.

Review: Rap and Politics: A Case Study of Panther, Gangsta and Hyphy Discourses in Oakland, CA (1965–2010), by Lavar Pope

Review: <i>Rap and Politics: A Case Study of Panther, Gangsta and Hyphy Discourses in Oakland, CA (1965–2010)</i>, by Lavar Pope

James H. (Jim) Sidanius (1945-2021).

Memorializes Jim Sidanius (née James Brown [1945-2021]), one of the the foremost social and political psychologists of his generation. His theory of social dominance redefined the scientific study of intergroup relations, advancing novel hypotheses regarding the causes and consequences of intergroup conflict and inequality by integrating insights across the social and biological sciences. Jim's theoretical insights were matched only by his empirical prowess; he was a master at analyzing large data sets with advanced statistical methods, methods that he taught to hundreds of doctoral students over the years in his notoriously challenging but rewarding graduate statistics courses at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Harvard. Beyond his teaching of statistics and advanced topics in social psychology and African American studies, Jim mentored dozens of aspiring intergroup relations scholars over a 44-year career. As one of few Black social psychologists, he served as a role model for young Black scholars in particular. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

A genetic association study of tobacco withdrawal endophenotypes in African Americans.

Genome-wide association (GWA) genetic epidemiology research has identified several variants modestly associated with brief self-report smoking measures, predominately in European Americans. GWA research has not applied intensive laboratory-based measures of smoking endophenotypes in African Americans-a population with disproportionately low quit smoking rates and high tobacco-related disease risk. This genetic epidemiology study of non-Hispanic African Americans tested associations of 89 genetic variants identified in previous GWA research and exploratory GWAs with 24 laboratory-derived tobacco withdrawal endophenotypes. African American cigarette smokers (N = 528; ≥10 cig/day; 36.2% female) completed two counterbalanced visits following either 16-hr of tobacco deprivation or ad libitum smoking. At both visits, self-report and behavioral measures across six unique "sub-phenotype" domains within the tobacco withdrawal syndrome were assessed (Urge/Craving, Negative Affect, Low Positive Affect, Cognition, Hunger, and Motivation to Resume Smoking). Results of the candidate variant analysis found two significant small-magnitude associations. The rs11915747 alternate allele in the CAD2M gene region was associated with .09 larger deprivation-induced changes in reported impulsivity (0-4 scale). The rs2471711alternate allele in the AC097480.1/AC097480.2 gene region was associated with 0.26 lower deprivation-induced changes in confusion (0-4 scale). For both variants, associations were opposite in direction to previous research. Individual genetic variants may exert only weak influences on tobacco withdrawal in African Americans. Larger sample sizes of non-European ancestry individuals might be needed to investigate both known and novel loci that may be ancestry-specific. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Lessons Learned from Building Lessons: “Teach It” and the Development of Digital Primary-Source Classroom Activities

Lessons Learned from Building Lessons: “Teach It” and the Development of Digital Primary-Source Classroom Activities

Sleep SAAF responsive parenting intervention improves mothers’ feeding practices: a randomized controlled trial among African American mother-infant dyads

Background/ObjectiveParents shape children’s early experiences with food, influencing what is served, children’s food choices, and how much children eat. Responsive parenting (RP) interventions such as INSIGHT have improved maternal infant feeding practices, but have only been tested among predominantly White families. This secondary analysis of data from the Sleep SAAF (Strong African American Families) RCT tests the effects of an RP intervention designed to prevent rapid infant weight gain on African American mothers’ infant feeding practices.MethodsPrimiparous African American mother-infant dyads (n = 194) were randomized to an RP or safety control intervention delivered by community research associates at infant age 3 and 8 weeks. At 16 weeks, mothers completed the Babies Need Feeding questionnaire, the Infant Feeding Styles Questionnaire, and the Babies Need Soothing questionnaire. Logistic regression and general linear models examined the effect of study group on infant feeding practices. Moderation analyses explored whether effects varied by feeding mode (any breast milk versus exclusive formula), maternal age (≥ 20 years versus < 20 years), and maternal pre-pregnancy BMI (with obesity versus not).ResultsRP mothers reported more responsive feeding (p = 0.005, partial η2 = 0.02), lower likelihood of using beverages other than breast milk/formula to soothe their infant (p = 0.01, OR = 0.42, 95% CI [0.2–0.8]), and less pressure with cereal than control mothers (p = 0.09, partial η2 = 0.02). RP mothers also reported less pressure to finish/soothe than controls (p = 0.007, partial η2 = 0.04); feeding mode (B = 0.74, p = 0.003) and maternal age (B = 0.53, p = 0.04) moderated this effect. There were no significant group differences in bottle-feeding practices (e.g., adding cereal to bottle, using an appropriate nipple/bottle size), or in context-based or emotion-based food to soothe.ConclusionsResponsive parenting education influenced some feeding practices of African American mothers. Mothers reported using less pressure, a control-based feeding practice, and more responsive feeding than controls.Trial registrationSleep SAAF: A Strong African American Families Study. www.clinicaltrials.gov NCT03505203. Registered 3 April 2018.

Run Home If You Don't Want to Be Killed: The Detroit Uprising of 1943

In their critique of Kathryn Bigelow's 2017 film adaptation of the Algiers Motel incident during the 1967 Great Rebellion, historians Mark Jay and Virginia Leavell argue that by constructing tales of “irrational violence pitting young, angry, and unruly Black men against a group of racist rogue police officers,” popular representations of racial uprisings often fail to ask: “What were the causes of such dramatically articulated outrage? What did people demand, and of whom? Was this a political rebellion with targets and demands or merely an ineffectual symptom of the mass exploitation, unemployment, and racism endemic to advanced capitalism?”1 Retelling Detroit's under-studied 1943 racial uprising, Rachel Marie-Crane Williams's graphic history Run Home If You Don't Want to Be Killed offers a brilliant example of how to contextualize the causes and experiences of Detroit's interrelated histories of racial terror, labor organizing, and Civil Rights activism rather than narratively capitalize on its most spectacular expressions of violence.Contrary to Bigelow's film Detroit's relegation of the city's long history of racial and economic injustice to an aestheticized montage at the beginning of the film before jumping into the action of the 1967 Great Rebellion, the first half of Run Home documents the accretion of racial tensions due to housing and labor discrimination against African Americans migrating to and living in the city from the 1920s to early 1940s. The events covered in this portion of the book include the advocacy of Black organizers and pressure of large-scale mobilization of Black workers that lead to the passage Executive Order 8802 in 1941, which “prohibited racial and ethnic discrimination in the defense industries” (p. 27); the migration of Black workers to Detroit, the “arsenal of democracy,” their experiences of discrimination in housing and the workplace, culminating in the 1942 Sojourner Truth Homes riots, in which whites, enabled by the Detroit Police Department, terrorized and blocked African Americans from moving in to a subsidized housing project in a predominantly middle-class area of the city; and the precarious position of Black workers in Henry Ford's notoriously brutal union-busting strategies, followed by the challenging work of labor leader Walter Reuther to secure the trust and support of Black workers in the United Auto Workers union, which was sometimes pejoratively referred to by Black Detroiters as “You Ain't White.”2Each of these nodes provide crucial context for the more spectacular uprising of 1943, and the payoff for Williams's narrativization is profound. Beginning as a skirmish at the public parks of Belle Isle, racial conflicts broke out across the city that ended with thirty-four dead, including seventeen African Americans killed by DPD in a rash of appalling and racist police violence documented in the graphic history. In a considered and humanistic account of the horrific toll of violence against people of all backgrounds, Williams expertly weaves into her narrativization the work of scholars of African American studies and history to explain the significant and racialized role that rumors played in fueling the mayhem and violence against African Americans in Detroit's streets.Williams unfolds her archival research and firsthand accounts, many of which crucially center the stories of Black women, beautifully through the graphic form. The firsthand accounts of police violence are harrowing, heightened by the physicality of Williams's hybrid art style of sketched pencils, pens, watercolors, and mixed-media realism (such as real, photocopied police badges on the arms of drawn, two-dimensional figures). The artwork throughout the book is impressive and befitting of the narrative, with many effective comic adaptations of archival materials such as advertisements, broadsides, affidavits, and police reports. I did struggle with some of the graphic elements of the text. Drawn lettering—on brilliant display in the adaptation of these archival materials—would have fit much more appealingly with Williams's art style than the digital font chosen, in particular for the dialogue. The layouts of certain captions, word balloons, and thought bubbles at times obstructed rather than enhanced the visual storytelling. That said, as Benjamin Fraser documents in Visible Cities, Global Comics and Kate Polak further proves in Ethics in the Gutter, comics are an essential medium in narrativizing histories of urban experience and racialized trauma because of the interdependent and artistic rendering of words and images. As Fraser articulates, “comics artists necessarily comment on the way social power drives the structure of the city, resulting in the exclusion of certain groups and certain ideas. In the right hands, the visual structure of the comics page thus becomes a way of exposing, questioning, critiquing and perhaps even correcting this urban imbalance.”3 With Run Home, Williams powerfully demonstrates this capacity of comics to expose, question, and critique urban histories in her essential graphic account of Detroit's 1943 racial uprising.

The Role of Adolescent Anxious Mood, Marijuana Use, and Locus of Control in the School to Prison Pipeline.

Racial disparities are evident in both educational outcomes and incarceration rates when comparing African American and white youth. It is essential to understand the school-to-prison pipeline and the ways in which school discipline practices and other factors disproportionately affect African American students, limit educational attainment, and increase risk for future incarceration in order to improve students' educational and life outcomes. This study explores how marijuana, anxiety and locus of control interact with school disciplinary practices in pushing students out of schools and into the criminal justice system. Analyses utilizing data from the Woodlawn Study, a longitudinal study of African Americans followed from first grade through adolescence, young adulthood, and midlife (n = 1,242), reveal that suspension or expulsion, frequent marijuana use, and locus of control (males only) all predict criminal justice system involvement above and beyond not graduating from high school, but do not interact significantly. This study offers avenues for intervention to reduce disparities.