New Books in African American Studies

In her new book Duty Beyond the Battlefield: African American Soldiers Fight for Racial Uplift, Citizenship, and Manhood, 1870-1920 (Southern Illinois University Press, 2020), Le’Trice D. Donaldson investigates how African American soldiers used their military service to challenge white notions of an African American second-class citizenry and forged a new identity as freedom fighters, demanding the rights of full citizenship and manhood. Donaldson identifies the often-overlooked era between the Civil War and the end of World War I as the beginning of black soldiers’ involvement in the long struggle for civil rights.Donaldson interrogates the association between masculinity and citizenship and the ways in which performing manhood through military service influenced how these men struggled for racial uplift. Following the Buffalo soldier units and two regular army infantry units from the frontier and the Mexican border to Mexico, Cuba, and the Philippines, she investigates how these locations and the wars therein provide windows into how the soldiers’ struggles influenced black life and status within the United States.Duty beyond the Battlefield demonstrates that from the 1870s to 1920s military race men laid the foundation for the “New Negro” movement and the rise of Black Nationalism that influenced the future leaders of the twentieth century Civil Rights movement.Dr. Le’Trice Donaldson is an assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin–Stout and the author of A Voyage through the African American Experience. She is also the creator and co-editor of The Blerdy Report a blog dedicated to all things Black and nerdy in film, television, and the comic universe. You can find her on Twitter @eboninerd and on Instagram @letrice_blackladynerdDr. Isabel Machado is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at the University of Memphis. Her forthcoming book uses Carnival as a vehicle to understand social and cultural changes in Mobile, Alabama (USA) in the second half of the 20th century. Her new research project is an investigation of different generations of artists and performers who challenge gender normativity in Monterrey, Nuevo León (Mexico). She also works as an Assistant Producer for the Sexing History podcast.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Adam H. Domby, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Charleston, has written a rigorous analysis of American political memory as it connects to the Civil War and long shadow of the Confederacy. The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory (University of Virginia Press, 2020) unpacks a variety of threads all connected to the Lost Cause ideology, and all based on falsehoods. These dimensions of the ideology include Domby’s examination of the history of dishonest claims to confederate pensions by white veterans, and also the accusations of fraud associated with claims made by former slaves and free people of color for much smaller pensions.The False Cause digs into the historical claims made about the heroics demonstrated on the battlefield during the Civil War. In this context, The False Cause unpacks the myth that the Confederate army was one of the best ever, and these heroic claims, many of which were made at least forty years after the war itself, are not the only heroic assertions made in context of the Lost Cause ideology. Domby also explores the “soldiers who weren’t” – the enslaved individuals who were compelled to accompany their masters to war, and were then transformed, within this constructed political memory, into Black Confederates, which is yet another myth within the ideology. The book begins with an extremely topical component of the Lost Cause ideology and political memory, the monuments to confederate soldiers that were built long after the war, and that have become contemporary political lightning rods. Through all of these cases, Domby weaves the thread of how each particular area was used to buttress white supremacy and to re-narrate or re-cast the Civil War itself and those who engaged in it. Issues of white masculinity and grievance are embedded within the mythology and are also unpacked in context of these heroic declarations. This is an important historical examination that leads the reader through the facts and the subsequently created mythologies, which continue to shape and impact American politics and historical understandings.Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

In 1831, Nat Turner led a band of Southampton County slaves in a rebellion that killed fifty-five whites, mostly women and children. After more than two months in hiding, Turner was captured, and quickly convicted and executed.Christopher Tomlins' new book In the Matter of Nat Turner: A Speculative History (Princeton University Press, 2020) penetrates the historical caricature of Turner as befuddled mystic and self-styled Baptist preacher to recover the haunting persona of this legendary American slave rebel, telling of his self-discovery and the dawning of his Christian faith, of an impossible task given to him by God, and of redemptive violence and profane retribution.Much about Turner remains unknown. His extraordinary account of his life and rebellion, given in chains as he awaited trial in jail, was written down by an opportunistic white attorney and sold as a pamphlet to cash in on Turner’s notoriety. But the enigmatic rebel leader had an immediate and broad impact on the American South, and his rebellion remains one of the most momentous episodes in American history. Tomlins provides a luminous account of Turner's intellectual development, religious cosmology, and motivations, and offers an original and incisive analysis of the Turner Rebellion itself and its impact on Virginia politics. Tomlins also undertakes a deeply critical examination of William Styron’s 1967 novel, The Confessions of Nat Turner, which restored Turner to the American consciousness in the era of civil rights, black power, and urban riots.A speculative history that recovers Turner from the few shards of evidence we have about his life, In the Matter of Nat Turner is also a unique speculation about the meaning and uses of history itself.Rob Denning is Associate Dean for Liberal Arts at Southern New Hampshire University’s Global Campus. He received his Ph.D from The Ohio State University, where he researched environmental policymaking in California during Ronald Reagan’s terms as governor. Rob hosts Working Historians, a podcast about the various career opportunities open to students with history degrees. He can be reached by email at rdenning13@gmail.com or on Twitter @DrRobHistory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Mary Stanton's Red, Black, White: The Alabama Communist Party, 1930–1950 (University of Georgia Press, 2019) is the first narrative history of the American communist movement in the South since Robin D. G. Kelley's groundbreaking Hammer and Hoe and the first to explore its key figures and actions beyond the 1930s. Written from the perspective of the district 17 (CPUSA) Reds who worked primarily in Alabama, it acquaints a new generation with the impact of the Great Depression on postwar black and white, young and old, urban and rural Americans.After the Scottsboro story broke on March 25, 1931, it was open season for old-fashioned lynchings, legal (courtroom) lynchings, and mob murder. In Alabama alone, twenty black men were known to have been murdered, and countless others, women included, were beaten, disabled, jailed, “disappeared,” or had their lives otherwise ruined between March 1931 and September 1935. In this collective biography, Mary Stanton―a noted chronicler of the left and of social justice movements in the South―explores the resources available to Depression-era Reds before the advent of the New Deal or the modern civil rights movement. What emerges from this narrative is a meaningful criterion by which to evaluate the Reds’ accomplishments.Through seven cases of the CPUSA (district 17) activity in the South, Stanton covers tortured notions of loyalty and betrayal, the cult of white southern womanhood, Christianity in all its iterations, and the scapegoating of African Americans, Jews, and communists. Yet this still is a story of how these groups fought back, and fought together, for social justice and change in a fractured region.Beth A. English is director of the Liechtenstein Institute’s Project on Gender in the Global Community at Princeton University. She also is a past president of the Southern Labor History Association. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

American masculinity is being critiqued, questioned, and reinterpreted for a new era. In Men in Place: Trans Masculinity, Race, and Sexuality in America (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), Miriam J. Abelson makes an original contribution to this conversation through in-depth interviews with trans men in the U.S. West, Southeast, and Midwest, showing how the places and spaces men inhabit are fundamental to their experiences of race, sexuality, and gender.In this interview, Dr. Abelson and I discuss the various types of masculinity she identified in her study, such as hypermasculine men, regular guys, and men who seek to embody what Abelson calls “Golidlocks masculinity.” Additionally, we discuss how race and space affect expressions and embodiment of masculinity. For example, trans men in rural spaces were more likely to embody a redneck masculinity. On the other hand, urban trans men were more likely to embody a masculinity of the “urban thug.” Lastly, Abelson explains the significance of health care settings and public bathroom as spaces for upholding the gender binary and potential instances of violence. I recommend this book for students, professors, and anyone else interested in gender, sexuality, race, and studies of place.Dr. Miriam Abelson (@AbelsonDr) is an Associate Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Portland State University.Krystina Millar is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Indiana University. Her research interests include gender, sociology of the body, and sexuality. You can find her on Twitter at @KrystinaMillar. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Katherine Franke’s ambitious new book challenges Americans to face our collective responsibility for ongoing racial inequality. Rather than fall back on what Franke calls a “palliative history” that emphasizes granting freedom and rights after the Civil War, Franke insists that Americans acknowledge the failure to provide any meaningful reparation to formerly enslaved people in the 1860s. That failure has ongoing structural effects today.The book replots this history through archival research on two post-war communities in which property ownership produced increased autonomy for freed people. Franke contrasts free and freed – and calls this the dangling ‘d’ the residue of enslavement. Using a myriad of primary documents from the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Davis Bend, Mississippi, Franke details the successes and failures of these communities as they governed and organized their land. Repair demonstrates how government officials recognized the need for reparations (a term they used) and repair in the form of land ownership – an approach later reversed by President Johnson.Repair: Redeeming the Promise of Abolition (Haymarket Books, 2020) reflects on these radical examples of 19th-century reparations in order to contribute to the modern call for reparations. For Franke, the atrocity of slavery is a festering national wound and the examples of history suggest ways in which we might funnel national wealth (though estate taxes) to a fund to empower black ownership and citizenship.Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

In their new book, Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior (Princeton University Press, 2020), political scientists Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird explore the political behavior of African American voters in the United States and examine extensive data to determine how this particular group of voters have operated as a fairly unified voting block over the course of many election cycles. The research is fascinating, delineating the ideological fissures within the African-American community while also analyzing the voting patterns of African Americans and their inclination to remain loyal Democratic voters. Steadfast Democrats spends time examining the historical roots of this unified voting behavior, noting the roles that slavery and segregation played in creating the tightly connected communities in which many African Americans live and work.White and Laird pay particular attention to how these connections operate in terms of norms in political behavior, building on linked fate theories, but distinguishing differences in terms of understanding how ideology and political behavior operate in context of partisan loyalty. White and Laird explain these dynamics through their theory of racialized social constraint and they build their research from survey data about voting patterns and behaviors, while adding in supplemental, experimental research to test these dynamics and norm enforcement. The research is not necessarily limited to black political behavior in the U.S., and the conclusion of Steadfast Democrats takes the theoretical framework of norm enforcement and community unity and examines other groups in the United States that operate along similar patterns and dynamics.Steadfast Democrats:  is a window into understanding why and how African American voters in the United States remain a strongly unified voting bloc, even among many differences of opinion, a diversity of perspective, and a variety of lived experiences.Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), as well as co-editor of Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

In the second half of the eighteenth century, as European imperial conflicts extended the domain of capitalist agriculture, warring African factions fed their captives to the transatlantic slave trade while masters struggled continuously to keep their restive slaves under the yoke. In this contentious atmosphere, a movement of enslaved West Africans in Jamaica (then called Coromantees) organized to throw off that yoke by violence. Their uprising—which became known as Tacky’s Revolt—featured a style of fighting increasingly familiar today: scattered militias opposing great powers, with fighters hard to distinguish from noncombatants. It was also part of a more extended borderless conflict that spread from Africa to the Americas and across the island. Even after it was put down, the insurgency rumbled throughout the British Empire at a time when slavery seemed the dependable bedrock of its dominion. That certitude would never be the same, nor would the views of black lives, which came to inspire both more fear and more sympathy than before.Tracing the roots, routes, and reverberations of this event across disparate parts of the Atlantic world, Vincent Brown offers us a superb geopolitical thriller. Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War (Harvard University Press, 2020) expands our understanding of the relationship between European, African, and American history, as it speaks to our understanding of wars of terror today.Adam McNeil is a 2nd year Ph.D. student in History at Rutgers University-New Brunswick Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Jeff Forret is the author of William’s Gang: A Notorious Slave Trader and his Cargo of Black Convicts, published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. William’s Gang explores the career of prominent slave trader William H. Williams, whose operation was based in Washington D.C. His infamous Yellow House slave pin was a major stop in the domestic slave trade. Forret examines Williams’s life as a slave trader, and particularly the legal troubles he found himself in when he was accused of trying to sell twenty-seven enslaved convicts, from Virginia, in Louisiana. The myriad of courtroom battles Williams went through are placed alongside the larger history of slavery and the slave trade in the Antebellum Period, as Forret explores issues of slave criminality, southern law, and the U.S. economy.Dr. Forret is a Professor of History at Lamar University.Derek Litvak is a Ph.D. student in the department of history at the University of Maryland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Coming of Age in Jim Crow DC: Navigating the Politics of Everyday Life (NYU Press, 2019) by Paula C. Austin, an Assistant Professor of history at Boston University, is not only a history of black youth in Washington D.C. in the 1930s but also a history of social science thought as illustrated in the work of scholars such as sociologists E. Franklin Frazier and William H. Jones. Austin juxtaposes the interior lives of black youth, who she posits as “thinkers, theorists, and critics,” with the ideas of well-known intellectuals to tell a multifaceted history of the Jim Crow era in the nation’s capital. This is a concise monograph that utilizes some recognizable sources in intellectual history, including Frazier’s studies on black families, while also considering the thoughts and ideas of everyday people who were interviewed by experts during the New Negro era. Austin draws upon the methodologies of slavery studies, post-colonial theory, labor history and women’s studies in an attempt to challenge the “limiting boundaries of intellectual history” by illustrating the role that ideas played in the lives of everyday people who navigated “structural impediments” and made a world that reveals a rich cultural and intellectual life.This text is a work of intellectual and social history that is interdisciplinary in scope as structured around four concise chapters. Chapter One focuses on Howard University’s Sociology Department, Chapter Two focuses on race and space, and Chapter Three discusses the political ideas expressed by black youth. Finally, Chapter Four concerns race, gender, and sexuality as well as recreation/leisure time in the lives of black youth in D.C. Austin traverses several modes of inquiry in her narrative including African American history, women’s history, youth studies, and urban history. She does this by making the lives of black children and youths the core of her narrative while considering the history of African Americans, more generally, in the New Negro era and paying critical attention to concerns about gender, race, and space. In this text, Austin reveals how black youth in Jim Crow era D.C. were possessed of both an interior life and an intellectual life. Coming of Age in Jim Crow DC is an important contribution in American intellectual history.Hettie V. Williams Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of African American history in the Department of History and Anthropology at Monmouth University where she teaches courses in African American history and U.S. history. She has published book chapters, essays, and edited/authored five books. Her latest publications include Bury My Heart in a Free Land: Black Women Intellectuals in Modern U.S. History (Praeger, 2017) and, with Dr. G. Reginald Daniel, Race and the Obama Phenomenon: The Vision of a More Perfect Multiracial Union(University Press of Mississippi 2014). You can follow Dr. Williams on Twitter @DrHettie2017. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies