New Books in African American Studies

Many in the global West have heard something about acupuncture as a treatment for pain relief; they may even have learned of its use in treating opioid addiction. But few know that, in the early 1970s, acupuncture was employed as a means of social and political revolution by Black, Latinx, and radical left-wing activists, inspired by the barefoot doctors of Mao Zedong's Communist revolution. Led by Mutulu Shakur, a charismatic member of the Republic of New Afrika, these young and idealistic people learned to apply acupuncture in the gritty confines of Lincoln Hospital, in the South Bronx of New York. The derelict public hospital, long known as "the Butcher Shop," became an unlikely source of energy and hope as the activists successfully helped people from the community recover from heroin addiction. The acupuncturists - some of them recovering from heroin addiction themselves - employed a combination of needling points in the ear with counseling and "political education"; for instance, taking clients to witness the trials of political prisoners (people imprisoned for their political beliefs or activities). By the late 1970s, the activists' radical approach led to their forced removal from Lincoln. But Shakur and others formed the Black Acupuncture Advisory Association of North America (BAAANA) and founded a college to train a new generation of acupuncturists in the fine art of traditional Chinese medicine. The fundamental principle was healthcare as a human right. The goal was the liberation of people oppressed by racism. The college had a short life; it was closed after an FBI raid in connection with the lethal armed robbery of a Brink's truck. Yet over three decades, the spirit of revolutionary acupuncture did not die, and neither did the issues that forced its rise, including drug addiction, racism, and social and health care inequities. Inspired by the radical acupuncturists of the 1970s, another group - the People's Organization of Community Acupuncture - founded the community acupuncture movement and took up the mantle of revolution. They, too, proclaim health care as a human right for people marginalized by society - and seek to give back that right through the art of inserting fine needles. Acupuncture as Revolution: Suffering, Liberation, and Love (Brevis Press Limited, 2021) highlights a little-known intersection of acupuncture, leftist movements of the 1970s, and the global influence on the healthcare of Mao's Communist revolution - and shows how the legacy of that explosive meeting lives on today.Claire Clark is a medical educator, historian of medicine, and associate professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Big money NCAA basketball had its origins in a many-sided conflict of visions and agendas. On one side stood large schools focused on a commercialized game that privileged wins and profits. Opposing them was a tenuous alliance of liberal arts colleges, historically black colleges, and regional state universities, and the competing interests of the NAIA, each with distinct interests of their own.Kurt Edward Kemper tells the dramatic story of the clashes that shook college basketball at mid-century--and how the repercussions continue to influence college sports to the present day. Taking readers inside the competing factions, he details why historically black colleges and regional schools came to embrace commercialization. As he shows, the NCAA's strategy of co-opting its opponents gave each group just enough just enough to play along--while the victory of the big-time athletics model handed the organization the power to seize control of college sports.An innovative history of an overlooked era, Before March Madness: The Wars for the Soul of College Basketball (U Illinois Press, 2020) looks at how promises, power, and money laid the groundwork for an American sports institution.Kelly McFall is Professor of History and Director of the Honors Program at Newman University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Max Krochmal and Todd Moye’s Civil Rights in Black and Brown: Histories of Resistance and Struggle in Texas (University of Texas Press, 2021) is a critical contribution that uncovers histories of activism in the lone state. From El Paso, Dallas, and to the Rio Grande Valley, social justice initiatives were critical for fighting Jim Crow and Juan Crow. The contributors make the case that various towns and cities across the state developed coalitions across Black and Brown racial lines.In this episode, Tiffany speaks with Drs. Max Krochmal, Katherine Bynum, and Todd Moye about the process for collecting histories of the long liberation struggles in Texas. Moye, Krochmal, and other Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex joined forces to create a coalition of professionals to spearhead the creation of Civil Rights in Black and Brown, a digital oral history project that holds over a hundred oral interviews. As a graduate student at Texas Christian University, Bynum worked alongside Krochmal to document and preserve the oral records of activists and traveled with other peers to learn more about the hidden history of Jim Crow discrimination in the state.Tiffany González is an Assistant Professor of History at James Madison University. She is a historian of Chicana/Latinx history, American politics and social movements. 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 context of slavery, science is usually associated with slaveholders' scientific justifications of racism. But abolitionists were equally adept at using scientific ideas to discredit slaveholders.Looking beyond the science of race, The Science of Abolition: How Slaveholders Became the Enemies of Progress (Yale UP, 2021) shows how Black and white scientists and abolitionists drew upon a host of scientific disciplines--from chemistry, botany, and geology, to medicine and technology--to portray slaveholders as the enemies of progress. From the 1770s through the 1860s, scientists and abolitionists in Britain and the United States argued that slavery stood in the way of scientific progress, blinded slaveholders to scientific evidence, and prevented enslavers from adopting labor-saving technologies that might eradicate enslaved labor.While historians increasingly highlight slavery's centrality to the modern world, fueling the rise of capitalism, science, and technology, few have asked where the myth of slavery's backwardness comes from in the first place. This book contends that by routinely portraying slaveholders as the enemies of science, abolitionists and scientists helped generate that myth.Adam McNeil is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Jonathan W. White, associate professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University, has authored a book that reveals the personability of Abraham Lincoln in the context of meetings he held with African American visitors to the White House. Lincoln met with activists and soldiers and everyday African American citizens during his time as President. In A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022) book, White reviews the impressions and importance of those meetings to witnesses and the African Americans who met with Lincoln. In doing so, White examines the political and social culture of the period and reveals how unique Lincoln was in his relations with visitors to the White House.You can follow Jonathan on Twitter: ‎@CivilWarJonIan J. Drake is Associate Professor of Jurisprudence, Montclair State University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

“This is America”: Race Gender and Politics in America’s Musical Landscape by Katie Rios (Lexington Books, 2021) examines an eclectic mix of different artists and cultural products, from Laurie Anderson and Childish Gambino to Hamilton. The artists Rios studies confront problems of race and gender that have deep roots in American history, often by championing social movements that have recently swept the nation such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter. While a musicologist by training, Rios is concerned with more than the sonic signifiers of political dissent and resistance. She finds a shared language of cultural and political critique in a wide array of music, videos, dance, visual arts, and theater.Kristen M. Turner is a lecturer in the music and honors departments at North Carolina State University. Her research centers on race and class in American popular entertainment at the turn of the twentieth century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

It’s time for The Blues! In Bitten by the Blues: The Alligator Records Story (University of Chicago Press, 2018), Alligator Records president and founder Bruce Iglauer and his co-author, Patrick Roberts of Northern Illinois University, tell the tale of fifty years of Chicago Blues. From Delta-born guitar expressionists like Hound Dog Taylor to modern vocalists like Shemekia Copeland, from the South Side to the Norway fjords, Alligator Records has seen it all.David Hamilton Golland is professor of history and immediate past president of the faculty senate at Governors State University in Chicago's southland. @DHGolland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Building the Black Arts Movement: Hoyt Fuller and the Cultural Politics of the 1960s (U Illinois Press, 2019) explores the history of the Black Arts Movement through the experience of activist and organizer, Hoyt W. Fuller (1923-1981). In the first book to document and analyze Fuller's profound influence on the movement, Jonathan Fenderson attends to the paradox between Fuller's central role in the Movement and his marginal place in African-American historiography. Though focused on Fuller, the project is not simply a biographer; it is a series of historical vignettes covering different aspects of Fuller's cultural activism. As it chronicles Fuller's life, the book also address pivotal events and formative moments that grant insight into the ways the Black Arts Movement took shape at the local level; the ways artists shaped the Movement; how race, class, gender, sexuality, and corporate interests impacted the Movement; and, especially, how recovering Hoyt Fuller's work fundamentally alters our knowledge of the Black Arts MovementMickell Carter is a doctoral student in the department of history at Auburn University. She can be reached at mzc0152@auburn.edu and on twitter @MickellCarter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: Dr. White’s journey to earn a PhD in tuba The Baltimore School for the Arts The importance of having a village The hidden curriculum Why teaching and mentoring are equally important for educators to do A discussion of the book I’m Possible: A Story of Survival, A Tuba, and the Small Miracle of a Big Dream Today’s book is: I'm Possible: A Story of Survival, a Tuba, and the Small Miracle of a Big Dream (Flatiron Books, 2021), a memoir by Dr. Richard Antoine White. When he and his mother didn’t have a key to a room or a house, they had each other. Richard believed he could look after his mother, even as she struggled with alcoholism and sometimes disappeared, sending Richard into loops of visiting familiar spots until he could find her again. One night, when he almost died searching for her in the snow, he was taken in by his adoptive grandparents. When Richard joined the school band, he discovered a talent and a sense of purpose. He was accepted to the Baltimore School for the Arts, then to the Peabody, where he navigated racial and socioeconomic disparities as one of few Black students in his programs. Richard secured a coveted spot in a symphony orchestra and became the first African American to earn a doctorate in music for tuba performance.Our guest is: Dr. Richard Antoine White, a professor, mentor, and motivational speaker. He received his bachelor's degree at the Peabody Conservatory of Music, and his master's and doctoral degrees at Indiana University. Dr. White was principal tubist of the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra from 2004 until its untimely demise in 2011. He is now principal tubist of the Santa Fe Symphony and is in his tenth season as principal tubist of the New Mexico Philharmonic. He teaches at the University of Mexico, where he is associate professor of tuba/euphonium. He is the author of I’m Possible.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women and gender.Listeners to this episode might also be interested in: Information about the documentary referenced in this podcast and the film’s trailer Baltimore School for the Arts The Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University The Santa Fe Symphony The New Mexico Philharmonic Dr. White playing tuba You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island and neither are we. We reach across our mentor network to bring you experts about everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DM us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN. 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 Rule of Law in the United States: An Unfinished Project of Black Liberation (Hart, 2021), Dr. Paul Gowder focuses on examining the ideals of the American rule of law by asking: how do we interpret its history and the goals of its constitutional framers to see the rule of law ambitions its foundational institutions express? The book considers those constitutional institutions as inextricable from the problem of race in the United States and the tensions between the rule of law as a protector of property rights and the rule of law as a restrictor on arbitrary power and a guarantor of legal equality. In that context, it explores the distinctive role of Black liberation movements in developing the American rule of law. Finally, it considers the extent to which the American rule of law is compromised at its frontiers, and the extent that those compromises undermine legal protections Americans enjoy in the interior. It asks how America reflects the legal contradictions of capitalism and empire outside its borders, and the impact of those contradictions on its external goals.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies