Marshall Poe interviewed Colin Gordon, author of Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City, for the New Books in History blog. An audio file of this extensive interview is available for download at newbooksinhistory.com.
Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution
Neil Lanctot
512 pages | 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 | 31 illus.
Cloth 2004 | ISBN 978-0-8122-3807-5 | $37.95 | £25.00
Paper 2008 | ISBN 978-0-8122-2027-8 | $19.95 | £13.00
Winner of the 2005 Seymour Medal of the Society for American Baseball
Research
"Prodigiously researched and thoroughly unsentimental, Neil Lanctot's history of organized black baseball from 1933 through the early 1960s provides an enormously important historical corrective to feel-good versions of baseball integration."--New York Times
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Book reviewers: to request a press copy, contact Ellen Trachtenberg.
Educators: to request an exam copy for course use consideration, click here.
In a post titled "Du Bois in the Lone Star State 2.0", The Bald Blogger has made a recent lecture by Edward J. Blum, author of W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet, available on line. In this talk, "The Noose and the Cross: Race, Religion, and the Redemption of Violence in the Works of W. E. B. Du Bois," (a 53.5 MB mp3) Blum discusses the image of the Black Jesus that developed in the United States in response to racial oppression.
As Sen. Barack Obama deals with the fallout of controversial remarks by his pastor, a noted historian explains how the Rev. Jeremiah Wright came to say what he did.
That historian is Edward J. Blum, author of W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet. Here's an excerpt from the interview:
NEWSWEEK: You've said that African-American church leaders have taken America's Christian values and turned them against the nation's practitioners of racial discrimination, violence and imperialism for hundreds of years. When and how did this tradition begin?
Edward J. Blum: It began even before the United States became the United States, during the slave trade. Throughout slavery, African-Americans used the Bible to challenge their enslavement. Olaudah Equiano, a slave who was later freed, wrote a narrative juxtaposing the Christianity of the slaveholders vs. his own Christianity. Frederick Douglass said he hated the Christianity of whites but loved the Christianity of Christ. As Africans became Americans and embraced Christianity, they continued to turn the teachings of Jesus against whites.
In an HNN.us commentary, “God Damn America” in Black and White, Penn Press author and historian Edward J. Blum places the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's controversial oratory in the historical context of African American religious speech.
What is striking, historically, is that there is nothing new in Wright's sermon and how often African American perspectives on so-called American Christian nationalism are ignored. It seems that each year, at least a handful of books come out trying to discern whether the United States was founded as a Christian nation. Most recently, this can be seen in Steven Waldman's Liberating the Founders. But so often historians have approached the topic from the perspective of elite whites and not the people who were building the nation from its foundation, hoeing the fields and raising the cotton, washing the clothes and preparing the meals (one exception to this is David Howard-Pitney's wonderful The African-American Jeremiad). If we look closely at African American perspectives of Christian nationalism, we find the Reverend Wright firmly in a long oppositional and rhetorical tradition.
Edward J. Blum is a professor of history at San Diego State University and is the author of W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet and Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898.
Read the essay in its entirety on History News Network.
Boston University's BU Today asked Penn Press author Gene Andrew Jarrett to describe the post Civil War ideal of the "new Negro." Jarrett explains:
The “new Negro” was a concept of the second half of the 19th century, after the Civil War, when African-Americans were hoping to represent themselves in new, progressive ways, either in the halls of politics or in culture. There was a movement from the old Negro — that is, the plantation slave — to the new Negro, African-Americans who were considered more refined, educated, sophisticated, and involved in the political process.
Tonight at 7:00 p.m. at Barnes & Noble at BU, Jarrett, author of Deans and Truants: Race and Realism in African American Literature, will join a roundtable of African American studies scholars to discuss the significance of Black History Month. Jarrett listed some of the issues at stake in his BU Today interview:
Continue reading "Jarrett Describes the 19th Century "New Negro"" »
A review of Jason Chambers's Madison Avenue and the Color Line appears in this week's The Big Tent section of Advertising Age. "The book offers perspective for those entering the industry as well as those that don't understand what all of the fuss is about," writes Big Tent columnist Carol Watson.
This Valentine's Day, the hearts of devoted Phillies fans are hovering somewhere over Clearwater, Florida, where spring training begins for Phils pitchers and catchers. The local blog, High Cheese reports that Brett Myers and Ryan Madson are sporting "Winning Starts Now" t-shirts. There's always hope.
While baseball lovers (at least those not jaded by a string of steroid scandal headlines) dream of going all the way, the historians among them may turn back to earlier glories and bittersweet heartbreaks. Fortunately, we at Penn Press are ready to fulfill those desires with our spring line up of books.
Neil Lanctot's award-winning Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution will be released in paperback this month. In the forthcoming Almost a Dynasty, sports journalist William C. Kashatus details the rise and fall of the 1980 World Champion Phillies. In March, Penn Press will offer an additional special treat for baseball history buffs, an Almost a Dynasty trivia contest.
Who says baseball love always goes unrequited?
This month, Edward J. Blum, author of W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet, will visit campuses across the country to discuss the legacy of the renown scholar and activist.
Tomorrow, February 7, Blum kicks off his tour at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, where he will be giving a talk for the Institute for the Study of Religion, Violence, and Memory.
On February 13, he will be giving a lunchtime talk at Emory University in Atlanta, GA.
February 14 brings Blum to the Executive Leadership Center at Morehouse College—also located in Atlanta—for the symposium "Culture, Spiritual Values, and the Pursuit of Excellence in Higher Education" with Dr. Clayborne Carson, Dr. Stephen Carter, Dr. Cheryl Townsend-Gilkes, Dr. Martin E. Marty, and Dr. Harold Bennett.
Blum rounds out his tour with a talk at the University of California, Riverside on February 26. Shortly after the talk, we will make an mp3 recording available for download.
For details on these author appearances, visit the Penn Press Log Events page.
Marcy Sacks, author of Before Harlem: The Black Experience in New York City Before World War I, guides New York Times reporter John Strausbaugh through the Manhattan's San Juan Hill neighborhood in "Jazz in New York," an nytimes.com online video report.
In this video and the related New York Times article, Sacks not only describes the poor living conditions and ethnic tensions that shaped San Juan Hill in the early twentieth century. She also evokes the area's energetic cultural history.
