Negotiating Black Identities
Video
African American Suburban Development in Atlanta
African American Suburbanization Part 2: Dr. Wiese traces how Black suburbs faced intensified segregation and isolation from the post-WWII period through the 1960s Part 3: Dr. Wiese discusses how Black neighborhoods grew primarily through new home construction during the post war period Part 4: Dr. Wiese refers to postwar growth on Atlanta’s west side to illustrate how self-contained […]
Local Color
Local Color Local Color as a literary genre bears the full weight of the concept of region, for its typical stories and sketches offer highly particularized visions of “locale” that are “colored” by regionally defined characters, settings, folkways, and dialects. The paradox, and thus the richness, of this often discounted form lies in the tension […]
Seeds of Rebellion in Plantation Fiction: Victor Séjour’s “The Mulatto”
Introduction A little-known story first translated into English in 1995 by Philip Barnard for The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, “Le Mulâtre” (“The Mulatto”) by Victor Séjour (1817–1874), a New Orleans free man of color, was initially published in the March 1837 issue of Cyrille Bisette‘s Parisian abolitionist journal La Revue des Colonies. La […]
Memorializing the Freedom Riders
Essay Another Mother’s Day has come and gone and still no officially supported memorial honors the Freedom Riders at the site where civil rights workers braved the vicious firebombing of their bus near Anniston, Alabama, on Mother’s Day in May 1961. Momentum is growing to construct a suitable memorial at the site—one of the most […]
A Sleight of History: University of Alabama’s Foster Auditorium
A Sleight of History: Film and Essay Sleight of History: University of Alabama’s Foster Auditorium. A short film by Sarah Melton and Marshall Houston, 2009. My fellow filmmaker Marshall Houston and I became interested in Foster Auditorium while searching for a topic for our documentary filmmaking course at the University of Alabama. We both knew […]
Walking into History: The Beginning of School Desegregation in Nashville
Introduction At high noon, Nashville time, on Monday, May 17, 1954, all nine justices of the United States Supreme Court in Washington joined in a declaration that legally-sanctioned racial segregation in the public schools is a violation of the US Constitution’s promise of equal protection of the laws. The unanimous decision, covering five consolidated cases […]
Elegy for the Native Guards
Poem Elegy for the Native Guards Now that the salt of their blood Stiffens the saltier oblivion of the sea . . . —Allen Tate We leave Gulfport at noon; gulls overhead trailing the boat—streamers, noisy fanfare— all the way to Ship Island. What we see first is the fort, its roof of grass a […]
Naming Each Place
Readings Jericho Brown reads the poem “Like Father.” Poem text Jericho Brown reads “Prayer of the Backhanded.” Poem text Jericho Brown reads the poem “Scarecrow.” Poem text Jericho Brown reads the poem “Runaway.” Poem text. Interview with Natasha Trethewey In this interview, conducted on September 5, 2009, during the Decatur (Georgia) Book Festival, Jericho Brown […]
New Patterns of Segregation: Latino and African American Students in Metro Atlanta High Schools
Latinos, the largest minority group in US public schools, are surpassing African Americans as the most segregated racial or ethnic group nationally. This isolation is well documented in states like California, Texas, and Florida with historically high levels of Latino immigration, but less is known about how these newcomers are met in nontraditional destination locales […]