Our Town by
The brutal lynching of two young black men in Marion, Indiana, on August 7, 1930, cast a shadow over the town that still lingers. It is only one event in the long and complicated history of race relations in Marion, a history much ignored and considered by many to be best forgotten. But the lynching cannot be forgotten. It is too much a part of the fabric of Marion, too much ingrained even now in the minds of those who live there. In Our Town journalist Cynthia Carr explores the issues of race, loyalty, and memory in America through the lens of a specific hate crime that occurred in Marion but could have happened anywhere. Marion is our town, America's town, and its legacy is our legacy. Like everyone in Marion, Carr knew the basic details of the lynching even as a child: three black men were arrested for attempted murder and rape, and two of them were hanged in the courthouse square, a fate the third miraculously escaped. Meeting James Cameron-the man who'd survived-led her to examine how the quiet Midwestern town she loved could harbor such dark secrets. Spurred by the realization that, like her, millions of white Americans are intimately connected to this hidden history, Carr began an investigation into the events of that night, racism in Marion, the presence of the Ku Klux Klan-past and present-in Indiana, and her own grandfather's involvement. She uncovered a pattern of white guilt and indifference, of black anger and fear that are the hallmark of race relations across the country. In a sweeping narrative that takes her from the angry energy of a white supremacist rally to the peaceful fields of Weaver-once an all-black settlement neighboring Marion-in search of the good and the bad in the story of race in America, Carr returns to her roots to seek out the fascinating people and places that have shaped the town. Her intensely compelling account of the Marion lynching and of her own family's secrets offers a fresh examination of the complex legacy of whiteness in America. Part mystery, part history, part true crime saga, Our Town is a riveting read that lays bare a raw and little-chronicled facet of our national memory and provides a starting point toward reconciliation with the past. On August 7, 1930, three black teenagers were dragged from their jail cells in Marion, Indiana, and beaten before a howling mob. Two of them were hanged; by fate the third escaped. A photo taken that night shows the bodies hanging from the tree but focuses on the faces in the crowd--some enraged, some laughing, and some subdued, perhaps already feeling the first pangs of regret. Sixty-three years later, journalist Cynthia Carr began searching the photo for her grandfather's face.
Between the World and Me by
In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of "race," a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men--bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates's attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son--and readers--the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children's lives were taken as American plunder.
The Souls of Black Folk by
The Souls of Black Folk is a classic work of American literature by W. E. B. Du Bois. It is a seminal work in the history of sociology, and a cornerstone of African-American literary history.To develop this groundbreaking work, Du Bois drew from his own experiences as an African-American in the American society. Outside of its notable relevance in African-American history, The Souls of Black Folk also holds an important place in social science as one of the early works in the field of sociology.
Racism in Indian Country by
In the face of huge challenges, despite crushing social conditions, Indian people have survived. Racism in Indian Country exposes, for the first time, the degrading and inhuman treatment Indian people have had - and continue - to endure. This book provides numerous examples including the sterilization of thousands of Indian women without their consent, and the poor treatment Indians receive in our schools, resulting in the worst academic records - and the highest dropout rate, 50 percent - of any ethnic group. Subjected to constant harassment by anti-Indian groups, and banks and other lending institutions that either raise interest rates on loans to Indians or redline their reservations, Indians receive some of the most racist treatment in the United States. This book's thorough documentation and explication of the challenges faced by Indians historically and today will be useful in courses in modern history, ethnic studies, sociology, and anthropology.
The Cross and the Lynching Tree by
The cross and the lynching tree are the two most emotionally charged symbols in the history of the African American community. In this powerful new work, theologian James H. Cone explores these symbols and their interconnection in the history and souls of black folk.
"Theology's Great Sin: Silence in the Face of White Supremacy" in Black Theology by
Drawing on the legacies of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others, this essay calls academic theologians to break the silence about white racism within their discipline. Four realities are identified that have contributed and continue to create this silence. (1) Whites do not talk about racism because they do not have to. (2) White theologians avoid racial dialogue because talk about white supremacy arouses deep feelings of guilt. (3) Whites avoid talking with African Americans about race because Whites fear engaging Black peoples' rage. (4) Whites do not say much about racial justice because they are not prepared for a radical redistribution of wealth and power. Confronting these realities gives theologians an opportunity to develop antiracist theologies that go beyond simply condemning racism because they engage the histories, cultures and theologies of people of color. This is the work of love and justice because it is work that enhances our humanity.
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by
Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history. Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the US empire. With growing support for movements such as the campaign to abolish Columbus Day and replace it with Indigenous Peoples' Day and the Dakota Access Pipeline protest led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States is an essential resource providing historical threads that are crucial for understanding the present. In An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, Dunbar-Ortiz adroitly challenges the founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the Indigenous peoples was colonialist and designed to seize the territories of the original inhabitants, displacing or eliminating them. And as Dunbar-Ortiz reveals, this policy was praised in popular culture, through writers like James Fenimore Cooper and Walt Whitman, and in the highest offices of government and the military. Shockingly, as the genocidal policy reached its zenith under President Andrew Jackson, its ruthlessness was best articulated by US Army general Thomas S. Jesup, who, in 1836, wrote of the Seminoles: "The country can be rid of them only by exterminating them." Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples' history radically reframes US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative. An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States is a 2015 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature.
The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation, and Hidden Grief by
In this groundbreaking, interdisciplinary study Anne Anlin Cheng argues that we have to understand racial grief not only as the result of racism but also as a foundation for racial identity. The Melancholy of Race proposes that racial identification is itself already a melancholic act--asocial category that is imaginatively supported through a dynamic of loss and compensation, by which the racial other is at once rejected and retained. Using psychoanalytic theories on mourning and melancholia as inroads into her subject, Cheng offers a closely observed and carefully reasonedaccount of the minority experience as expressed in works of art by, and about, Asian-Americans and African-Americans. She argues that the racial minority and dominant American culture both suffer from racial melancholia and that this insight is crucial to a productive reimagining of progressivepolitics. Her discussion ranges from "Flower Drum Song" to "M. Butterfly," Brown v. Board of Education to Anna Deavere Smith's "Twilight," and Invisible Man to The Woman Warrior, in the process demonstrating that racial melancholia permeates our fantasies of citizenship, assimilation, and socialhealth. Her investigations reveal the common interests that social, legal, and literary histories of race have always shared with psychoanalysis, and situates Asian-American and African-American identities in relation to one another within the larger process of American racialization. A provocativelook at a timely subject, this study is essential reading for anyone interested in race studies, critical theory, or psychoanalysis.
Custer Died for Your Sins: An American Indian Manifesto by
In his new preface to this paperback edition, the author observes, "The Indian world has changed so substantially since the first publication of this book that some things contained in it seem new again." Indeed, it seems that each generation of whites and Indians will have to read and reread Vine Deloria’s Manifesto for some time to come, before we absorb his special, ironic Indian point of view and what he tells us, with a great deal of humor, about U.S. race relations, federal bureaucracies, Christian churches, and social scientists. This book continues to be required reading for all Americans, whatever their special interest.
Evolution, Creationism, and Other Modern Myths: A Critical Inquiry by
"I offer no comfort to religious fundamentalists or evolutionists...Both are passe and represent only a quarrel within the Western belief system, not an accurate rendering of Earth history." With this opening salvo, Vine Deloria Jr. launches a witty and erudite assault on the current state of evolutionary theory, science, and religion. Using the tension between evolutionists and creationists in Kansas in the 1990s as a focal point, Deloria takes Western science and religion to task, providing a critical assessment of the flaws and anomalies in each side's arguments. As he incorporates non-Western and Native American ideas, as well as the concept of "Intelligent Design," Deloria provides us with a framework to better understand our origins.
For This Land: Writings on Religion in America by
First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present by
Ward Churchill has achieved an unparalleled reputation as a scholar-activist and analyst of indigenous issues in North America. Here, he explores the history of holocaust and denial in this hemisphere, beginning with the arrival of Columbus and continuing on into the present. He frames the matter by examining both "revisionist" denial of the Nazi-perpatrated Holocaust and the opposing claim of its exclusive "uniqueness," using the full scope of what happened in Europe as a backdrop against which to demonstrate that genocide is precisely what has been--and still is--carried out against the American Indians. Churchill lays bare the means by which many of these realities have remained hidden, how public understanding of this most monstrous of crimes has been subverted not only by its perpetrators and their beneficiaries but by the institutions and individuals who perceive advantages in the confusion. In particular, he outlines the reasons underlying the United States's 40-year refusal to ratify the Genocide Convention, as well as the implications of the attempt to exempt itself from compliance when it finally offered its "endorsement." In conclusion, Churchill proposes a more adequate and coherent definition of the crime as a basis for identifying, punishing and preventing genocidal practices, wherever and whenever they occur.
God Is Red by
First published in 1972, Vine Deloria Jr.'s God Is Red remains the seminal work on Native religious views, asking new questions about our species and our ultimate fate. Celebrating three decades in publication with a special 30th-anniversary edition, this classic work reminds us to learn "that we are a part of nature, not a transcendent species with no responsibilities to the natural world." It is time again to listen to Vine Deloria Jr.'s powerful voice, telling us about religious life that is independent of Christianity and that reveres the interconnectedness of all living things.
The Metaphysics of Modern Existence by
One of Deloria's most controversial books, The Metaphysics of Modern Existence emphasizes that Native Americans have consistently perceived their realities experientially, confronting the reality of the experience, whereas Westerners often hold academic learning and theories above experience. This difference in perception and thought has had and continues to have very real environmental and political ramifications, not to mention personal and social consequences. Deloria's Metaphysics adroitly answers the often unasked question: what does an Indian think about the modern world.
The Nations Within: The Past and Future of American Indian Sovereignty by
Those of us who try to understand what is happening in North American Indian communities have learned to see Vine Deloria, Jr., both as an influential actor in the ongoing drama and also as its most knowledgeable interpreter. This new book on Indian self-rule is the most informative that I have seen in my own half-century of reading. Deloria and his co-author focus on John Collier's struggle with both the U.S. Congress and the Indian tribes to develop a New Deal for Indians fifty years ago. It is a blow-by-blow historical account, perhaps unique in the literature, which may be the only way to show the full complexity of American Indian relations with federal and state governments. This makes it possible in two brilliant concluding chapters to clarify current Indian points of view and to build onto initiatives that Indians have already taken to suggest which of these might be most useful for them to pursue. The unheeded message has been clear throughout history, but now we see how-- if we let Indians do it their own way-- they might, more quickly than we have imagined, rebuild their communities. -- Sol Tax, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, University of Chicago