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James Baldwin quote reading, "We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist."
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Image one: E-book titled The Racial Healing Handbook: Practical Activities to Help You Challenge Privilege, Confront Systemic Racism, and Engage in Collective Healing (2019) - synopsis: The Racial Healing Handbook offers practical tools to help you navigate daily and past experiences of racism, challenge internalized negative messages and privileges, and handle feelings of stress and shame. You'll also learn to develop a profound racial consciousness and conscientiousness and heal from grief and trauma. Most importantly, you'll discover the building blocks to creating a community of healing in a world still filled with racial microaggressions and discrimination.
Image two: E-book titled Uncompromising Activist: Richard Greener, First Black Graduate of Harvard College (2017) - synopsis: Richard Theodore Greener (1844–1922) was a renowned black activist and scholar. In 1870, he was the first black graduate of Harvard College. During Reconstruction, he was the first black faculty member at a southern white college, the University of South Carolina. He was even the first black US diplomat to a white country, serving in Vladivostok, Russia. A notable speaker and writer for racial equality, he also served as a dean of the Howard University School of Law and as the administrative head of the Ulysses S. Grant Monument Association.
Image three: E-book titled Hashtag Identity: Hash-tagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation (2019) - synopsis: Hashtag Identity is among the first scholarly books to address the positive and negative effects of Twitter on our contemporary world. The essays in Hashtag Identity consider topics such as the social justice movements organized through Hashtag Black Lives Matter, Hashtag Ferguson, and Hashtag Say Her Name; the controversies around Hashtag Why I Stayed and Hashtag Cancel Colbert; Twitter use in India and Africa; the integration of hashtags such as hashtag no homo and hashtag on fleek that have become part of everyday online vernacular; and other ways in which Twitter has been used by, for, and against women, people of color, LGBTQ, and Global South communities.
Image one: E-book titled African Americans and the First Amendment: The Case for Liberty and Equality (2019) - synopsis: African Americans and the First Amendment is the first book to explore in detail the relationship between African Americans and our “first freedoms,” especially freedom of speech. Timothy C. Shiell utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to demonstrate that a strong commitment to civil liberty and to racial equality are mutually supportive, as they share an opposition to orthodoxy and a commitment to greater inclusion and participation.
Image two: E-book titled Toni Morrison: Forty Years in the Clearing (2012) - synopsis: Enables audiences/readers, critics, and students to review Morrison’s cultural and literary impacts and to consider the import, and influence of her legacies in her multiple roles as writer, editor, publisher, reader, scholar, artist, and teacher over the last four decades.
Shirley Chisholm quote reading: "If they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair."
Image one: E-book titled Reaping a Greater Harvest: African Americans, the Extension Service, and Rural Reform in Jim Crow Texas (2007) - synopsis: Black farmers were excluded from cooperative demonstration work in Texas until the Smith-Lever Agricultural Extension act in 1914. However, the resulting Negro Division included a complicated bureaucracy of African American agents who reported to white officials, were supervised by black administrators, and served black farmers. The now-measurable successes of these African American farmers exacerbated racial tensions and led to pressure on agents to maintain the status quo. The bureau that was meant to ensure equality instead became another tool for systematic discrimination and maintenance of the white-dominated southern landscape.
Image two: E-book titled African American Women Chemists (2011) - synopsis: In this book, Jeannette Brown, an African American woman chemist herself, will present a wide-ranging historical introduction to the relatively new presence of African American women in the field of chemistry. It will detail their struggles to obtain an education and their efforts to succeed in a field in which there were few African American men, much less African American women. The book contains sketches of the lives of African America women chemists from the earliest pioneers up until the late 1960's when the Civil Rights Acts were passed and greater career opportunities began to emerge.
Image one: E-book titled Frederick Douglass Classics: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and My Bondage and My Freedom - synopsis: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is a dramatic autobiography of the early life of an American slave, first published in 1845 when Douglass had just achieved his freedom. Its shocking first-hand account of the horrors of slavery became an international bestseller. His eloquence led Frederick Douglass to become the first great African-American leader in the United States. My Bondage and My Freedom is Frederick Douglass' second autobiography. First published in 1855-at the height of Douglass's involvement in the abolitionist movement-his narrative describes the steps that had led him to the forefront of the struggle for racial justice.
Image two: E-book titled The Worlds of Langston Hughes: Modernism and Translation in the Americas (2012) - synopsis: In The Worlds of Langston Hughes, Vera Kutzinski contends that, for writers who are part of the African diaspora, translation is more than just a literary practice: it is a fact of life and a way of thinking. Focusing on Hughes's autobiographies, translations of his poetry, his own translations, and the political lyrics that brought him to the attention of the infamous McCarthy Committee, she shows that translating and being translated—and often mistranslated—are as vital to Hughes's own poetics as they are to understanding the historical network of cultural relations known as literary modernism.
Image one: E-book titled Walking Harlem: The Ultimate Guide to the Cultural Capital of Black America (2018) - synopsis: With its rich cultural history and many landmark buildings, Harlem is not just one of New York’s most distinctive neighborhoods; it’s also one of the most walkable. This illustrated guide takes readers on five separate walking tours of Harlem, covering ninety-one different historical sites. Alongside major tourist destinations like the Apollo Theater and the Abyssinian Baptist Church, longtime Harlem resident Karen Taborn includes little-known local secrets like Jazz Age speakeasies, literati, political and arts community locales. Drawing from rare historical archives, she also provides plenty of interesting background information on each location.
Image two: E-book titled Black Women of the Harlem Renaissance Era (2017) - synopsis: Black Women of the Harlem Renaissance Era profiles the most important figures of this cultural and intellectual movement. Highlighting the accomplishments of black women who sought to create positive change after the end of WWI, this reference work includes representatives not only from the literary scene but also activists, actresses, artists, educators, entrepreneurs, musicians, political leaders, and scholars.
Image one: E-book titled Black Hunger: Soul Food and America (2004) - synopsis: Black Hunger focuses on debates over soul food since the 1960s to illuminate a complex web of political, economic, religious, sexual, and racial tensions between whites and blacks and within the black community itself. Doris Witt draws on vaudeville, literature, film, visual art, and cookbooks to explore how food has been used both to perpetuate and to challenge racial stereotypes.
Image two: E-book titled The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad (2014) - synopsis: Elijah Muhammad (1897-1975) was one of the most significant and controversial black leaders of the twentieth century. His followers called him the Messenger of Allah, while his critics labeled him a teacher of hate. Southern by birth, Muhammad moved north, eventually serving as the influential head of the Nation of Islam for over forty years. Claude Clegg III not only chronicles Muhammad's life, but also examines the history of American black nationalists and the relationship between Islam and the African American experience.
Image one: E-book titled Josephine Baker and the Rainbow Tribe (2014) - synopsis: In 1953, Josephine Baker did something completely unexpected and, in the context of racially sensitive times, outrageous. Adopting twelve children from around the globe, she transformed her estate into a theme park, complete with rides, hotels, a collective farm, and singing and dancing. The main attraction was her Rainbow Tribe, the family of the future, which showcased children of all skin colors, nations, and religions living together in harmony. Alerting readers to some of the contradictions at the heart of the Rainbow Tribe project—its undertow of child exploitation and megalomania in particular—Guterl concludes that Baker was a serious and determined activist who believed she could make a positive difference.
Image two: E-book titled Reclaiming Community: Race and the Uncertain Future of Youth Work (2019) - synopsis: Approximately 2.4 million Black youth participate in after-school programs, which offer a range of support, including academic tutoring, college preparation, political identity development, cultural and emotional support, and even a space to develop strategies and tools for organizing and activism. In Reclaiming Community, Bianca Baldridge tells the story of one such community-based program, Educational Excellence (EE), shining a light on both the invaluable role youth workers play in these spaces, and the precarious context in which such programs now exist.
Image one: E-book titled After Katrina: Race, Neoliberalism, and the End of the American Century (2018) - synopsis: Suggests that New Orleans has been reimagined as a laboratory for a racialized neoliberalism, and as such might be seen as a terminus of the American dream. This US disaster zone has unveiled a network of social and environmental crises that demonstrate that prospects of social mobility have dwindled as environmental degradation and coastal erosion emerge as major threats not just to the quality of life but to the possibility of life in coastal communities across America and the world. And yet After Katrina also suggests that New Orleans culture offers a way of thinking about the United States in terms that transcend the binary of national renewal or declension. The post-Hurricane city thus emerges as a flashpoint for reflecting on the contemporary United States.
Image two: E-book titled Black Women and Social Justice Education: Legacies and Lessons (2019) - synopsis: Black Women and Social Justice Education explores Black women’s experiences and expertise in teaching and learning about justice in a range of formal and informal educational settings. Linking historical accounts with groundbreaking contributions by new and rising leaders in the field, it examines, evaluates, establishes, and reinforces Black women’s commitment to social justice in education at all levels.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the grandmother of rock and roll, quote reading, "All this new stuff they call rock and roll, why, I've been playing that stuff for years now."
Image one: E-book titled Swimming against the Tide: African American Girls and Science Education (2008) - synopsis: Hanson examines the experiences of African American girls in science education using multiple methods of quantitative and qualitative research, including a web survey and vignette techniques. She understands the complex interaction between race and gender in the science domain and, using a multicultural and feminist framework of analysis, addresses the role of agency and resistance that encourages and sustains interest in science in African American families and communities.
Image two: E-book titled Black History: More Than Just a Month (2013) - synopsis: Some of the most interesting people and events of the past often get bypassed in a classroom. This includes a large number of African-Americans who helped build this country. Black History: More Than Just A Month pays tribute to these forgotten individuals and their accomplishments. Some of the people included are war heroes, inventors, celebrities, athletes, etc. This book is a great supplement to any history class.
UNT Dallas Founding Librarian Leora Kemp passed away at the end of Jan. 2021. Kemp was a most dedicated library professional and a faithful donor to UNT Dallas. In the library community, Kemp was known as a “librarian's librarian.” She possessed a wealth of knowledge and shared it freely. She encouraged, helped, and supported young library professionals whenever, and however she could. During her tenure, Kemp was presented a proclamation from Senator Royce West and was honored with a plaque from UNT Dallas in recognition of her service to the university and for playing an instrumental role in the formation of the university. Kemp also was honored by UNT Dallas Pres. Bob Mong at the 2015 Friends of the Dallas Public Library Exall Awards dinner. Her dedication to the university and her support of future librarians will always be remembered.
Audre Lorde quote reading: "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare."
Image one: E-book titled James Baldwin: Challenging Authors (2014) - synopsis: This edited volume gathers a collection of essays from a wide range of perspectives that confront Baldwin’s impressive and challenging canon as well as his role as a public intellectual. Contributors also explore Baldwin as a confrontational voice during his life and as an enduring call for justice.
Image two: E-book titled Black Lives, Native Lands, White Worlds: A History of Slavery in New England (2019) - synopsis: In this concise yet comprehensive history, Jared Ross Hardesty focuses on the individual stories of enslaved people, bringing their experiences to life. He also explores larger issues such as the importance of slavery to the colonization of the region and to agriculture and industry, New England’s deep connections to Caribbean plantation societies, and the significance of emancipation movements in the era of the American Revolution.
Image one: E-book titled Being Black, Being Male on Campus: Understanding and Confronting Black Male Collegiate Experiences (2016) - synopsis: Being Black, Being Male on Campus uses in-depth interviews to investigate the collegiate experiences of Black male students at historically White institutions. Framed through Critical Race Theory and Black-maleness, the study provides new analysis on the utility and importance of Black Male Initiatives (BMIs). This work explores Black men’s perceptions, identity constructions, and ambitions, while it speaks meaningfully to how race and gender intersect as they influence students’ experiences.e
Image two: E-book titled My Work is That of Conservation: An Environmental Biography of George Washington Carver (2011) - synopsis: Carver had a truly prolific career dedicated to studying the ways in which people ought to interact with the natural world, yet much of his work has been largely forgotten. Carver's environmental vision came into focus when he moved to the Tuskegee Institute in Macon County, Alabama, where his sensibilities and training collided with the denuded agrosystems, deep poverty, and institutional racism of the Black Belt. It was there that Carver realized his most profound agricultural thinking, as his efforts to improve the lot of the area's poorest farmers forced him to adjust his conception of scientific agriculture.
Image one: E-book titled I Fight for a Living: Boxing and the Battle for Black Manhood, 1880-1915 (2017) - synopsis: As the author details, boxers bought into American ideas about masculinity and free enterprise to prove their equality while using their bodies to become self-made men. The African American middle class, meanwhile, grappled with an expression of public black maleness they saw related to disreputable leisure rather than respectable labor. Moore shows how each fighter conformed to middle-class ideas of masculinity based on his own judgment of what culture would accept.
Image two: E-book titled The Black Musician and the White City: Race and Music in Chicago, 1900-1967 (2014) - synopsis: Amy Absher’s The Black Musician and the White City tells the story of African American musicians in Chicago during the mid-twentieth century. While depicting the segregated city before World War II, Absher traces the migration of black musicians, both men and women and both classical and vernacular performers, from the American South to Chicago during the 1930s to 1950s.
Malcolm X quote reading, "I just don't believe that when people are being unjustly oppressed that they should let someone else set rules for them by which they can come out from under that oppression."
Image one: E-book titled A Marked Man: The Assassination of Malcolm X (2012) - synopsis: Few were shocked by the news of Malcolm X‘s death. Since 1952 the former member of the Nation of Islam had supported the Nation‘s philosophy of violence as the method to achieve justice for blacks in the United States. But in March 1964, after a major shift in his philosophy, Malcolm changed his message. He no longer agreed with the Nation of Islam and feuded with its leaders. In this chronicle of an assassination, find out the answers to the questions about who assassinated Malcolm and learn more about the impact of Malcolm X‘s life, and his death, on civil rights in the United States.
Image two: E-book titled Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (2019) - synopsis: In the 1960s and 70s, the two most important black nationalist organizations, the Nation of Islam and the Black Panther Party, gave voice and agency to the most economically and politically isolated members of black communities outside the South. Though vilified as fringe and extremist, these movements proved to be formidable agents of influence during the civil rights era, ultimately giving birth to the Black Power movement.
Image one: E-book titled Where the River Burned: Carl Stokes and the Struggle to Save Cleveland (2015) - synopsis: Carl Stokes, the first African American mayor of a major U.S. city, had come into office in Cleveland a year earlier with energy and ideas. He surrounded himself with a talented staff, and his administration set new policies to combat pollution, improve housing, provide recreational opportunities, and spark downtown development. In Where the River Burned, David Stradling and Richard Stradling describe Cleveland's nascent transition from polluted industrial city to viable service city during the Stokes administration.
Image two: E-book titled The Color of the Third Degree: Racism, Police Torture, and Civil Rights in the American South, 1930-1955 (2019) - synopsis: Available for the first time in English, The Color of the Third Degree uncovers the still-hidden history of police torture in the Jim Crow South. Based on a wide array of previously neglected archival sources, Silvan Niedermeier argues that as public lynching decreased, less visible practices of racial subjugation and repression became central to southern white supremacy. The first historical study of police torture in the American South, Niedermeier draws attention to the willing acceptance of violent coercion by prosecutors, judges, and juries, and brings to light the deep historical roots of police violence against African Americans, one of the most urgent and distressing issues of our time.
Image one: E-book titled Black Women's Mental Health: Balancing Strength and Vulnerability (2017) - synopsis: This book offers a unique, interdisciplinary, and thoughtful look at the challenges and potency of Black women’s struggle for inner peace and mental stability. It brings together contributors from psychology, sociology, law, and medicine, as well as the humanities, to discuss issues ranging from stress, sexual assault, healing, self-care, and contemplative practice to health-policy considerations and parenting.
Image two: E-book titled Keeping Heart: A Memoir of Family Struggle, Race, and Medicine (2015) - synopsis: This engaging chronicle illuminates the journeys not only of a black man born with heart disease in the southern Appalachian coalfields, but of his family and community. It fills an important gap in the literature on an under-examined aspect of American experience: the lives of blacks in rural Appalachia and in the non-urban endpoints of the Great Migration. Its emotional power is a testament to the importance of ordinary lives.
Image One: Black History Month
Image Two: E-book titled Integration Now: Alexander v. Holmes and the End of Jim Crow Education (2019) - synopsis: Recovering the history of an often-ignored landmark Supreme Court case, William P. Hustwit assesses the significant role that Alexander v. Holmes (1969) played in integrating the South's public schools. Although Brown v. Board of Education has rightly received the lion's share of historical analysis, its ambiguous language for implementation led to more than a decade of delays and resistance by local and state governments. Alexander v. Holmes required "integration now," and less than a year later, thousands of children were attending integrated schools.
Image Three: E-book titled Black New Jersey: 1664 to the Present Day (2018) - synopsis: Black New Jersey tells the rich and complex story of the African American community’s remarkable accomplishments and the colossal obstacles they faced along the way. Drawing from rare archives, historian Graham Russell Gao Hodges brings to life the courageous black men and women who fought for their freedom and eventually built a sturdy and substantial middle class.
