Selected Books: The Black Church
African-American Religion: Interpretive Essays in History and Culture by
African American Religion brings together in one forum the most important essays on the development of these traditions to provide an overview of the field.
ISBN: 9780415914581Publication Date: 1997-01-08
African American Religious History by
This widely-heralded collection of remarkable documents offers a view of African American religious history from Africa and early America through Reconstruction to the rise of black nationalism, civil rights, and black theology of today. The documents--many of them rare, out-of-print, or difficult to find--include personal narratives, sermons, letters, protest pamphlets, early denominational histories, journalistic accounts, and theological statements. In this volume Olaudah Equiano describes Ibo religion. Lemuel Haynes gives a black Puritan's farewell. Nat Turner confesses. Jarena Lee becomes a female preacher among the African Methodists. Frederick Douglass discusses Christianity and slavery. Isaac Lane preaches among the freedmen. Nannie Helen Burroughs reports on the work of Baptist women. African Methodist bishops deliberate on the Great Migration. Bishop C. H. Mason tells of the Pentecostal experience. Mahalia Jackson recalls the glory of singing at the 1963 March on Washington. Martin Luther King, Jr. writes from the Birmingham jail. Originally published in 1985, this expanded second edition includes new sources on women, African missions, and the Great Migration. Milton C. Sernett provides a general introduction as well as historical context and comment for each document.
ISBN: 0822396033Publication Date: 2000-01-17
Black Church Beginnings by
Black Church Beginnings provides an intimate look at the struggles of African Americans to establish spiritual communities in the harsh world of slavery in the American colonies. Written by one of today's foremost experts on African American religion, this book traces the growth of the black church from its start in the mid-1700s to the end of the nineteenth century. As Henry Mitchell shows, the first African American churches didn't just organize; they labored hard, long, and sacrificially to form a meaningful, independent faith. Mitchell insightfully takes readers inside this process of development. He candidly examines the challenge of finding adequately trained pastors for new local congregations, confrontations resulting from internal class structure in big city churches, and obstacles posed by emerging denominationalism. Original in its subject matter and singular in its analysis, Mitchell's Black Church Beginnings makes a major contribution to the study of American church history.
ISBN: 0802827853Publication Date: 2004-10-04
The Black Church in the African American Experience by
Black churches in America have long been recognized as the most independent, stable, and dominant institutions in black communities. In "The Black Church in the African American Experience, "based on a ten-year study, is the largest nongovernmental study of urban and rural churches ever undertaken and the first major field study on the subject since the 1930s. Drawing on interviews with more than 1,800 black clergy in both urban and rural settings, combined with a comprehensive historical overview of seven mainline black denominations, C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya present an analysis of the Black Church as it relates to the history of African Americans and to contemporary black culture. In examining both the internal structure of the Church and the reactions of the Church to external, societal changes, the authors provide important insights into the Church s relationship to politics, economics, women, youth, and music. Among other topics, Lincoln and Mamiya discuss the attitude of the clergy toward women pastors, the reaction of the Church to the civil rights movement, the attempts of the Church to involve young people, the impact of the black consciousness movement and Black Liberation Theology and clergy, and trends that will define the Black Church well into the next century. This study is complete with a comprehensive bibliography of literature on the black experience in religion. Funding for the ten-year survey was made possible by the Lilly Endowment and the Ford Foundation."
ISBN: 1282904140Publication Date: 1990-01-01
God and Government in the Ghetto by
In recent years, as government agencies have encouraged faith-based organizations to help ensure social welfare, many black churches have received grants to provide services to their neighborhoods' poorest residents. This collaboration, activist churches explain, is a way of enacting their faith and helping their neighborhoods. But as Michael Leo Owens demonstrates in God and Government in the Ghetto, this alliance also serves as a means for black clergy to reaffirm their political leadership and reposition moral authority in black civil society. Drawing on both survey data and fieldwork in New York City, Owens reveals that African American churches can use these newly forged connections with public agencies to influence policy and government responsiveness in a way that reaches beyond traditional electoral or protest politics. The churches and neighborhoods, Owens argues, can see a real benefit from that influence--but it may come at the expense of less involvement at the grassroots. Anyone with a stake in the changing strategies employed by churches as they fight for social justice will find God and Government in the Ghetto compelling reading.
ISBN: 0226642089Publication Date: 2007-01-01
A History of the African American Church by
Carter G. Woodson's classic text on the emergence of African American churches, chronicling their story out of the eighteenth-century evangelical revivals and their transformations through the nineteenth and early twentieth century, is important for reasons other than "black church" history. With the exception of recent books, such as C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya's "The Black Church in the African-American Experience," Woodson's text remains one of the best overviews of the topic. But Woodson's text is also a significant account of the ways in which Christian-based instruction and socialization shaped not only class divisions and vetted leadership among, but also shaped who/what became the "Negro/Colored/Black/African American." For even the "Father of Black History," as Woodson is often called, could not escape the spell casted by the prevailing Christian ideology of his time, and in the earlier periods he investigated. In fact, Woodson viewed "Christianity as] a rather difficult religion for the] undeveloped mind of the enslaved African] to grasp," and never questioned this Christianity or probed the African basis of rituals and ideas among the enslaved and the emancipated. Instead, Woodson extols the virtues of Christianity among the converted, and the men who established the various churches in African descended communities, including the educative, social, economic, and political roles played by these institutions after the U. S. Civil War. There is little here about those who adhered to spiritual or religious practices and ideas that remained as close to Africa as possible. For Woodson, then, the ministry was one of the highest callings and occupations to which African American male leaders could aspire, and from which they accrued prominence within their communities at a time when religious instruction was the primary schooling option available. These "educated Negroes," as Woodson called them, were now armed with the Christian religion, Christian names, and a dream to partner (in an inferior position) with the dominant values and views of white society, which all created sectarianism and, eventually, two divergent visions among African descended peoples in North America. Nineteenth century converts split along "class" lines, and urbanized elites developed a Christian distaste for their kinfolk who continued to engage in African-based rituals and practices, such as the ring shout. By the first quarter of the nineteenth century, these elites began to seek equal rights and full acceptance by whites-thus the need to distance themselves from things "African" and despite the fact that a few church organizations kept the term "African" as part of their name. The majority of the African-based community saw racism and its insidiousness as deeply rooted in their fight for human rights, while the elites viewed slavery and discrimination as obstacles which prevented "their" particular progress rather than a collective advancement. Since Woodson, writing in the first quarter of the twentieth century, had access to individuals who were either enslaved or children of the enslaved, his account is still therefore relevant as both a source and as a story that captures some of the foregoing processes in African and African American history.
ISBN: 1937306631Publication Date: 2017-10-26
Little Zion: A Church Baptized by Fire by
The arson attacks in early 2006 on a number of small Baptist churches in rural Alabama recalled the rash of burnings at dozens of predominantly black houses of worship in the South during the mid-1990s. One of the churches struck by probable arson in 1996 was Little Zion Baptist Church in Boligee, Alabama. This book draws on the voices and memories of church members to share a previously undocumented history of Little Zion, from its beginnings as a brush arbor around the time of emancipation, to its key role in the civil rights movement, to its burning and rebuilding with the help of volunteers from around the world. Folklorist Shelly O'Foran, a Quaker who went to Boligee as a volunteer in the church rebuilding effort, describes Little Zion as always having been much more than the building itself. She shows how the spiritual and social traditions that the residents of Boligee practice and teach their children have assured the continued vitality of the church and community. Through thoughtful fieldwork and presentation, Little Zion also explores the power of oral narrative to promote understanding between those inside and outside the church community. Illustrated with historical and contemporary photographs, this volume is both a celebration of Little Zion's history and an invitation to share in its long life story.
ISBN: 9780807857632Publication Date: 2006-09-30
A Pursued Justice by
The narrative of Civil Rights often begins with the prophetic figure of Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s. City squares became a church, the body politic a congregation, and sermons a jeremiad of social changeâor so the story goes. In A Pursued Justice , Kenyatta Gilbert instead traces the roots of King's call for justice to African American prophetic preaching that arose in an earlier moment of American history. In the wake of a failed Reconstruction period, widespread agricultural depression, and the rise of Jim Crow laws, and triggered by America's entry into World War I, a flood of southern Blacks moveâd from the South to the âurban centers of the North. This Great Migration transformed northern Black churches and produced a new mode of preachingâprophetic Black preachingâwhich sought to address this brand new context. Black clerics such as Baptist pastor Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr., A.M.E. Bishop Reverdy Cassius Ransom, and A.M.E. Zion pastor Reverend Florence Spearing Randolph rose up within these congregations. From their pulpits, these pastors "spoke truth to power" for hope across racial, ethnic, and class lines both within their congregations and between the Black community and the wider culture. A Pursued Justice profiles these three ecclesiastically inventive clerics of the first half of the twentieth century whose strident voices gave birth to a distinctive form of prophetic preaching. Their radical sermonic response to injustice and suffering, both in and out of the Black church, not only captured the imaginations of participants in the largest internal mass migration in American history but also inspired the homiletical vision ofMartin Luther King Jr. and subsequent generations of preachers of revolutionary hope and holy disobedience.
ISBN: 9781481303989Publication Date: 2016-08-01
Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postemancipation Virginia by
That churches are one of the most important cornerstones of black political organization is a commonplace. In this history of African American Protestantism and American politics at the end of the Civil War, Nicole Myers Turner challenges the idea of black churches as having always been politically engaged. Using local archives, church and convention minutes, and innovative Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping, Turner reveals how freedpeople in Virginia adapted strategies for pursuing the freedom of their souls to worship as they saw fit--and to participate in society completely in the evolving landscape of emancipation. Freedpeople, for both evangelical and electoral reasons, were well aware of the significance of the physical territory they occupied, and they sought to organize the geographies that they could in favor of their religious and political agendas at the outset of Reconstruction. As emancipation included opportunities to purchase properties, establish black families, and reconfigure gender roles, the ministry became predominantly male, a development that affected not only discourses around family life but also the political project of crafting, defining, and teaching freedom. After freedmen obtained the right to vote, an array of black-controlled institutions increasingly became centers for political organizing on the basis of networks that mirrored those established earlier by church associations. We are proud to announce that this book will also be published as an enhanced open-access e-book on a companion website hosted by Fulcrum, an innovative publishing platform launched by Michigan Publishing at the University of Michigan Library. The Fulcrum version of the book can be located using this link: https://doi.org/10.5149/9781469655253_Turner.
ISBN: 9781469655246Publication Date: 2020-02-20
Your Spirits Walk Beside Us by
Even before the emergence of the civil rights movement with black churches at its center, African American religion and progressive politics were assumed to be inextricably intertwined. In her revelatory book, Barbara Savage counters this assumption with the story of a highly diversified religious community whose debates over engagement in the struggle for racial equality were as vigorous as they were persistent. Rather than inevitable allies, black churches and political activists have been uneasy and contentious partners. From the 1920s on, some of the best African American minds--W. E. B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, Benjamin Mays, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Mary McLeod Bethune, Charles S. Johnson, and others--argued tirelessly about the churches' responsibility in the quest for racial justice. Could they be a liberal force, or would they be a constraint on progress? There was no single, unified black church but rather many churches marked by enormous intellectual, theological, and political differences and independence. Yet, confronted by racial discrimination and poverty, churches were called upon again and again to come together as savior institutions for black communities. The tension between faith and political activism in black churches testifies to the difficult and unpredictable project of coupling religion and politics in the twentieth century. By retrieving the people, the polemics, and the power of the spiritual that animated African American political life, Savage has dramatically demonstrated the challenge to all religious institutions seeking political change in our time.
ISBN: 9780674043114Publication Date: 2012-10-22
Encyclopedias, Dictionaries, and Other Sources
Africana by
Inspired by the dream of the late African American scholar W.E.B. Du Bois and assisted by an eminent advisory board, Harvard scholars Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Kwame Anthony Appiah have created the first scholarly encyclopedia to take as its scope the entire history of Africa and the African Diaspora.Beautifully designed and richly illustrated with over a thousand images - maps, tables, charts, photographs, hundreds of them in full color - this single-volume reference includes more than three thousand articles and over two million words. The interplay between text and illustration conveys the richness and sweep of the African and African American experience as no other publication before it. Certain to prove invaluable to anyone interested in black history and the influence of African culture on the world today, Africana is a unique testament to the remarkable legacy of a great and varied people.With entries ranging from ”affirmative action” to ”zydeco,” from each of the most prominent ethnic groups in Africa to each member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Africana brings the entire black world into sharp focus. Every concise, informative article is referenced to others with the aim of guiding the reader through such wide-ranging topics as the history of slavery; the civil rights movement; African-American literature, music, and art; ancient African civilizations; and the black experience in countries such as France, India, and Russia.More than a book for library reference, Africana will give hours of reading pleasure through its longer, interpretive essays by such notable writers as Stanley Crouch, Gerald Early, Randall Kennedy, and Cornel West. These specially commissioned essays give the reader an engaging chronicle of the religion, arts, and cultural life of Africans and of black people in the Old World and the New.
ISBN: 0465000711Publication Date: 1999-10-27
Encyclopedia of African-American Education by
This indispensable reference is a comprehensive guide to significant issues, policies, historical events, laws, theories, and persons related to the education of African-Americans in the United States. Through several hundred alphabetically arranged entries, the volume chronicles the history of African-American education from the systematic, long-term denial of schooling to blacks before the Civil War, to the establishment of the Freedmen's Bureau and the era of Reconstruction, to Brown v. Board of Education and the civil rights reforms of the last few decades. Entries are written by expert contributors and contain valuable bibliographies, while a selected bibliography of general sources concludes the volume. The African-American population is unique in that its educational history includes as law and public policy the systematic, long-term denial of the acquisition of knowledge. In the 18th century, African-Americans were initially legally forbidden to be taught academic subjects in the South, where most African-Americans lived. This period, which ended around 1865 with the conclusion of the Civil War and the establishment of the Freedmen's Bureau, was followed by the introduction of laws, policies, and practices providing for rudimentary education for 69 years under the dual-school, separate-but-equal policies established by Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). These policies did not end until the Brown v. Board of Education decisions of 1954 and 1955 were reinforced by the passage of civil rights and equal opportunity legislation in the mid-1960s. The education of African-Americans has been a continuing moral, political, legal, economic, and psychological issue throughout this country's history. It continues to consume time and attention, and it remains an unresolved dilemma for the nation. Through several hundred alphabetically arranged entries, this indispensable reference offers a comprehensive overview of significant issues, policies, historical events, laws, persons, and theories related to African-American education from the early years of this country to the present day. The entries are written by expert contributors, and each entry includes a bibliography of works for further reading. A selected, general bibliography concludes the volume.
ISBN: 9780313289316Publication Date: 1996-08-28
Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History by
The black experience in America has been one of pain, struggle, and perseverance, placed against a backdrop of cultural identity that would not be beaten down or eradicated in the face of adversity. Born of this combination of effort and identity and shaped by experience is the African-American, whose resultant cultural identity and history has for far too long remained only partly defined and incompletely documented. Filling this void, at last, is The Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History - an authoritative, five volume work dealing with all aspects of the African-American experience from 1619 to the present day. With over 2,300 entries, 2,500 pages, and more than 1,000 photographs, maps, and charts, the Encyclopedia encompasses a broad range of topics in an effort to fully define in one source both the cultural roots and the current condition of the African-American community.
ISBN: 0028973453Publication Date: 1995-12-01
Encyclopedia of American Race Riots [2 Volumes] by
Race riots are the most glaring and contemporary displays of the racial strife running through America's history. Mostly urban, mostly outside the South, and mostly white-instigated, the number and violence of race riots increased as blacks migrated out of the rural South and into the North and West's industrialized cities during the early part of the twentieth-century. Though white / black violence has been the most common form of racial violence, riots involving Asians and Hispanics are also included and examined. Race riots are the most glaring and contemporary displays of the racial strife running through America's history. Mostly urban, mostly outside the South, and mostly white-instigated, the number and violence of race riots increased as blacks migrated out of the rural South and into the North and West's industrialized cities during the early part of the twentieth-century. While most riots have occurred within the past century, the encyclopedia reaches back to colonial history, giving the encyclopedia an unprecedented historical depth. Though white on black violence has been the most common form of racial violence, riots involving other racial and ethnic groups, such as Asians and Hispanics, are also included and examined. Organized A-Z, topics include: notorious riots like the Tulsa Riots of 1921, the Los Angeles Riots of 1965 and 1992; the African-American community's preparedness and responses to this odious form of mass violence; federal responses to rioting; an examination of the underlying causes of rioting; the reactions of prominent figures such as H. Rap Brown and Martin Luther King, Jr to rioting; and much more. Many of the entries describe and analyze particular riots and violent racial incidents, including the following: Belleville, Illinois, Riot of 1903 Harlem, New York, Riot of 1943 Howard Beach Incident, 1986 Jackson State University Incident, 1970 Los Angeles, California, Riot of 1992 Memphis, Tennessee, Riot of 1866 Red Summer Race Riots of 1919 Southwest Missouri Riots 1894-1906 Texas Southern University Riot of 1967 Entries covering the victims and opponents of race violence, include the following: Black Soldiers, Lynching of Black Women, Lynching of Diallo, Amadou Hawkins, Yusef King, Rodney Randolph, A. Philip Roosevelt, Eleanor Till, Emmett, Lynching of Turner, Mary, Lynching of Wells-Barnett, Ida B. Many entries also cover legislation that has addressed racial violence and inequality, as well as groups and organizations that have either fought or promoted racial violence, including the following: Anti-Lynching League Civil Rights Act of 1957 Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 Ku Klux Klan National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Nation of Islam Vigilante Organizations White League Other entries focus on relevant concepts, trends, themes, and publications. Besides almost 300 cross-referenced entries, most of which conclude with lists of additional readings, the encyclopedia also offers a timeline of racial violence in the United States, an extensive bibliography of print and electronic resources, a selection of important primary documents, numerous illustrations, and a detailed subject index.
ISBN: 0313333009Publication Date: 2006-11-30
Encyclopedia of Black Studies by
Click ′Additional Materials′ for downloadable samplesThe Encyclopedia of Black Studies is the leading reference source for dynamic and innovative research on the Black experience. The concept for the encyclopedia was developed from the successful Journal of Black Studies (SAGE) and contains a full analysis of the economic, political, sociological, historical, literary, and philosophical issues related to Americans of African descent. This single-volume reference is the vanguard of the recent explosive growth in quality scholarship in the field. More than a chronicle of black culture or black people, this encyclopedia deals with the emergence and maturity of an intellectual field over the past four decades. Beginning with the protests at San Francisco State College in 1967 that led to the first degree-granting department of Black Studies, the field′s rapid growth over time necessitates an authoritative account of the discipline. More than ever scholars and students need a clear conception of what the evolutionary processes have been in the creation and maintenance of the discipline. Chronology of Important Events in Black Studies 1966 Merritt College Black Studies Courses1967 San Francisco State University Protests1968 San Francisco State University Black Studies Program Established1969 Cornell University students seize student center to protest harassment of African American Students1970 University of California, Los Angeles opens Center for Afro American Studies1969 Robert Singleton and Molefi Asante creates Journal of Black Studies1972 National Black Political Convention of Gary, Indiana1974 National Council of Black Studies founded1982 Maulana Karenga′s Introduction to Black Studies published1983 Mae Jemison who received majored in Black Studies and engineering is made the first African American female astronaut.1986 Cheikh Anta Diop makes his transition1988 Temple University approves doctoral program in African American Studies created by Molefi Kete Asante1988 Toni Morrison wins Pulitzer Prize for Beloved1990 Adeniyi Coker receives first Ph.D. in African American Studies1992 Harvard University seeks "Dream Team" in African American Studies1995 More than a million black men march in Washington, DC1997 Phile Chionesu and Barbara Smith bring one million women to Philadelphia Key Features More than 240 signed articles by nearly 200 scholars, organized A to Z, with coverage spanning the social sciences Edited by the founder and current editor of the Journal of Black Studies Reader′s Guide facilitates browsing by topic and easy access to information Contains numerous illustrative charts, sidebars, and historical photographs Appendices with listings of doctoral granting programs, major journals in the field, and professional and scholarly associations Master Bibliography Key Themes* Afrocentricity * Annual Conferences * Anti-Racism * Arts * Associations and Organizations * Books * Campus Politics * Civil Rights * Classical Africa * Concepts * Culture * Departmental Histories * Films * Institutions* Intellectual Schools * Journals * Legal Issues * Movements * Newspapers * Political Issues * Professional Organizations * Publishers * Racism * Religion * Reparations * Research Centers * Resistance * Theories * United States Constitution Editorial Board Dr. Troy Allen, Southern University Dr. S.B. Assensoh, Indiana University Dr. Katherine Olukemi Bankole, West Virginia University Professor Leroy Bryant, Chicago State University Dr. Patricia Dixon, Georgia State University Howard Dodson, New York Public Library Dr. Lewis Gordon, Brown University Dr. Winston Van Horne, University of Wisconsin Dr. Clenora Hudson-Weems, University of Missouri-Columbia Dr. Charles Jones, Georgia State University Dr. Maulana Karenga, California State University, Long Beach Dr. Manning Marable, Columbia University Dr. Miriam Monges, California State University, Chico Dr. Wade Nobles, San Francisco State University Dr. Emeka Nwadiora, Temple University Dr. James Turner, Cornell University
ISBN: 9780761927624Publication Date: 2004-12-09
Encyclopedia of Race and Racism by
The Encyclopedia of Race and Racism is the first such work examining the anthropological, sociological, historical, economic, and scientific theories of race and racism in the modern era. The set delves into the historic origins of ideas of race and racism and explores their social and scientific consequences. Some of the nearly 400 articles address broad theoretical topics that have helped to shape modern ideas about race and racism; others address more specific subjects in the larger fields. The set includes biographies of dozens of significant theorists, as well as political and social leaders and notorious racists. The Encyclopedia of Race and Racism also includes a carefully chosen selection of primary documents that enhance and reinforce the content of the articles. Set includes a thematic outline, a filmography, and a comprehensive general index.
ISBN: 9780028660202Publication Date: 2007-11-12
The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture by
There is no denying that race is a critical issue in understanding the South. However, this concluding volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture challenges previous understandings, revealing the region's rich, ever-expanding diversity and providing new explorations of race relations. In 36 thematic and 29 topical essays, contributors examine such subjects as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Japanese American incarceration in the South, relations between African Americans and Native Americans, Chinese men adopting Mexican identities, Latino religious practices, and Vietnamese life in the region. Together the essays paint a nuanced portrait of how concepts of race in the South have influenced its history, art, politics, and culture beyond the familiar binary of black and white.
ISBN: 9781469607221Publication Date: 2013-06-03
The SAGE Encyclopedia of African Cultural Heritage in North America by
The Encyclopedia of African Cultural Heritage in North America provides an accessible ready reference on the retention and continuity of African culture within the United States. Our conceptual framework holds, first, that culture is a form of self-knowledge and knowledge about self in the world as transmitted from one person to another. Second, that African people continuously create their own cultural history as they move through time and space. Third, that African-descended people living outside of Africa are also contributors to and participants in the creation of African cultural history. Entries focus on illuminating Africanisms (cultural retentions traceable to an African origin) and cultural continuities (ongoing practices and processes through which African culture continues to be created and formed). Thus, the focus is more culturally specific and less concerned with the broader transatlantic demographic, political and geographic issues that are the focus of similar recent reference works. We also focus less on biographies of individuals and political and economic ties and more on processes and manifestations of African cultural heritage and continuity. FEATURES: A two-volume A-to-Z work, available in a choice of print or electronic formats 350 signed entries, each concluding with Cross-references and Further Readings 150 figures and photos Front matter consisting of an Introduction and a Reader's Guide organizing entries thematically to more easily guide users to related entries Signed articles concluding with cross-references
ISBN: 9781452258218Publication Date: 2015-08-04
