Mixed Race Studies

Black Germany: The Making and Unmaking of a Diaspora Community, 1884–1960

Cambridge University Press
September 2013
379 pages
18 b/w illus.
235 x 158 x 22 mm
Hardback ISBN: 9781107041363

Robbie Aitken, Senior Lecturer in Imperial History
Sheffield Hallam University, United Kingdom

Eve Rosenhaft, Professor of German Historical Studies
University of Liverpool, United Kingdom

This groundbreaking history traces the development of Germany’s black community, from its origins in colonial Africa to its decimation by the Nazis during World War II. Robbie Aitken and Eve Rosenhaft follow the careers of Africans arriving from the colonies, examining why and where they settled, their working lives and their political activities, and giving unprecedented attention to gender, sexuality and the challenges of ‘mixed marriage’. Addressing the networks through which individuals constituted community, Aitken and Rosenhaft explore the ways in which these relationships spread beyond ties of kinship and birthplace to constitute communities as ‘black’. The study also follows a number of its protagonists to France and back to Africa, providing new insights into the roots of Francophone black consciousness and postcolonial memory. Including an in-depth account of the impact of Nazism and its aftermath, this book offers a fresh critical perspective on narratives of ‘race’ in German history.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 1. The first generation: from presence to community
• 2. Should I stay and can I go? Status and mobility in the institutional net
• 3. Settling down: marriage and family
• 4. Surviving in Germany: work, welfare and community
• 5. Problem men and exemplary women? Gender, class and ‘race’
• 6. Practising diaspora – politics 1918–33
• 7. Under the shadow of national socialism
• 8. Refuge France?
• Epilogue

The Propaganda War in the Rhineland: Weimar Germany, Race and Occupation after World War I

I. B. Tauris
2013-02-28
352 pages
Hardback ISBN: 9781780763460
216 x 134mm

Peter Collar

Piecing together a fractured European continent after World War I, the Versailles Peace Treaty stipulated the long term occupation of the Rhineland by Allied troops. This occupation, perceived as a humiliation by the political right, caused anger and dismay in Germany and an aggressive propaganda war broke out – heightened by an explosion of vicious racist propaganda against the use of non-European colonial troops by France in the border area. These troops, the so-called Schwarze Schmach or “Black humiliation” raised questions of race and the Other in a Germany which was to be torn apart by racial anger in the decades to come. Here, in the first English-language book on the subject, Peter Collar uses the propaganda posters, letters and speeches to reconstruct the nature and organization of a propaganda campaign conducted against a background of fractured international relations and turbulent internal politics in the early years of the Weimar Republic. This will be essential reading for students and scholars of Weimar Germany and those interested in Race and Politics in the early 20th Century.

Introduction

Under the terms of the Armistice Agreement that ended World War I, those regions of Germany that lay to the west of the Rhine were immediately occupied by Allied troops. At the subsequent Peace Treaty negotiations presupposition of German responsibility tor the war led to the imposition of extensive penalties on the nation. Included in these was the continuing occupation of the Rhineland for a number of years in order to guarantee German fulfilment of the Peace Treaty clauses relating to reparations and disarmament.

Within Germany the terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty were widely regarded as being unduly harsh and were greeted by the majority with anger and dismay. However, the use of force to overturn the situation was out of the question: the only way forward was to use persuasion. Following the reluctant signing of the Treaty, Therefore, strenuous efforts were made using propaganda to influence international opinion against the allegation of German war guilt and against the Treaty provisions. It was hoped that the Allies would agree to revision of the Treaty. The Rhineland occupation was one of the main targets of the stream of propaganda of all kinds that came out of post-war Germany and it is with this aspect that this book is concerned.

However, German propaganda against the occupation was aimed not only at an international readership. At home, there was the necessity of maintaining morale in the occupied regions, which at first were virtually isolated from the remainder of Germany. It was equally important to keep the public in unoccupied Germany well informed and to maintain its interest in, and support for, the occupied regions. Propaganda came from a wide range of sources. Some were official or semi-official bodies, though at the rime efforts were made by the governments of the Reich and those of the constituent states to conceal this fact. Private individuals and organisations, some set up specifically for the purpose, also took part.

The Allied armies occupied individual zones in the Rhineland territory of four German states: Prussia, Bavaria, Hessen and Oldenburg. Much German propaganda embraced the Rhineland as a whole, making no particular distinction between the territory of individual states. This was generally the case where private organisations and individuals were involved. Naturally, the Reich government had a national perspective. But propaganda was also organised at the level at the individual states, though even then the themes often included national issues. The picture overall was thus a very complex one. The roles of the different agencies actively engaged in this propaganda, often with conflicting interests and motivation, have so far nor been comprehensively addressed by historians.

I have concentrated on one particular region, the Bavarian Palatinate, or Pfalz. There are several reasons for this. By virtue of its position and the nature of its terrain the Pfalz in the southern Rhineland held a unique strategic and military importance for both France and Germany. For France, deeply concerned about her future security, the future of the region at the end of World War I presented both opportunity and frustration. Ideally, the Rhine, which formed the eastern border of the Pfalz, would also have made a natural eastern frontier for France, for it provided a natural line of defence against arrack from the east. Direct annexation of the Pfalz, however, was out of the question in the face of hostility from other Allies. Instead, the policy adopted by the French government was to encourage the local German population to form a Rhineland state, independent of the German Reich and friendly to France, which could act as a buffer zone…

…Of all the many propaganda themes of the early Weimar years none aroused as much passion and caused as much uproar as the campaign against the use of non-European colonial troops in the French army of occupation, the propaganda against the so-called Schwafze Schmach (the Black Humiliation). It was  intended to bring events in the Rhineland to the attention of the outside world, to influence foreign public opinion and so bring pressure to bear on foreign governments, especially that of the USA, where race had long been an issue. The underlying aim was to pressure the Allies into revising the terms of the Peace Treaty. At the same time the campaign was intended to mobilise support in unoccupied Germany. The origin, organisation, main themes and national and international impact of this campaign are therefore a subsidiary focus of this study.

Schwarze Schmach propaganda has already received considerable attention from other historians. Among the early studies, that by Keith Nelson drew mainly, though not exclusively, on archives in Washington to assess the international impact of the campaign and particularly its effect on the North American public. Gisela Lebzelter analysed the character and symbolism of the campaign in terms of the national mood prevailing in Germany following defeat in 1918, bringing in attitudes concerning racial superiority and drawing parallels with the development of anti-Semitism. The official sources cited by Lebzelter are almost exclusively drawn from the files of the Auswartiges Amt (Reich Foreign Minisrry) in Berlin, to which organisation she attributed major influence on the campaign.

The work by Reiner Pommerin had as its main theme the fate suffered by the few hundred children of mixed race who were born as a result o relationships between colonial troops and local German women. Such children offended against National Socialist concepts of racial purity and in 1937 a programme of enforced mass sterilization was carried our on them. Pommerin outlined the development of the Schwarze Schmach campaign, and noted the main organisations taking part, before exploring concerns about racial purity – evidently already beginning to surface in the Weimar period – through to the National Socialist era. The role of neither the Pfalzzenrale nor rhe Rheinische Frauenliga (Rhineland Women’s League), organisations that feature prominently in this study, received much mention. This may have resulted from a reliance mainly on the records of the Foreign Ministry, for relatively little reference was made to the extensive records that are available in the Bavarian State Archives in Munich. In passing it may also be noted that at the time these two studies were made records held in the Potsdam archives of the former DDR were nor available…

Amon: Mein Großvater hätte mich erschossen [Amon: My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me]

Rowohlt Verlag
2013-09-20
272 pages
Hardcover ISBN 978-3-498-06493-8

Jennifer Teege with Nikola Sellmair

Es ist ein Schock, der ihr ganzes Selbstverständnis erschüttert: Mit 38 Jahren erfährt Jennifer Teege durch einen Zufall, wer sie ist. In einer Bibliothek findet sie ein Buch über ihre Mutter und ihren Großvater Amon Göth. Millionen Menschen kennen Göths Geschichte. In Steven Spielbergs Film «Schindlers Liste» ist der brutale KZ-Kommandant der Saufkumpan und Gegenspieler des Judenretters Oskar Schindler. Göth war verantwortlich für den Tod tausender Menschen und wurde 1946 gehängt. Seine Lebensgefährtin Ruth Irene, Jennifer Teeges geliebte Großmutter, begeht 1983 Selbstmord.

Jennifer Teege ist die Tochter einer Deutschen und eines Nigerianers. Sie wurde bei Adoptiveltern groß und hat danach in Israel studiert. Jetzt ist sie mit einem Familiengeheimnis konfrontiert, das sie nicht mehr ruhen lässt. Wie kann sie ihren jüdischen Freunden noch unter die Augen treten? Und was soll sie ihren eigenen Kindern erzählen? Jennifer Teege beschäftigt sich intensiv mit der Vergangenheit. Sie trifft ihre Mutter wieder, die sie viele Jahre nicht gesehen hat.

Gemeinsam mit der Journalistin Nikola Sellmair recherchiert sie ihre Familiengeschichte, sucht die Orte der Vergangenheit noch einmal auf, reist nach Israel und nach Polen. Schritt für Schritt wird aus dem Schock über die Abgründe der eigenen Familie die Geschichte einer Befreiung.

Deutsch sein und schwarz dazu: Erinnerungen eines Afro-Deutschen [Being German and also Being Black: Memoirs of an Afro-German]

Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag
November 2013
200 pages
Hardback ISBN: ISBN 978-3-423-26005-3
ePub ISBN: 978-3-423-42033-4
eBook ISBN: 978-3-423-42034-1

Theodor Michael

Theodor Michaels Autobiografie ist so aberwitzig, dass sie erfunden sein könnte, wenn sie nicht allzu wahr wäre. Er entfaltet in ›Deutsch sein und schwarz dazu‹ eine Welt, die man so nicht gekannt hat, beschrieben von einem Mann, den man für seine Kraft, das alles zu bewältigen, nur bewundern kann, und dafür, dass es ihm gelungen ist, die Menschlichkeit zu bewahren. Theodor Michael erzählt ganz nüchtern, aber die Ereignisse sprechen für sich.

Der Lebensrückblick des schwarzen deutschen Zeitzeugen Theodor Michael

Theodor Michael wurde 1925 in Berlin als Sohn einer Deutschen und eines Kameruners geboren wurde. Als sein Vater nach Deutschland kam, war Kamerun noch deutsches Schutzgebiet, sprich Kolonie. Afrikaner wurden in Deutschland ganz freundlich aufgenommen. Nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg waren die Kolonien verloren und das Klima wurde deutlich unfreundlicher. Man fand, die Schwarzen sollten den Deutschen keine Arbeitsplätze wegnehmen. Aber in den sehr beliebten Völkerschauen kamen sie noch unter, die “Artfremden” mit dem “negroiden Einschlag”. Sogar in der Nazi-Zeit, als Statisten in den äußerst beliebten Kolonialfilmen. Doch dann landeten sie im KZ oder in Zwangsarbeiterlagern. So erging es auch Theodor Michael: Nachdem seine Eltern starben, schlug er sich als Page, Portier und Komparse durch, bis er 1943, mit 18 Jahren, in einem Zwangsarbeiterlager interniert wurde.

Deutsch sein und schwarz dazu‹ hat Theodor Michael in der Vergangenheit viele Probleme bereitet

Theodor Michael hat das alles überstanden, um dann nach Kriegsende feststellen zu müssen, dass er der Kollaboration verdächtigt wurde, weil er überlebt hatte. Damals hätte er es sich nicht träumen lassen, dass er einmal als Regierungsdirektor beim BND in den Ruhestand gehen würde.

Seit seiner Pensionierung engagiert er sich für die afro-deutsche Gemeinde und ist ein gefragter Ansprechpartner für die Presse.

From Mushkegowuk to New Orleans: A Mixed Blood Highway

NeWest Press
April 2008
48 pages
ISBN: 978-1-897126-29-5

Joseph Boyden

In 2007, Joseph Boyden, author of the bestselling novel Three Day Road and 2008 Giller Prize winner for Through Black Spruce, was invited by the Canadian Literature Centre | Centre de littérature canadienne to deliver the inaugural Henry Kreisel Lecture at the University of Alberta. Boyden spoke passionately, relating Aboriginal people in Canada to poor African Americans, Whites, and Hispanics in post-Katrina New Orleans. At the end of his lecture he presented a manifesto to the audience, demanding independence from the shackles of North American governments on behalf of these oppressed cultures. The lecture was received with much acclaim and enthusiasm.

In collaboration with the Canadian Literature Centre, NeWest Press is pleased to present the Henry Kreisel Lecture Series publications, a forum for open, inclusive critical thinking, and a tribute to Henry Kreisel himself.

Intermarried

Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg
2013
128 pages
57 color ills.
24 x 29.5 cm
English
Hardcover ISBN 978-3-86828-418-8

Photography by: Yael Ben-Zion

Text by: Amy Chua, Maurice Berger, Yael Ben-Zion

Yael Ben-Zion uses photography and text to reflect on intermarriage.

Following her award-winning monograph 5683 miles away (Kehrer 2010), in Intermarried Yael Ben-Zion fixes her camera on another personal but politically charged theme: intermarriage. Ben-Zion initiated the project in 2009 by contacting an online parent group in Washington Heights, her Manhattan neighborhood, inviting couples who define themselves as “mixed” to participate. Her own marriage “mixed,” she was interested in the many challenges faced by couples who choose to share their lives regardless of their different origins, ethnicities, races or religions.

Through layered images and revealing texts (including excerpts from a questionnaire she asked her subjects to fill out), Intermarried weaves together fragments of reality to compose a subtle narrative that deals with the multifaceted issues posed by intermarriage.

Free African Americans of Maryland and Delaware from the Colonial Period to 1810

Genealogical Publishing Company
2000
392 pages
Hardcover ISBN: 9780806350424

Paul Heinegg

As he did for Free Blacks in North Carolina and Virginia, Paul Heinegg has reconstructed the history of the free African American communities of Maryland and Delaware by looking at the history of their families.

Free African Americans of Maryland and Delaware is a new work that will intrigue genealogists and historians alike. First and foremost, Mr. Heinegg has assembled genealogical evidence on more than 300 Maryland and Delaware black families (naming nearly 6,000 individuals), with copious documentation from the federal censuses of 1790-1810 and colonial sources consulted at the Maryland Hall of Records, county archives, and other repositories. No work that we know of brings together so much information on colonial African Americans except Mr. Heinegg’s earlier volume on Virginia and North Carolina. The author offers documentation proving that most of these free black families descended from mixed-race children who were the progeny of white women and African American men. While some of these families would claim Native American ancestry, Mr. Heinegg offers evidence to show that they were instead the direct descendants of mixed-race children.

Colonial Maryland laws relating to marriages between offspring of African American and white partners carried severe penalties. For example, one 18th-century statute threatened a white mother with seven years of servitude and promised to bind her mixed-race offspring until the age of thirty-one. Mr. Heinegg shows that, despite these harsh laws, several hundred child-bearing relationships in Delaware and Maryland took place over the colonial period as evidenced directly from the public record. Maryland families, in particular, which comprise the preponderance of those studied, also had closer relationships with the surrounding slave population than did their counterparts in Delaware, Virginia, or North Carolina. Mr. Heinegg recounts the circumstances under which a number of these freedmen were able to become landowners. Some Maryland families, however, including a number from Somerset County, chose to migrate to Delaware or Virginia, where the opportunities for land ownership were greater.

Free African Americans of Maryland and Delaware is a work that will be sought after for its commentary on social history as for its genealogical content and methodology. No collection of African American history or genealogy can be without it.

Free African Americans of North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina from the Colonial Period to About 1820 (Fifth Edition)

Genealogical Publishing Company
2005
2 volumes; 1355 pages
Hardcover ISBN: 9780806352800

Paul Heinegg

The third edition of Paul Heinegg’s Free African Americans of North Carolina and Virginia was awarded the American Society of Genealogists’ prestigious Donald Lines Jacobus Award for the best work of genealogical scholarship published between 1991 and 1994. This fifth edition is Heinegg’s most ambitious effort yet to reconstruct the history of the free African-American communities of Virginia and the Carolinas by looking at the history of their families.

Published in two volumes, and 300 pages longer than the fourth edition, Free African Americans of North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina from the Colonial Period to About 1820 consists of detailed genealogies of 600 free black families that originated in Virginia and migrated to North and/or South Carolina from the colonial period to about 1820. The families under investigation represent nearly all African Americans who were free during the colonial period in Virginia and North Carolina. Like its immediate predecessor, the fifth edition traces the branches of a number of African-American families living in South Carolina, where original source materials for this period are much scarcer than in the two states to its north. Researchers will find the names of the more than 10,000 African Americans encompassed by Mr. Heinegg’s genealogies conveniently located in the full-name index at the back of the second volume.

Mr. Heinegg’s findings are the outgrowth of 20 years of research in some 1,000 manuscript volumes, including colonial and early national period tax records, colonial parish registers, 1790-1810 census records, wills, deeds, Free Negro Registers, marriage bonds, Revolutionary pension files, newspapers, and more. The author furnishes copious documentation for his findings and an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources.

A work of extraordinary breadth and detail, Free African Americans is of great importance to social historians as well as genealogists. The fifth edition traces many families who were covered in previous editions back to their 17th- and 18th-century roots (families like those of humanitarian Ralph Bunch, former NAACP president Benjamin Chavis, and tennis stars Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson, that would go on to fame or fortune). Providing copious documentation for his findings and an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources, Mr. Heinegg shows that most of these families were the descendants of white servant women who had had children by slaves or free African Americans, not the descendants of slave owners. He dispels a number of other myths about the origins and status of free African Americans, such as the “mysterious” origins of the Lumbees, Melungeons, and other such marginal groups, and demonstrates conclusively that many free African-American families in colonial North Carolina and Virginia were landowners.

The two volumes include the following family surnames: Abel, Acre, Adams, Africa, Ailstock, Alford, Allen, Alman, Alvis, Ampey, Ancel, Anderson, Andrews, Angus, Archer, Armfield, Armstrong, Arnold, Artis, Ashberry, Ashby, Ashe, Ashton, Ashworth, Atkins, Aulden, Avery, Bailey, Baine, Baker, Balkham, Ball, Baltrip, Banks, Bannister, Barber, Bartly/Bartlett, Bass, Bates, Battles, Bazden, Bazmore, Beckett, Bee, Bell, Bennett, Berry, Beverly, Bibbens, Bibby, Biddie, Bing, Bingham, Binns, Bizzell, Black, Blake, Blango, Blanks, Blizzard, Blue, Bolton, Bond, Boon, Booth, Bosman, Bow, Bowden, Bowers, Bowles, Bowman, Bowmer, Bowser, Boyd, Brady, Branch, Brandican, Brandon/Branham, Braveboy, Braxton, Britt, Brogdon, Brooks, Brown, Bruce, Brumejum, Bryan, Bryant, Bugg, Bullard, Bunch, Bunday, Burden, Burke, Burkett, Burnett, Burrell, Busby, Busy, Butler, Byrd, Cane, Cannady, Carter, Cary, Case, Cassidy, Causey, Cauther, Chambers, Chandler, Chapman, Charity, Chavis, Church, Churchwell, Churton, Clark, Cobb, Cockran, Cole, Coleman, Collins, Combess, Combs, Conner, Cook, Cooley, Cooper, Copeland, Copes, Corn, Cornet, Cornish, Cotanch, Cousins, Cox, Coy, Craig, Crane, Cuff, Cuffee, Cumbo, Cunningham, Curle, Curtis, Custalow, Cuttillo, Cypress, Dales, Davenport, Davis, Day, Dean, Deas, Debrix, Demery, Dempsey, Dennis, Dennum, Derosario, Dixon, Dobbins, Dolby, Donathan, Douglass, Dove, Drake, Drew, Driggers, Dring, Driver, Drury, Duncan, Dungee, Dungill, Dunlop, Dunn, Dunstan, Durham, Dutchfield, Eady, Easter, Edgar, Edge, Edwards, Elliott, Ellis, Elmore, Epperson, Epps, Evans, Fagan, Faggott, Farrar, Farthing, Ferrell, Fielding, Fields, Findley, Finnie, Fletcher, Flood, Flora, Flowers, Fortune, Fox, Francis, Francisco, Franklin, Frazier, Freeman, Frost, Fry, Fullam, Fuller, Fuzmore, Gallimore, Gamby, Garden, Gardner, Garner, Garnes, George, Gibson, Gilbert, Gillett, Godett, Goff, Goldman, Gordon, Gowen, Grace, Graham, Grant, Grantum, Graves, Gray, Grayson, Gregory, Grice, Griffin, Grimes, Groom, Groves, Guy, Gwinn, Hackett, Hagins, Hailey, Haithcock, Hall, Hamilton, Hamlin, Hammond, Hanson, Harden, Harmon, Harris, Harrison, Hartless, Harvey, Hatcher, Hatfield/Hatter, Hawkins, Hawley, Haws, Haynes, Hays, Hearn, Heath, Hedgepeth, Hewlett, Hewson, Hickman, Hicks, Hill, Hilliard, Hitchens, Hiter, Hobson, Hodges, Hogg, Hollinger, Holman, Holmes, Holt, Honesty, Hood, Hoomes, Horn, Howard, Howell, Hubbard, Huelin, Hughes, Humbles, Hunt, Hunter, Hurley, Hurst, Ivey, Jackson, Jacobs, James, Jameson, Jarvis, Jasper, Jeffery, Jeffries, Jenkins, Johns, Johnson, Joiner, Jones, Jordan, Jumper, Keemer, Kelly, Kendall, Kent, Kersey, Key/ Kee, Keyton, King, Kinney, Knight, Lamb, Landum, Lang, Lansford, Lantern, Lawrence, Laws, Lawson, Lee, Lephew, Lester, Lett, Leviner, Lewis, Lighty, Ligon, Lively, Liverpool, Locklear, Lockson, Locus/Lucas, Logan, Longo, Lowry, Lugrove, Lynch, Lyons, Lytle, McCarty, McCoy, McDaniel, McIntosh, Maclin, Madden, Mahorney, Manly, Mann, Manning, Manuel, Marshall, Martin, Mason, Matthews, Mayo, Mays, Meade, Mealy, Meekins, Meggs, Melvin, Miles, Miller, Mills, Milton, Mitchell, Mitchum, Mongom, Monoggin, Month, Moore, Mordick, Morgan, Morris, Mosby, Moses, Moss, Mozingo, Muckelroy, Mumford, Munday, Muns, Murray, Murrow, Nash, Neal, Newsom, Newton, Nicholas, Nickens, Norman, Norris, Norton, Norwood, Nutts, Oats, Okey, Oliver, Otter, Overton, Owen, Oxendine, Page, Pagee, Palmer, Parker, Parr, Parrot, Patrick, Patterson, Payne, Peavy, Peacock, Pendarvis, Pendergrass, Perkins, Peters, Pettiford, Phillips, Pickett, Pierce, Pinn, Pittman, Pitts, Plumly, Poe, Pompey, Portions, Portiss, Powell, Powers, Poythress, Press, Price, Prichard, Proctor, Pryor, Pugh, Pursley, Rains, Ralls, Randall, Ranger, Rann, Raper, Ratcliff, Rawlinson, Redcross, Redman, Reed, Reeves, Revell, Reynolds, Rich, Richardson, Rickman, Ridley, Roberts, Robins, Robinson, Rogers, Rollins, Rosario, Ross, Rouse, Rowe, Rowland, Ruff, Ruffin, Russell, Sample, Sampson, Sanderlin, Santee, Saunders, Savoy, Sawyer, Scott, Seldon, Sexton, Shaw, Shepherd, Shoecraft, Shoemaker, Silver, Simmons, Simms, Simon, Simpson, Sisco, Skipper, Slaxton, Smith, Smothers, Sneed, Snelling, Soleleather, Sorrell, Sparrow, Spelman, Spiller, Spriddle, Spruce, Spurlock, Stafford, Stephens, Stewart, Stringer, Sunket, Swan, Sweat, Sweetin, Symons, Taborn, Talbot, Tann, Tate, Taylor, Teague, Teamer, Thomas, Thompson, Timber, Toney, Tootle, Toulson, Toyer, Travis, Turner, Tyler, Tyner, Tyre, Underwood, Valentine, Vaughan, Vena/Venie, Verty, Vickory, Viers, Walden, Walker, Wallace, Warburton, Warrick, Waters, Watkins, Weaver, Webb, Webster,Weeks, Welch, Wells, West, Wharton, Whistler, White, Whitehurst, Wiggins, Wilkins, Wilkinson, Williams, Willis, Wilson, Winborn, Winn, Winters, Wise, Womble, Wood, Wooten, Worrell, Wright, and Young.

Free African Americans ranks as the greatest achievement in black genealogy of this generation! No collection of African-American genealogy or social history is complete without this two-volume work.

A True History Full of Romance: Mixed Marriages and Ethnic Identity in Dutch Art, News Media, and Popular Culture (1883-1955)

Amsterdam University Press
2012-04-02
184 pages
Soft Cover ISBN: 9789089644251

Marga Altena, Historian of Visual Culture

This important study about ethnically mixed marriages in the Netherlands of the 1883-1955 period offers a compelling overview on the nature and experience of ethnicity from a wide range of scholarly perspectives.

Drawing from exhaustive research in the Netherlands, Europe and the Americas, Altena offers illuminating new insights into mixed-marriage families as they were depicted in the arts and in news media; and how the families themselves in turn reacted to, and influenced those images. The author focuses on well-documented individuals and shows how they gained a coherent voice in Dutch culture. Altena attributes to them conscious agency in their own self-presentation, rather than just viewing them as victims of racial prejudice.

A timely contribution to the debate surrounding ethnicity and integration in Dutch society, this work demonstrates how that process was mediated by the various agencies, while placing special emphasis on the marginal groups within central news media as crucial in the opinion making.

Freedom’s Witness: The Civil War Correspondence of Henry McNeal Turner

University of West Virginia Press
March 2013
288 pages
Hardcover (Jacketed) ISBN: 978-1-935978-60-2
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-935978-61-9
ePub ISBN: 978-1-935978-62-6
PDF ISBN: 978-1-935978-95-4

Foreword by:

Aaron Sheehan-Dean, Fred C. Frey Professor of Southern Studies
Louisiana State University

Edited by:

Jean Lee Cole, Associate Professor of English
Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore

In a series of columns published in the African American newspaper The Christian Recorder, the young, charismatic preacher Henry McNeal Turner described his experience of the Civil War, first from the perspective of a civilian observer in Washington, D.C., and later, as one of the Union army’s first black chaplains.

In the halls of Congress, Turner witnessed the debates surrounding emancipation and black enlistment. As army chaplain, Turner dodged “grape” and cannon, comforted the sick and wounded, and settled disputes between white southerners and their former slaves. He was dismayed by the destruction left by Sherman’s army in the Carolinas, but buoyed by the bravery displayed by black soldiers in battle. After the war ended, he helped establish churches and schools for the freedmen, who previously had been prohibited from attending either.

Throughout his columns, Turner evinces his firm belief in the absolute equality of blacks with whites, and insists on civil rights for all black citizens. In vivid, detailed prose, laced with a combination of trenchant commentary and self-deprecating humor, Turner established himself as more than an observer: he became a distinctive and authoritative voice for the black community, and a leader in the African Methodist Episcopal church. After Reconstruction failed, Turner became disillusioned with the American dream and became a vocal advocate of black emigration to Africa, prefiguring black nationalists such as Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X. Here, however, we see Turner’s youthful exuberance and optimism, and his open-eyed wonder at the momentous changes taking place in American society.

Well-known in his day, Turner has been relegated to the fringes of African American history, in large part because neither his views nor the forms in which he expressed them were recognized by either the black or white elite. With an introduction by Jean Lee Cole and a foreword by Aaron Sheehan-Dean, Freedom’s Witness: The Civil War Correspondence of Henry McNeal Turner restores this important figure to the historical and literary record.

Table of Contents

• Editor’s Note
• Foreword, Aaron Sheehan-Dean
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: “I have seen war wonders”: The Civil War Correspondence of Henry McNeal Turner
• Chapter 1. Emancipation and Enlistment (March 22, 1862–April 18, 1863)
• Chapter 2. The Siege of Petersburg (June 25, 1864–December 17, 1864)
• Chapter 3. Fort Fisher (Jan. 7, 1865–Feb. 18, 1865)
• Chapter 4. Freeing Slaves, Meeting Sherman (Feb, 25, 1865–June 10, 1865)
• Chapter 5. Roanoke Island (June 24, 1865–August 5, 1865)
• About the Authors