Category: United States

  • The Public Life of Poetry: An Interview with Natasha Trethewey Los Angeles Review of Books 2013-06-11 Jennifer Chang 1. THE STORY OF NATASHA TRETHEWEY’s life as a poet began with her mother’s death. Until then, though her father is a poet, poetry had not figured in her future plans. She was a 19-year-old college student…

  • Marriage, Melanin, and American Racialism Reviews in American History Volume 41, Number 2, June 2013 pages 282-291 DOI: 10.1353/rah.2013.0048 Heidi Ardizzone, Assistant Professor of American Studies St. Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri Adele Logan Alexander, Parallel Worlds: The Remarkable Gibbs-Hunts and the Enduring (In)significance of Melanin. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010. 375 pages. Photographs,…

  • For some, Cheerios commercial crossed a line by depicting mixed-race family as normal The Daily Circuit MPR News Minnesota Public Radio 2013-06-11 You might not think a cereal commercial would serve as a vehicle for a heartfelt conversation about race, but that seems to be what’s happening — both around the country and on The…

  • Becoming Indian: The Struggle over Cherokee Identity in the Twenty-First Century by Circe Sturm (review) The American Indian Quarterly Volume 37, Numbers 1-2, Winter/Spring 2013 pages 269-272 DOI: 10.1353/aiq.2013.0006 Miguel A. Maymí Circe Sturm’s book Becoming Indian: The Struggle over Cherokee Identity in the Twenty-First Century is an insightful view into the motivations of those…

  • ‘Plessy v. Ferguson’: Who Was Plessy? The Root 2013-06-10 Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor of History Harvard University 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro: Learn about the man whose case led to decades of legal segregation. Amazing Fact About the Negro No. 35: Who was the Plessy in the Plessy v. Ferguson…

  • Prodigy and Prejudice The New York Times 1995-12-10 Phyllis Rose Composition in Black and White: The Life of Philippa Schuyler. By Kathryn Talalay. Illustrated. 317 pp. New York: Oxford University Press This enthralling, heartbreaking book restores to attention Philippa Schuyler, child prodigy of the 1930’s, pianist, composer, Harlem’s Mozart, “the Shirley Temple of American Negroes.”…

  • Family Money explores the histories of formerly enslaved women who tried to claim inheritances left to them by deceased owners, the household traumas of mixed-race slaves, post-Emancipation calls for reparations, and the economic fallout from anti-miscegenation marriage laws.

  • From Medical Innovation to Sociopolitical Crisis: How Racialized Medicine Has Shifted the Scope of Racial Discourse and its Social Consequences Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut May 2013 51 pages Danielle Antonia Craig An essay submitted to the faculty of Wesleyan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Departmental…

  • love, desire, and impossible measures The State 2013-06-08 Tiana Reid Columbia University Children rule. No, certain children rule the ways in which we measure fantasies of progress. I read Meagan Hatcher-Mays’ Jezebel piece, “I’m Biracial, and That Ad Is a Big Fucking Deal. Trust Me.,” before I saw the Cheerios commercial itself. The commercial, like…

  • Negro-White Marriages Here Show Rise Despite Problems of Prejudice The New York Times 1963-10-18 Fred Powledge Marriages between Negroes and whites have been increasing in New York and have become a poignant part of the life of the city. The precise number of such marriages may never be known. Documents on file at the City…