Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies

Centers Black Women’s Discourse and Sociopolitical Action from the Nation’s Founding through the Civil War and Beyond

An Examination of the Ways African American Rhetoric Becomes Whitened When It Crosses Over into White Audiences

American Dream Deferred challenges postwar narratives of government largess for African Americans by illuminating the neglected stories of these unknown black workers.

The first publication of a reclaimed WPA project studying Pittsburgh’s black population. The book features articles on civil rights, social class, lifestyle, culture, folklore, and institutions, from colonial times through the 1930s.

Race and Renaissance presents the first history of African American life in Pittsburgh after World War II. It examines the origins and significance of the second Great Migration, the persistence of Jim Crow into the postwar years, the second ghetto, the contemporary urban crisis, the civil rights and Black Power movements, and the Million Man and Million Woman marches, among other topics.

An examination of the relationship between African Americans and the environment in U.S. history, “To Love the Wind and the Rain” contains essays covering topics such as slavery, religion, the turpentine industry, gardening, outdoor recreation, women and politics.

A dialogue between father and son, combining prose and poetry, that uses fishing as a shared activity and a metaphor, to address the universal challenge of raising good children. The lessons they share have the power to save a generation of young black men.

Traces of a Stream offers a unique scholarly perspective that merges interests in rhetorical and literacy studies, United States social and political theory, and African American women writers. Focusing on elite nineteenth-century African American women who formed a new class of women well positioned to use language with consequence, Royster uses interdisciplinary perspectives (literature, history, feminist studies, African American studies, psychology, art, sociology, economics) to present a well-textured rhetorical analysis of the literate practices of these women.

Winner of the 2000 MLA Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize

Focuses on expressions of popular culture among blacks in Africa, the United States, and the Carribean. Fifteen essays cover a world of topics, from American girls’ Double Dutch games to protest discourse in Ghana; from the history of Rasta to the evolving significance of kente cloth from rap video music to hip-hop to zouk.

Examines the 1985 confrontation between police and members of the black counterculture group MOVE, which ended in the destruction of sixty-one homes and the death of eleven residents—five of them children. Sheds light on relevant issues such as negotiating with “irrational” adversaries and problems of perception and misperception when different cultures clash.