Looks at Abraham Lincoln's pursuit of colonization in the Chiriquí region of Colombia (now Panamá), conventionally known as one of just two places that he seriously considered with respect to his policy of relocating African Americans. Challenging the standard account of the scheme's demise around October 1862 due to vehement Central American protest, this piece questions whether such a development really took the president by surprise.
Myriad new peoples emerged in Africa, America, and Europe during the first three centuries following Columbus’s arrival in the New World. By focusing on ethnogenesis as the product of the local as well as the global, we have sought to put the experiences of Africans and Amerindians at the center of Atlantic history.
Examines the presence of father figures in the lives of African American, Caribbean black and non-Hispanic white American males until the age of 16; assesses the current socio-demographic factors of these men as adults; and explores whether these factors lead to variations in mental health outcomes.
Examined the prevalence of psychiatric disorders among Black Caribbean immigrant ("Caribbean Black") and African American populations and the correlates of psychiatric disorders among the Caribbean Black population
Examines welfare-reliant, female heads of households and the barriers they face in their attempts to obtain employment. Almost all the Latina respondents spoke only Spanish and were born in South or Central America, Cuba, or the West Indies. The study challenges the assumptions on which the Temporary Assistance for Need Families operates, including its political origins and its current regulations that mandate time limits on assistance in spite of persistent national economic problems.
Examined differences within the black population by separately examining the prevalence of inpatient treatment of African Americans and U.S.- and foreign-born Caribbean blacks. Used a population-based sample of 9,371 community-dwelling adults, including 3,570 African Americans, 1,621 blacks of Caribbean descent, and 4,180 non-Hispanic whites. Concludes that disparities between blacks and whites in the prevalence of psychiatric inpatient treatment appear to be persistent, but global comparisons mask important heterogeneity within the black population.
This essay focuses on James Weldon Johnson's overlapping literary and diplomatic careers. Johnson's novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, written while he worked as a US consul in Latin America, draws upon tropes of international representation to weigh in upon questions of aesthetic and racial representation. Tracing Johnson's transition from a US representative abroad to a race representative within the US, the essay argues that Johnson's case illustrates the importance of permitting the significant tradition of black work in the US's diplomatic program to inform the ways we approach African America's expressive and geopolitical engagements with the international world.
