The African heritage hypothesis posits that the substantial African ancestry of Puerto Ricans explains why this group is less segregated from African-Americans than non-Hispanic whites. This pattern is unlike that of other Hispanic groups, who have been found to be highly segregated from African-Americans but modestly segregated from whites. The research presented here shows that Dominicans, another Hispanic group with substantial African ancestry, are also less segregated from African-Americans than whites. Dominicans, therefore, also appear to be conforming to the African heritage thesis by residing in neighborhoods with greater proximity to African-Americans than whites.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
Originally published: Afro-American folktales. c1985., 327 p, These tales range from the earthy comedy of tricksters to stories explaining how the world was created and got to be the way it is, to moral fables that tell of encounters between masters and slaves. They includes stories set down in travelers' reports and plantation journals from the early nineteenth century, tales gathered by collectors such as Joel Chandler Harris and Zora Neale Hurston, and narratives tape-recorded by Roger Abrahams himself during extensive expeditions throughout the American South and the Caribbean.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
268 p., In an examination of the fiction of contemporary women writers of the African Diaspora, these writers engage important texts from writers in Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States, largely ignored by mainstream literary scholars. They employ fresh and poignant critical perspectives accessible to both scholars and students. Includes Carolyn Cooper's
"Sense make befoh book": Grenadian popular culture and the rhetoric of revolution in Merle Collins's Angel and the Colour of forgetting," Paula C. Barnes "Meditations on her/story: Maryse Conde's I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem and the slave narrative tradition," and Erna Brodber's "Guyana's historical sociology and the novels of Beryl Gilroy and Grace Nichols."
Works like Wheatley's and [Harriet Jacobs]' remind us how important it is to document our history with authenticity. History tells us of the need to write our own stories in our own words, for accuracy, for validation. And this is exactly why writers like Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks, Poet Laureate Rita Dove, Alice Walker and Louise Bennett Coverly (Jamaica) have revolutionized the written word and established themselves as role models for all of us. Positive images. Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker uses the word "womanist" in her works to refer to the liberation of black women. Through her famous novel "The Color Purple" and other works, she has revolutionized literature in the New World and given great insights into the traditions, beliefs, history, and values of people of African ancestry. The central theme in all of her work becomes the flower of hope that grows out of all despair. Black women writers have created for us a window to the world through which we can make real-life connections. From them we have received portraits in courage and a validation of ourselves. Their words constantly remind us that hope is eternal and that beauty can rise from adversity, as is so aptly expressed in the poignant declaration by Maya Angelou, the first female to read at a U.S. presidential inauguration, "And still I rise."
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Journal Title Details:
1 videocassette (59 min.)
Notes:
Originally broadcast on the television program Booknotes on November 7, 1999. Brian Lamb interviews Eugene Robinson about his book Coal to Cream: A Black Man's Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race. The book examines race relations in the United States and much of the Western Hemisphere by looking at Mr. Robinson's personal experiences in the U.S. and Brazil, where he noted that racism is rare but inequality still exists.
Essence co-founder Edward Lewis welcomes Benedita da Silva, vice-governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro, to Essence Communications, Inc., headquarters. Da Silva, one of the most-powerful politicians in Brazil, was in New York recently to meet with African-American business leaders to discuss economic and political partnerships between Black Americans and Afro-Brazilians.
Verila, on the other hand, is a woman who is in constant flight and change. She lives in Canada and has returned to her island birthplace, ultimately in search of happiness. Elizete professes her love for Verila early in the book. The excitement and overwhelming for desire Elizete has for Verila is palpable. She claims, "I abandon everything for Verila. I sink in Verila and let she flesh swallow me up. I devour her. She open me up like any morning. Limp, limp and rain light, soft to the marrow."
Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Harlem in 1918. By 1924 there were over 700 branches in 38 states and over 200 branches throughout the world as far away as South Africa at a time when there was no e-mail, television, or even radio to advertise. Those who could not hear Garvey directly received his views through his newspaper called the Negro World, which boasted a circulation as high as 200,000 by 1924. In 1919, the UNIA and Negro World were blamed for the numerous violent colonial uprisings in Jamaica, Grenada, Belize, Trinidad and Tobago. British and French authorities deported all UNIA organizers and banned the Negro World from all their colonies, but seamen continued to smuggle the paper throughout the world.
