African American Studies Center
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
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The first incarnation of Black History Month began in 1926, when Carter G. Woodson, historian and author, established an observance during the second week of February coinciding with the birthdays of social reformer Frederick Douglass and President Abraham Lincoln. The month-long celebration was then proposed at Kent State University, Ohio, in February 1969, beginning the following year.
Posted on February 28, 2018
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Since 1801, the fifth anniversary of his death, January 25 has become synonymous with the poet Robert Burns, widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and celebrated worldwide. One of the lesser-known aspects of Burns' life is that he almost moved to Jamaica to become an overseer; his tumultuous relationship with 'ungrateful' Jean Armour also attributed to his resolution to sail as an emigrant to Jamaica.
Posted on January 18, 2018
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Marshall (2017) recounts one of the most contentious Supreme Court cases in American history, represented by Thurgood Marshall, who would later serve as the first African American Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Directed by Reginald Hudlin, with Chadwick Boseman playing the title role, the film establishes Marshall's greatest legal triumph, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in which the Court declared the laws allowing for separate but equal public facilities (including public schools) inherently unconstitutional. The case, handed down on 17 May 1954, signalled the end of racial segregation in America and the beginning of the American civil rights movement. In 2013, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Editor in Chief of the Oxford African American Studies Center, spoke with Larry S. Gibson, Professor of Law at the University of Maryland, whose book Young Thurgood: The Making of a Supreme Court Justice recounts the personal and public events that shaped Marshall's work.
Posted on October 30, 2017
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While watching the first episode of Luke Cage, I noticed something of a minor miracle. Starting from the amazing opening credits sequence, you could actually count the minutes before a single non-black face graced the screen. Every character of consequence, heroic or villainous, was black. Not only that, they were characters well-versed in blackness, however stereotypical.
Posted on November 12, 2016
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At the intersection of State and Washington Streets in the Warehouse District of downtown Peoria, a city of about 116,000 that sits halfway between Chicago and St. Louis, stands a nine-foot-tall bronze likeness of the city's most infamous native son. If you were a visitor, in town to hang out along the up-and-coming riverfront or to visit Caterpillar, the only Fortune 500 company headquartered in the city, you would be forgiven
Posted on November 11, 2016
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Muhammad Ali's funeral and memorial service brought together a seemingly incongruous cast of characters, once again spotlighting the many contradictions that have made it so difficult for commentators and biographers to extract a realistic assessment of his life. Even with a staggering amount written about him, Ali leaves behind a contested image largely characterized by misinterpretation.
Posted on June 30, 2016
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The phrase 'moveable feast,' while popularized by Ernest Hemingway's memoir, refers primarily to the holidays surrounding Passover and Easter. Although 'Easter' is not a biblical word, Passover is a major holiday in the Jewish calendar. The origins of the festival, while disputed among scholars, are narrated in the biblical texts in Exodus 12'13
Posted on March 25, 2016
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There is a moment in the George Miller film Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985) that has stuck with me over the two decades since I first saw it. A bedraggled Max (Mel Gibson) is escorted through the crumbling desert outpost of Bartertown.
Posted on March 1, 2016
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In 1996, decades before the trending hashtag, Reverend Jesse Jackson led a boycott protesting the lack of diversity at the Oscars. Having encouraged attendees to wear a rainbow ribbon in support of the issue, he was ridiculed for his efforts.
Posted on February 28, 2016
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Patterned on other sports dramas about race and the freedom rights struggle, such as Remember the Titans, Glory Road, We Are Marshall, The Express, and 42, Race tells the story of Jesse Owens' preparation and stunning performance at the 1936 Summer Olympics at Berlin, Germany. However, while Owens follows a long tradition of unsung African American heroes, many remain unfamiliar with the details surrounding his rise to prominence.
Posted on February 18, 2016
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First established in 1926 by historian Carter G. Woodson with the support of the Association for the Study for Negro Life, Negro History Week took place on the second week of February to coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, two men whose actions greatly influenced the black population in America.
Posted on February 16, 2016
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It's been over 195 years since Thomas Jennings received a patent for a dry cleaning process, and black inventors have continued to change, innovate and enhance day-to-day life. This Black History Month, the team behind the Oxford African American Studies Center is excited to explore some of the many inventions, dreamed up, brought to life, and patented by black inventors.
Posted on February 11, 2016
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Nowhere is media's influence on social attitudes more evident than among the millions of fans following Star Wars. Decades after the franchise's creator, George Lucas, made his first iteration of the fictional galaxy filled with aliens, Stormtroopers, and the Force, his vision has captivated fans with countless iconic moments.
Posted on December 22, 2015
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When the late Ken Harper first began pitching his idea for a show featuring an all black cast that would repeat and revise the popular plot of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, augmenting it with a Hitsville USA-inspired score, he had television in his sights.
Posted on December 4, 2015
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The prevailing wisdom of most African Americanists, is that due to the distinctive history and acculturation of Africans in the British colonies in North America, African-American literature is most meaningfully assessed in the context of multiple geographical, oral, and literary heritages.
Posted on September 7, 2006
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Susan Butterworth discusses the life and legacy of Zora Neale Hurston. A vibrant figure of the Harlem Renaissance, a fertile interpreter of black folklore, and a lyrical writer ' Hurston had a fascinating career. By the time of her death however, she had sadly disappeared into poverty and obscurity.
Posted on September 11, 2006
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Today, we'll look at a towering figure in 1970s soul music and a forebear of modern hip hop and rap; Isaac Hayes. His classic 1969 record, the sumptuous, deep-grooving 'Hot Buttered Soul', made Hayes a star and cemented his image in the minds of a generation of young African Americans.
Posted on August 17, 2006
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Today we'll look at the jazz roots of hip hop by examining the charismatic stage presence and dapper style of the great Cab Calloway. As a pioneer of the genre, Calloway was described by President Bill Clinton as a 'true legend among the musicians of this century' ' and his legacy lives on today.
Posted on August 24, 2006
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Today we'll look at the spoken word roots of hip hop by examining the life and career of one of the greatest stand-up comedians of all time; Richard Pryor. Here is the entry on Richard Pryor from upcoming eight-volume 'African American National Biography'.
Posted on August 31, 2006
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In the mid-1970s the cultural shockwave known as hip hop emerged from the economic paralysis of New York City, especially the neglected neighborhoods in the Bronx. However, while hip hop music was born in New York, it speaks to a long line of black American and African diasporic cultural traditions.
Posted on August 4, 2006
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Celebrate the end of Black Music Month with this timeline highlighting over 100 years of music created and produced by influential African-Americans. Kenny Gamble, Ed Wright, and Dyana Williams developed the idea for Black Music Month back in 1979 as a way to annually show appreciate for black music icons. After lobbying, President Jimmy Carter hosted a reception to formally recognize the month.
Posted on June 30, 2015
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The filming and recent airing of the HBO film Bessie, which stars Queen Latifah as Bessie Smith, serves as a perfect excuse to look back at the music and life of the woman who was accurately billed as the Empress Of The Blues. When Bessie Smith made her recording debut in 1923, she was not the first blues singer to record.
Posted on May 24, 2015
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Since the promulgation of the revised missal, popularly known as the Novus Ordo by Pope Paul VI, with the Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanun in 1969, a growing call for either a return to the Tridentine Mass or recognition of the legitimate place of such a rite alongside the Novus Ordo has gained an international status.
Posted on July 14, 2015
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Established in 2001, Jazz Appreciation Month celebrates the rich history, present accolades, and future growth of jazz music. Spanning the blues, ragtime, dixieland, bebop, swing, soul, and instrumentals, there's no surprise that jazz music has endured the test of time from its early origins amongst African-American slaves in the late 19th century to its growth today.
Posted on April 18, 2015
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In this interview with Professor Nancy Deihl, Master Teacher of Costume Studies at New York University, we look back in history to discuss and discover the life and accomplishments of Zelda Wynn Valdes, celebrity dressmaker and designer of the original Playboy bunny costume.
Posted on March 31, 2015
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Given the scope and the length of time I've been working on the African American National Biography (over 13 years and counting), selecting just a few biographies that were somehow 'representative' of the overall project would have been an impossible task. Instead, working with The Root's managing editor, Lyne Pitts, I chose four entries that showcased some of the diversity of the collection, but focused on hidden or barely remembered figures in black history.
Posted on February 27, 2015
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Last week marked two important events in the unfinished story of southern racial violence. On February 10, the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative released Lynching in America, an unflinching report that documents 3,959 black victims of mob violence in twelve southern states between 1877 and 1950.
Posted on February 24, 2015
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What do opera singer Leontyne Price, activist Victoria Gray Adams, civil rights organizer Bayard Rustin, and Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson have in common? They all attended or graduated from Wilberforce University. Located outside of Dayton, Ohio, Wilberforce was the first institution of higher education to be owned and operated by African Americans.
Posted on February 25, 2015
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As the city buzzes around us in preparation for the 2015 NBA All-Star Weekend, hosted jointly by the New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets, we caught up with a few of our office's basketball fans to reflect on their all-time favorite NBA All-Stars -- and their entries in the Oxford African American Studies Center. Without further ado, Oxford University Press New York's 5 Guys and a Girl weigh in
Posted on February 14, 2015
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Decades before P. Diddy, Jay-Z, and Russell Simmons, there was Frederick Bruce Thomas, known later in his life as Fyodor Fyodorovich Tomas -- one of the most successful African-American musical impresarios and businessmen of his generation.
Posted on February 10, 2015
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More than half a century after its founding, Motown is still remembered by fans, musicians, and historians as the mover and shaker of its generation. From The Temptations' "My Girl" to Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through The Grapevine," its reverberating influence is recognized even today, echoed in modern hits like Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars' wildly popular "Uptown Funk."
Posted on January 16, 2015
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Starting in the early 1960s, female artists embarked upon solo careers with the Motown label. The first to be signed to the label was Mable John, a blues vocalist born in Bastrop, Louisiana. Slow melodic songs like 'No Love' and 'Who Wouldn't Love a Man Like That' stood firmly in the blues genre yet only appealed to a limited, mature audience and did not translate into commercial success.
Posted on January 15, 2015
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The Marvelettes, a girl group consisting of Gladys Horton, Katherine Anderson, Georgeanna Tillman, Juanita Cowart and Wanda Young, recorded Motown's first number one pop hit, 'Please Mr. Postman.' The upbeat song topped both the pop and R&B charts, making the Marvelettes one of the first all-girl groups in the industry to achieve such a feat.
Posted on January 14, 2015
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Perhaps no other record label in America's music history performed a more significant role in fashioning Rhythm and Blues' assimilation into the country's popular culture than Motown Records. Founded by Detroit songwriter Berry Gordy, Jr. in 1959, Motown (originally named Tamla Records) began producing hit records almost from its inception and continued to do so throughout the sixties.
Posted on January 13, 2015
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On 12 January 1959, Berry Gordy, Jr. founded Tamla Records in Detroit, Michigan. A year later it would be incorporated with a new name that became synonymous with a sound, style, and generation of music: Motown. All this week we're looking the great artists and tracks that emerged from those recording studios.
Posted on January 12, 2015
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By Tim Allen Josephine Baker, the mid-20th century performance artist, provocatrix, and muse, led a fascinating transatlantic life. I recently had the opportunity to pose a few questions to Anne A. Cheng, Professor of English and African American Literature at Princeton University and author of the book Second Skin: Josephine Baker & the Modern Surface, about her research into Baker's life, work, influence, and legacy.
Posted on March 25, 2014
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Dirty South hip hop refers to a gritty rap culture first developed in the southern United States during the 1980s and the 1990s. Goodie Mob, an eccentric quartet from Atlanta, Georgia, titled a 1995 single 'Dirty South' in order to shed light on myriad societal ills in the former Confederacy, where ethnic prejudice and racism seemed to be perennial sicknesses.
Posted on February 26, 2014
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By Richard Newman The noble ideal of Black History Month is that by extracting and examining key people and moments in the African American grain, we learn much about black achievement. But it is equally powerful to set black history in the grand swirl of events to see the many ways that African-Americans have impacted the nation's political and cultural development.
Posted on February 21, 2014
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Osagie K. Obasogie, J.D., Ph.D., is Professor of Law at the University of California, Hastings with a joint appointment at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. His first book, Blinded By Sight: Seeing Race Through the Eyes of the Blind, was recently published by Stanford University Press and his second book on the past, present, and future of bioethics is under contract with the University of California Press.
Posted on February 18, 2014
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Beginning the 26th of December, a globe-spanning group of millions of people of African descent will celebrate Kwanzaa, the seven-day festival of communitarian values created by scholar Maulana Karenga in 1966. The name of the festival is adapted from a Swahili phrase that refers to 'the first fruits,' and is meant to recall ancient African harvest celebrations.
Posted on December 26, 2013
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By Daniel Donaghy During the movie awards season, Steve McQueen's new film 12 Years a Slave will inspire discussions about its realistic depiction of slavery's atrocities (Henry Louis Gates Jr. has already called it, 'most certainly one of the most vivid and authentic portrayals of slavery ever captured in a feature film.') and the points at which the film most clearly reflects and departs from Solomon Northup's original narrative.
Posted on January 12, 2014
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By Tim Allen Albert Camus, author of those high school World Literature course staples The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus, would have been 100 years old today.
Posted on November 7, 2013
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By Sarah Thomson In 2012, 45 US states, as well as the District of Columbia, adopted and began implementing the new Common Core State Standards in K-12 public schools. In history and social studies classes, the Common Core Standards emphasize critical thinking and analytical reading and writing skills.
Posted on November 8, 2013
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By Tony Whyton Created by the Berlin-based street artist MTO, a graffiti artwork was painted on a Parisian wall a few years ago and only on display for a few days before being painted over. A few photographs of the image, taken by MTO at the scene, are all that remain of the work.
Posted on October 1, 2013
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Aim© C©saire (1913 ' 2008) has left behind an extraordinary dual legacy as eminent poet and political leader. Several critics have claimed to observe a contradiction between the vehement anti-colonial stance expressed in his writings and his political practice. Criticism has focused on his support for the law of 'departmentalization' (which incorporated the French Antilles, along with other overseas territories, as administrative 'departments' within the French Republic) and his reluctance to lead his country to political independence.
Posted on June 26, 2013
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I grew up with Star Trek. When I was 10, I helped my mom put together an intricate scale model of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701, if you're curious). I knew that LeVar Burton could tell me about a warp core before I knew that he would read me a children's book, and I knew that Klingon was a learnable language long before I had ever heard of human languages like Tagalog or Swahili.
Posted on June 5, 2013
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What do you get when you combine Hollywood, African American actors, gritty urban settings, sex, and a whole lot of action? Some would simply call it a recipe for box office success, but since the early 1970s, most people have known this filmmaking formula by the name 'Blaxploitation.' Blaxploitation cinema occupies a fascinating place in the landscape of American pop culture.
Posted on June 3, 2013
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Here is a discussion of the music, biography and inspirations of the one-and-only James Brown; the legendary African American soul and funk singer - who has been invariably called the 'Godfather of Soul', 'Soul Brother Number One', 'Mr. Dynamite', and the 'Hardest Working Man in Show Business'.
Posted on August 14, 2006
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Today, we'll look at one of the literary forerunners of the hip hop revolution; Iceberg Slim. Slim's works are marked by a criticism of American justice, devotion to the politics of the Black Panthers, frank language, and a combination of violence and sexuality. They remain influential to this day.
Posted on August 21, 2006
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In this post, we look at rapper Ice-T, and his influence on the development of hip hop. A prolific and outspoken Rap artist, Ice-T helped pioneer the 'gangsta' musical style, in which the turmoil of urban street life is exposed through blunt, explicit lyrics and a bass-heavy, fluid musical style.
Posted on August 28, 2006
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