The HistoryMakers 2012 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on African American Political History
The month-long institute is broken out into themes by week. For each week, there are
assigned readings which illuminate the topic being discussed. Visiting scholars highlight
ideas in these readings and participants use them to complete their curriculum. Find below
the titles of the readings separated by the week they are studied in the institute. To download a
PDF of the readings, click on the date.
2010 Readings (2012 Coming Soon)
WEEK ONE: African American Political Development Pre and Post Civil War
Radinsky, Josh. "GIS for History: a GIS learning environment to Teach Historical Reasoning,"
in Digital Geography: Geospatial Technologies in the Social Studies Classroom ed. Andrew
J. Wilson and Marsha Alibrandi. (New York: Information Age Publishing, 2008), 99-117.
Hahn, Steven. "Prologue, Looing Out From Slavery" in A Nation Under our Feet: Black
Political Struggles in the Rurual South from Slavery to the Great Migration (HUP, 2003) 1-10.
"Of Ballots and Bi-Racialism" in A Nation Under our Feet: Black Political Struggles in
the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (HUP, 2003), 364-411.
"The Valley and the Shadows" in A Nation Under our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the
Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (HUP, 2003), 412-464.
Dailey, Jane. The Age of Jim Crow: A Norton Casebook in History (New York: Norton, 2009), xi-xlix
Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, "False Friends and Avowed Enemies: South African Americans and Party
Allegiances in the 1920s" in Jumpin' Jim Crow: Southern Politics from Civil War to Civil Rights
eds. Jane Dailey, Glenda Gilmore and Bryant Simon, (PUP, 2000), 219-238.
Du Bois, W.E.B. "Of Booker T. Washington and Others," in The Souls of Black Folk
Chapter 3, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 38-51.
Rudwick, Elliott. "W.E.B. Du Bois" in Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century ed by
John Hope Franklin and August Meier, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 63-84.
Harlan, Louis R. "Booker T. Washington" in ed.
by John Hope Franklin and August Meier, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 10-18.
Letter from Robert Herberton Terrell to Washington, January 31, 1904 in The Booker T.
Washington Papers, ed. Louis Harlan and Raymond Smock, Vol. 7, 1903-1904, (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1972), 420-421.
Emmett Jay Scott to the Editor of the Montomgery Advertiser, September 6, 1905, in The
Booker T. Washington Papers, edited by Louis Harlan and Raymond Smock, Vol. 7, (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1972), 353.
Booker T. Washinton to Julius Rosenwald, December 24, 1912 in ,
edited by Louis Harlan and Raymond Smock, Vol. 12, 1912 - 1914, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972), 92.
Booker T. Washington to Samuel Laing Williams, January 20, 1913 in The Booker T. Washington Papers,
edited by Louis Harlan and Raymond Smock, Vol. 12, 1912 - 1914, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972), 105.
Du Bois, W.E.B. "The Concept of Race" in Dusk of Dawn, (New York: Transaction, 1983), 97 - 133.
"The NAACP," in The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life.
(New York: International Publishers, 1970), 254 - 276.
"Close Ranks," The Crisis, July, 1918.
"Returning Soldiers," The Crisis, May, 1919.
"Segregation," The Crisis, January, 1934.
Walters, Ronald "Booker T. Washington," in Uncle Tom or New Negro: African Americans Reflect
on Booker T. Washington ed. Rebecca Carrol (New York: Harlem Moon/Random House, 2006), 25 - 31.
Hutchingson, Earl Ofari. "Booker T. Washington," in Uncle Tom or New Negro: African Americans
Reflect on Booker T. Washington edited by Rebecca Carroll, (New York: Harlem Moon/Random House, 2006), 106 - 114.
Walters, Ronald W. "A Theory and Method of Relationship" in Pan-Africanism in the
African Diaspora (Detroit: Wayne State Press, 1993), 1 - 23.
Henry, Charles P. "Ideology, Politics and Culture" in Culture and African American Politics
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 1 - 11.
Conyers, James "Pan Africanism, African American Historiography, and Afrocentricity: A Critical
Review of Ideology and Historical Thought" in Re-evaluating the Pan-Africanism of W.E.B.
DuBois and Marcus Garvey: Escapist Fantasy or Relevant Reality, ed. James Conyers, Jr.
(London: Mellen Press, 2006), 207 - 227.
Holloway, Joseph E. "The Origins of African-American Culture" in Africanisms in American
Culture, ed. Joseph E. Holloway, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 1 - 18.
Bates, Beth Tompkins. "A New Crowd Challenges the Agenda of the Old Guard in the NAACP,"
The American Historical Review 102:2 (Apr. 1997), 340 - 377.
Preece, Harold. "What Goes on in Packington," The Chicago Defender, 23 September 1939.
Randolph, A. Phillip. "Views and Reviews," The Chicago Defender, 1 January 1938.
Arnese, Eric. "The Black Wedge of Civil Rights Unionism," in Brotherhoods of Color: Black
Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 84 - 115.
"The Politics of Fair Employment," in Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the
Struggle for Equality (Cambridge: Harvard University, 2005).
"Pullman Porters Win Increase in Wages" The Chicago Defender 4 September 1937.
Arnese, Eric. "Reconsidering the 'Long Civil Rights Movement.'" Historically Speaking
Randolph, A. Phillip. "Randolph Tells Philosophy Behind 'March' Movement," Chicago Defender,
19 January 1943.
Arnese, Eric. "No 'Graver Danger': Black Anticommunism, the Communist Party, and the Race Question,"
Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, 3:4 (2006), 13 - 52.
Smith, Alfred E. "Why I Joined the Communist Party," Chicago Defender, 31 July, 1943.
Arnese, Eric. "The Red and the Black: Reflections on the Responsed to 'No Graver Danger,'"
Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, 3:4 (2006), 75 -
High, Stanley. "Black Omens," Saturday Evening Post, 4 June 1938.
Pollack, Harriet and Christopher Metress, "The Emmitt Till Case and Narratives" in Emmett
Till in Literary Imagination and Memory, (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2007).
Benson, Christopher. "Turning Point," The Crisis, Winter 2009.
Till-Mobley, Mamie and Christopher Benson, "Chapter 13," in Death of Innocence (New York:
Random House, 2003), 117 - 127.
"Chapter 14," in Death of Innocence, (New York: Random House, 2003) 128 - 135.
"Chapter 20," in Death of Innocence, (New York: Random House, 2003) 191 - 200.
Hurie, William Bradford, "The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi" originally
published in Look Magazine 1956.
King, Jr. Martin Luther. "Letter From Birmingham Jail," Accessed 5/5/2010 from http:
//mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/resources/article/annotated_letter_from_birmingham/
Fairclough, Adam. "The Preachers and the People: The Origins and Early Years of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference," Journal of Southern HIstory, 52:3 (Aug, 1986), 403-440.
Glennon, Robert Jerome. "The Role of Law in the Civil Rights Movement: The Montgomery Bus
Boycott," Law and History Review, 9:1 (Spring 1991), 59-112.
Barnes, Jack and Barry Sheppard, "Malcolm X: Youth More Filled with Urge to Eliminate Oppression,"
in Malcolm X Talks to Young People 2ed. (New York: Pathfinder Press, 2002).
X, Malcolm. "After the Bombing/Speech at Ford Stadium," Accessed 5/5/2010 from http://www.
malcolm-x.org/speeches/spc_021465.html
Hamilton, Charles V. and Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) "White Power" in Black Power:
The Politics of Liberation, (New York: Vintage Press, 1992), 2-32.
"Black Power: It Needs Substance" in Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, (New York:
Vintage Press, 1992), 34-56.
Hamilton, Charles V. "Afterword" in Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, (New
York: Vintage Press, 1992), 201-219.
Raiford, Leigh. "Come Let Us Build a New World Together: SNCC and Photography of the Civil
Rights Movement," American Quarterly 59:4 (Dec. 2007), 1129-1157.
Payne, Charles. "Men Led, but Women Organized: Movement Participation of Women in the Mississippi
Delta," in Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941-1965
eds. Vicki L. Crawford, et al. (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1990), 1-11.
Mueller, Carol. "Ella Baker and the Origins of 'Participatory Democracy," in Women in
the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941-1965 eds. Vicki L. Crawford,
et. al. (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1990), 51-70.
Burks, Mary Fair. "Trailblazers: Women in the Montgomery Bus Boycott," in Women in the Civil
Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941-1965 eds. Vicki L. Crawford, et. al.
(Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1990), 71-84.
Standley, Anne. "The Role of Black Women in the Civil Rights Movement," in Women in the
Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 194101965 eds. Vicki L. Crawford et.
al. (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1990), 183-202.
Regan, Bernice Johnson. "Women as Culture Carriers in the Civil Rights Movement:
Fannie Lou Hamer," in Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers,
1941-1965 eds. Vicki L. Crawfod, et. al. (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1990), 203-218.
Blakely, Julie. "A War on Terror: The Civil Rights Movement and Mississippi Freedom Summer,"
(photocopy) 14 March 2005.
Lawson, Steven F. "Freedom Then, Freedom Now: The Historiography of the Civil Rights Movement,"
American Historical Review, 96:2 (April, 1991), 456-471.
Payne, Charles. "The Civil Rights Movement as History," Equity and Excellence in Education,
19:3 (May, 1982), 54-60.
Eagles, Charles W. "Toward New Histories of the Civil Rights Era," Journal of Southern History,
66:4 (Nov. 2000), 815-848.
WEEK FOUR: 1970s Black Politics & the New Generation of Black Politicians
Simpson, Dick. "Harold Washington's Council Wars, 1983-1987," in Rogues, Rebels, and Rubber
Stamps: The Politics of the Chicago City Council from 1863 to the Present (Boulder: Westview Press,
2001), 203-243.
"Eugene Sawyer's Chaos, 1987-1989," in Rogues, Rebels, and Rubber Stamps: The Politics of
the Chicago City Council from 1863 to the Present (Boulder: Westview Press, 2001), 226-243.
Kuhlman, Martin. "Direct Action at the University of Texas During the Civil Rights Movement,
1960-1965," in The African American Experience in Texas, eds. Bruce A. Glasrud and James M.
Smallwood, (Lubbock: Texas Tech Press, 2007), 318-334.
Jones, Alethia. "Identity Politics: Part of A Reinvigorated Class Politics," New Labor Forum
19:2 (Spring 2010), 12-15.
New Labor Forum 19:2
(Spring 2010), 8-11.
Reed, Jr. Adolph, "The Black Urban Regime: Structural Origins and Constraints," in Stirrings
in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Pres,
1986), 79-115.
Bennett, Larry and Adolph Reed, Jr. "The New Face of Urban Renewal: The Near North Redevelopment
Initiative and the Cabrini-Green," in Without Justice For All, ed. Adolph Reed, Jr. (Boulder:
Westview Press, 1999), 175-211.
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