This week's open threads will highlight the other "unsung" heroes of the Civil Rights movement. We have always talked about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks. There were others, black and white who were involved in securing civil rights for African-Americans. This week's thread will talk about these people. Vernon Ferdinand Dahmer, … [Read more...] about Monday Open Thread: The Unsung Heroes of the Civil Rights Movement
Race
Friday Open Thread: The Niggerati and The Negrotarians
The Costs of White Patronage This extraordinarily rich cultural moment, the Harlem Renaissance, in which it seemed possible that African Americans would take the lead in creating the cosmopolitan America that progressive writer Randolph Bourne had called for in the 1910s, won the attention and admiration of a good many white critics and intellectuals. In particular, … [Read more...] about Friday Open Thread: The Niggerati and The Negrotarians
Saturday Open Thread: African-Americans and the Labor Union Movement
James v. Marinship was a California Supreme Court decision that ruled that jobs requiring labor union membership could not exclude blacks or other racial groups. The Marinship Corporation operated various shipyards and was involved in the building of various ships and vessels during the wartime era. The respondent, Joseph James, was an employee of the Marinship Corporation. … [Read more...] about Saturday Open Thread: African-Americans and the Labor Union Movement
Wednesday Open Thread: African-Americans and the Labor Union Movement
The Southern Tenant Farmers' Union (STFU) was founded in 1934 as a civil farmer's union to organize tenant farmers in the Southern United States. Since the Reconstruction era the vast majority of Southern farmers were exploited under semi-feudal labor conditions, paying for their land usage with crops, and easily subject to the whims of the white landowners. Their plight was … [Read more...] about Wednesday Open Thread: African-Americans and the Labor Union Movement
Saturday Open Thread: The Blackness of Country Music
Bertha Bearden Dorsey was born and raised Jackson, Tennessee. Country music fans got to know her by her stage name, Ruby Falls. It has been written in several sources that she was among the most successful black female country music singers. … [Read more...] about Saturday Open Thread: The Blackness of Country Music