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Most people who have heard of Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977) are aware of the impassioned testimony that this Mississippi sharecropper and civil rights activist delivered at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.Far fewer people are familiar with the speeches Hamer delivered at the 1968 and 1972 conventions, to say nothing of addresses she gave closer to home, or with Malcolm X in Harlem, or even at the founding of the National Women's Political Caucus.Until now, dozens of Hamer's speeches have been buried in archival collections and in the basements of movement veterans.After years of combing library archives, government documents, and private collections across the country, Maegan Parker Brooks and Davis W. Houck have selected twenty-one of Hamer's most important speeches and testimonies.

As the first volume to exclusively showcase Hamer's talents as an orator, this book includes speeches from the better part of her fifteen-year activist career delivered in response to occasions as distinct as a Vietnam War Moratorium Rally in Berkeley, California, and a summons to testify in a Mississippi courtroom.

Brooks and Houck have coupled these heretofore unpublished speeches and testimonies with brief critical descriptions that place Hamer's words in context.The editors also include the last full-length oral history interview Hamer granted, a recent oral history interview Brooks conducted with Hamer's daughter, as well as a bibliography of additional primary and secondary sources.The Speeches of Fannie Lou Hamer demonstrates that there is still much to learn about and from this valiant black freedom movement activist.

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Groundbreaking in many ways, Jubilee is the historical and fictional account of the life of Margaret Walker's great-grandmother, from slavery through Reconstruction. In Trumpeting a Fiery Sound Jacqueline Miller Carmichael examines the novel's genesis and composition, the process of revision and publication, the work's structure and narrative strategies, its use of history and folklore, and its critical reception. ... Read more

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Compelling
This book is worth the cost.It is exiting compelling and interesting.I can read it over and over again.Margaret Walker is an excellent author. ... Read more

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Lindsey R. Swindall examines the historical and political context of acclaimed African American actor Paul Robeson's three portrayals of Shakespeare's Othello in the United Kingdom and the United States.These performances took place in London in 1930, on Broadway in 1943, and in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1959.All three of the productions, when considered together, provide an intriguing glimpse into Robeson's artistry as well as his political activism.

The Politics of Paul Robeson's Othello maintains that Robeson's development into a politically minded artist explicates the broader issue of the role of the African American artist in times of crisis.Robeson (1898-1976) fervently believed that political engagement was an inherent component of the role of the artist in society, and his performances demonstrate this conviction.

In the 1930 production, audiences and critics alike confronted the question: Should a black actor play Othello in an otherwise all-white cast?In the 1943 production on Broadway, Robeson consciously used the role as a form for questioning theater segregation both onstage and in the seats.In 1959, after he had become well known for his leftist views and sympathies with Communism, his performance in a major Stratford-upon-Avon production called into question whether audiences could accept onstage an African American who held radical-and increasingly unpopular-political views.Swindall thoughtfully uses Robeson's Othello performances as a collective lens to analyze the actor and activist's political and intellectual development.

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Although Aaron Henry (1922-1997) was one of the nation's major grassroots fighters in the freedom movement on local, state, and national levels, his name has not yet been accorded its full recognition. This book reveals why Aaron Henry should be acknowledged, in the ranks of Fannie Lou Hamer and Medgar Evers, as a truly influential crusader.

Long before many of his contemporaries, he was a civil rights activist, but he preferred to stay out of the limelight. A certified pharmacist and owner of Fourth Street Drug Store in Clarksdale, he considered himself a down-home businessman who must not leave Mississippi. Although he was a key figure in bringing Head Start, housing, employment, and health service to his state, his tact and his quiet diplomacy garnered him less attention than more radical protesters received.

Born in the age of segregation in the Mississippi Delta, the son of a sharecropper, he became state president of the NAACP in 1959. He was able, more than any previous leader, to unite Mississippi blacks, despite diversities of age, ideology, and class, in confronting white supremacy. He spearheaded the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). Some activists criticized him for urging protesters to take the middle ground between the NAACP's conservative position and SNCC's militant activism. Facing recurring death threats, thirty-three jailings, and Klan bombings of his home and drugstore, Henry remained stalwart and courageous. John Dittmer describes him as a "conservative militant," willing not only to risk his life but also to compromise on issues of strategy even when doing so led to alienation from outspoken activists.

Constance Curry has shaped this personal narrative of a brave and underacknowledged man who helped to change his state forever. To his candid story, transcribed from interviews he gave two young historians in 1965, Curry adds new material from her own interviews with his family, friends, and political associates. Henry's prophetic voice documents a momentous period in African American history that extends from the Great Depression through the civil rights movement in the pivotal 1960s.

Constance Curry is the author of Silver Rights, winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award in 1996. She lives in Atlanta. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Unsung Civil Rights leader
The Fire Ever Burning is definitely a book anyone interested in the Civil Rights movement should read. Henry helped secure the headstart program for Mississippi and risked his life so that all Mississippians could enjoy the rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. Although his name is not as recognizable as Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and other civil rights icons, his role in the movement was just as important. If you are a student of the Civil Rights movement or just interested in the movement itself, add this book to your reading list.

Another Beautiful Book
"The Fire Ever Burning" by Aaron Henry and Constance Curry is an important contribution about the Civil Rights Movement. Henry was loved by his friends and was considered to be astute, brave and caring. As was often typical of the times, he was accused of some rotten stuff. How else do you stop people from obtaining their rights? Constance Curry, who wrote this book from Henry's papers, lived the Civil Rights Movement and was actively involved in the Mississippi Delta where Henry lived. She is a careful researcher and writes from the heart. Like "Silver Rights" by Curry, about school integration in the Delta, this book is another good read and I highly recommend it.

Aaron Henry--a morally bankrupt man
I came to know Aaron Henry when he was elected to serve in the Mississippi House in 1980. Initially I thought he was a doddering relic, yet pleasant enough, who tended to pontificate. He was in over his head and didn't really seem to have much interest in the legislative process and, as a result, was not highly regarded by his peers. He had a long history of arrests in city parks in the middle of the night, if you catch my drift. He made advances toward me and several other individuals--it was pathetic. Aaron Henry is indicative of the rotten core of the civil rights movement and liberal politicians in general--you don't have to look far for this. He ranks up there with Al Lowenstein and Bill Clinton. I believe this book is self serving and out of synch with reality. ... Read more

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Raymond Pace Alexander (1897-1974) was a prominent black attorney in Philadelphia and a distinguished member of the National Bar Association, the oldest and largest association of African American lawyers and judges. A contemporary of such nationally known black attorneys as Charles Hamilton Houston, William Hastie, and Thurgood Marshall, Alexander litigated civil rights cases and became well known in Philadelphia. Yet his legacy to the civil rights struggle has received little national recognition.

As a New Negro lawyer during the 1930s, Alexander worked with left-wing organizations to desegregate an all-white elementary school in Berwin, Pennsylvania. After World War II, he became an anti-communist liberal and formed coalitions with like-minded whites. In the sixties, Alexander criticized Black Power rhetoric, but shared some philosophies with Black Power such as black political empowerment and studying black history. By the late sixties, he focused on economic justice by advocating a Marshall Plan for poor Americans and supporting affirmative action.

Alexander was a major contributor to the northern civil rights struggle and was committed to improving the status of black lawyers. He was representative of a generation who created opportunities for African Americans but was later often ignored or castigated by younger leaders who did not support the tactics of the old guard's pioneers.

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Passing in the Works of Charles W. Chesnutt is a collection that reevaluates Chesnutt's deft manipulation of the "passing" theme to expand understanding of the author's fiction and nonfiction. Nine contributors apply a variety of theories---including intertextual, signifying/discourse analysis, narratological, formal, psychoanalytical, new historical, reader response, and performative frameworks---to add richness to readings of Chesnutt's works. Together the essays provide convincing evidence that "passing" is an intricate, essential part of Chesnutt's writing, and that it appears in all the genres he wielded: journal entries, speeches, essays, and short and long fiction.

The essays engage with each other to display the continuum in Chesnutt's thinking as he began his writing career and established his sense of social activism, as evidenced in his early journal entries. Collectively, the essays follow Chesnutt's works as he proceeded through the Jim Crow era, honing his ability to manipulate his mostly white audience through the astute, though apparently self-effacing, narrator, Uncle Julius, of his popular conjure tales. Chesnutt's ability to subvert audience expectations is equally noticeable in the subtle irony of his short stories. Several of the collection's essays address Chesnutt's novels, including Paul Marchand, F.M.C., Mandy Oxendine, The House Behind the Cedars, and Evelyn's Husband. The volume opens up new paths of inquiry into a major African American writer's oeuvre.

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"Many contexts shape and limit moral thinking in philosophy and life. Human conditions of vulnerability and interdependency, of limited awareness and control, of imperfect insight into ourselves and others are inevitable contexts that neither moral thought nor theory should forget. To be truly reflective, moral thinking and moral philosophy must become aware of the contexts that bind our thinking about how to live. This collection of essays by Margaret Urban Walker seek to show how to do this, and why it makes a difference. Contingent and changeable contexts that shape moral thinking include our individual histories, our social positions, and institutional roles, relationships, cultural settings, and social arrangements, and the specific moral idioms we pick up along the way. The paradigms and specialized language of ethical theory are contexts, too; they shape how moral theory looks and what or whom it looks at. Ethical theory and practice are meaningless without these Moral Contexts." ... Read more

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Daisy Bates (1914-1999) has long been renowned as the mentor of the Little Rock Nine, the first African Americans to attend Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. For her work guiding the Nine through one of the most tumultuous civil rights crises of the 1950s, she was selected as 1957 Woman of the Year in Education by the Associated Press, and was the only woman invited to speak at the Lincoln Memorial ceremony in Martin Luther King’s March on Washington in 1963. But her importance as a historical figure has been overlooked by scholars of the civil rights movement.

Daisy Bates: Civil Rights Crusader from Arkansas chronicles her childhood, her marriage, her co-founding of the Arkansas State Press with her husband L.C. Bates, and her political advocacy before, during, and well after the Central High School crisis. An orphan from the southern Arkansas mill town of Huttig, she eventually rose to the zenith of civil rights action in the South. In 1952, she was elected president of the NAACP in Arkansas and traveled the country speaking on civil rights and political issues. During the 1960s and 1970s, she worked as a field organizer for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson to get out the black vote. Even after a series of strokes, she continued her work, orchestrating the affairs of numerous self-help and economic initiatives in Arkansas.

Using interviews, archival records, contemporary newspaper accounts, and other materials, author Grif Stockley reconstructs Bates's life and career, revealing her to be a complex, contrary leader of the civil rights movement. Her struggles with family, marriage, and community leaders are given the nuanced treatment they deserve. Ultimately, Daisy Bates paints a vivid portrait of an ardent, overlooked advocate of social justice. ... Read more

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Daisy Bates: Civil Rights Crusader from Arkansas
As a student in Nashville, Tn, in 1957,I watched in awe, seeing the very good-looking woman Daisy Bates lead the LITTLE ROCK NINE against howling mobs who had to be held in check by Airborne Infantry. I wondered "What lies ahead."
Six years later I would draw upon {Their} examples of personal courage as I helped orchestrate Martin Luther King and personally lead the "Foot Soldiers" against the billy clubs,attack dogs, and fire-hoses during the furious civil rights campaign in Birmingham, Alabama.
I bought the tandem selection Daisy Bates.../ Turn Away Thy Son... from Amazon. I read the first one "real good." I will not read the book with Liz Eckford's picture on the cover (Old men have to be careful about crying too much).
The television media now teaches us that only preachers conducted the Civil Rights Movement in America. These books will help show that Daisy and some other women paved the way and showed the way.

... Read more

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Introduces the life of Madam C. J. Walker, who invented hair-care products for African Americans, founded factories and beauty schools, and organized one of the first national meetings of businesswomen in the United States.

... Read more

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This collection of original essays opens up a novel area of inquiry: the distinctively ethical dimension of women's experiences of aging. Fifteen distinguished contributors here explore assumptions, experiences, practices, and public policies that affect women's well-being and dignity in later life. The book brings to the study of women's aging a reflective dimension missing from the empirical work that has predominated to date. Ethical studies of aging have so far failed to emphasize gender. And feminist ethics has neglected older women, even when emphasizing other dimensions of "difference." Finally work on aging in all fields has focused on the elderly, while this volume sees aging as an extended process of negotiating personal and social change. ... Read more

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Age before beauty
Every now and then a book appears which responds to a real need, even ifyou didn't know the need existed.This book breaks new ground on the issueof aging and women.The studies on images of women and how it affectswomen aging are especially good.Not all is perfect.Many claims are madefor the differences between male aging and female aging, but little proofis given.The religious issues which surround aging are strangely absent. Still, this is a first and a scholarly one. ... Read more

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A "Must Read" in Black History and Women's History
Ellen Craft, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell should be familiar names to anyone interested in women's history or black history. Unfortunately, too few are aware of all three women.

The author accompanies brief (40 pages) well-written biographies of each woman with photographs and a timeline of key events in her life. The introduction provides an overview of the significance of each woman, and there is an excellent bibliography. ... Read more

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This book is a great book for Black Literature.
This book focuses on a young girl name Vyry who has to face many choicesin life. First the death of her mother. Then this mean old 18th centurydevil Selina. She experiencesmany people like her first love RandallWare, and Innis Brown. She has to make a choice between these men. ... Read more