- Table View
- List View
Florida's Miracle Strip: From Redneck Riviera to Emerald Coast
by Tim HollisSince World War II, tourists have flocked to Florida's northwest Gulf Coast and sun and fun spots at Panama City Beach, Fort Walton Beach, and Pensacola Beach. Every year those visitors number in the millions. For those who long to recall how the vacationland appeared thirty, forty, or even fifty years ago, Tim Hollis has written Florida's Miracle Strip: From Redneck Riviera to Emerald Coast. In a style that informs and entertains, Hollis describes the rise of early developments, such as Long Beach Resort, and major tourist attractions, such as the Gulfarium and the Miracle Strip Amusement Park. With heartfelt nostalgia and a dose of tongue-in-cheek, he reminisces on the motels and tourist cottages; the restaurants, such as Captain Anderson's and Staff's; the elaborate miniature golf courses, such as Goofy Golf and its many imitators. He takes a special delight in recovering the memories of those quirky businesses that now exist only in faded photographs and aging postcards, such wacky tourist traps as Castle Dracula, Petticoat Junction, Tombstone Territory, and the Snake-A-Torium. In the book, Hollis examines how this area became known as the "Miracle Strip," and how the local chambers of commerce got so tired of that image that the name gradually fell into disuse. The book is illustrated with a profusion of vintage photos and advertisements, most of which have not been seen in print since their original appearances. For the nostalgia lover, the snowbird, the tourist seeking yesteryear, Florida's Miracle Strip: From Redneck Riviera to Emerald Coast will be a welcome traveling companion.
The Jim Dilemma: Reading Race in Huckleberry Finn
by Jocelyn A. ChadwickEspecially in academia, controversy rages over the merits or evils of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in particular its portrayal of Jim, the runaway slave. Opponents disrupt classes and carry picket signs, objecting with strong emotion that Jim is no fit model for African American youth of today. In continuing outcries, they claim that he and the dark period of American history he portrays are best forgotten. That time has gone, Jim's opponents charge. This is a new day. But is it? Dare we forget? The author of The Jim Dilemma argues that Twain's novel, in the tradition of all great literature, is invaluable for transporting readers to a time, place, and conflict essential to understanding who we are today. Without this work, she argues, there would be a hole in American history and a blank page in the history of African Americans. To avoid this work in the classroom is to miss the opportunity to remember. Few other popular books have been so much attacked, vilified, or censored. Yet Ernest Hemingway proclaimed Twain's classic to be the beginning of American literature, and Langston Hughes judged it as the only nineteenth-century work by a white author who fully and realistically depicts an unlettered slave clinging to the hope of freedom. A teacher herself, the author challenges opponents to read the novel closely. She shows how Twain has not created another Uncle Tom but rather a worthy man of integrity and self-reliance. Jim, along with other black characters in the book, demands a rethinking and a re-envisioning of the southern slave, for Huckleberry Finn, she contends, ultimately questions readers' notions of what freedom means and what it costs. As she shows that Twain portrayed Jim as nobody's fool, she focuses her discussion on both sides of the Jim dilemma and unflinchingly defends the importance of keeping the book in the classroom.
A New History of Mississippi
by Dennis J. MitchellCreating the first comprehensive narrative of Mississippi since the bicentennial history was published in 1976, Dennis J. Mitchell recounts the vibrant and turbulent history of a Deep South state. The author has condensed the massive scholarship produced since that time into an appealing narrative, which incorporates people missing from many previous histories including American Indians, women, African Americans, and a diversity of other minority groups. This is the story of a place and its people, history makers and ordinary citizens alike. Mississippi's rich flora and fauna are also central to the story, which follows both natural and man-made destruction and the major efforts to restore and defend rare untouched areas. Hernando De Soto, Sieur d’Iberville, Ferdinand Claiborne, Thomas Hinds, Aaron Burr, Greenwood LeFlore, Joseph Davis, Nathan Bedford Forrest, James D. Lynch, James K. Vardaman, Mary Grace Quackenbos, Ida B. Wells, William Alexander Percy, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Elvis Presley, John Grisham, Jack Reed, William F. Winter, Jim Barksdale, Richard Howorth, Christopher Epps, and too many more to list—this book covers a vast and rich legacy. From the rise and fall of American Indian culture to the advent of Mississippi’s world-renowned literary, artistic, and scientific contributions, Mitchell vividly brings to life the individuals and institutions that have created a fascinating and diverse state.
Winnie Lightner: Tomboy of the Talkies (Hollywood Legends Series)
by David L. LightnerWinnie Lightner (1899–1971) stood out as the first great female comedian of the talkies. Blessed with a superb singing voice and a gift for making wisecracks and rubber faces, she rose to stardom in vaudeville and on Broadway. Then, at the dawn of the sound era, she became the first person in motion picture history to have her spoken words, the lyrics to a song, censored. In Winnie Lightner: Tomboy of the Talkies, David L. Lightner shows how Winnie Lightner's hilarious performance in the 1929 musical comedy Gold Diggers of Broadway made her an overnight sensation. She went on to star in seven other Warner Bros. features. In the best of them, she was the comic epitome of a strident feminist, dominating men and gleefully spurning conventional gender norms and moral values. So tough was she, the studio billed her as “the tomboy of the talkies.” When the Great Depression rendered moviegoers hostile toward feminism, Warner Bros. tried to craft a new image of her as glamorous and sexy. Executives assigned her contradictory roles in which she was empowered in the workplace but submissive to her male partner at home. The new persona flopped at the box office, and Lightner's stardom ended. In four final movies, she played supporting roles as the loudmouthed roommate and best friend of actresses Loretta Young, Joan Crawford, and Mona Barrie. Following her retirement in 1934, Lightner faded into obscurity. Many of her films were damaged or even lost entirely. At long last, this biography gives Winnie Lightner the recognition she deserves as a notable figure in film history, in women's history, and in the history of show business.
Campaigns and Hurricanes: A History of Presidential Visits to Mississippi
by John M. Hilpert Zachary M. HilpertWhen William McKinley traveled to Mississippi in 1901, he became the first US president to visit the state while in office. Though twenty-four men served as president prior to McKinley, none of them included Mississippi in their travel plans. Presidents in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have a better record of visiting Mississippi. There were forty-five presidential trips to the state between 1901 and 2016. Thirty-three communities hosted one or more of the sixty-nine stops the presidents made during those visits. George W. Bush is the unrivaled champion when it comes to the number and frequency of presidential visits. During eight years in office, he visited Mississippi nineteen times, fourteen of those during the state's recovery from Hurricane Katrina.Campaigns and Hurricanes: A History of Presidential Visits to Mississippi traces the presidential visits from William McKinley to Barack Obama and sets each visit into its historical context. Readers will learn that of the forty-five visits made to Mississippi by sitting presidents, eighteen were for disaster recovery, eleven were to campaign, eight were in support of policy proposals, three were purely recreational, and five had singular purposes--for example, university commencement ceremonies or military inspections. Mixed in the history of these visits are anecdotes and discussions of issues, trends, politics, and the people shaping the moments that brought US presidents to Mississippi.
Vampires and Zombies: Transcultural Migrations and Transnational Interpretations
by Dorothea Fischer-Hornung and Monika MuellerThe undead are very much alive in contemporary entertainment and lore. Indeed, vampires and zombies have garnered attention in print media, cinema, and on television. The vampire, with roots in medieval European folklore, and the zombie, with origins in Afro-Caribbean mythology, have both undergone significant transformations in global culture, proliferating as deviant representatives of the zeitgeist.As this volume demonstrates, distribution of vampires and zombies across time and space has revealed these undead figures to carry multiple meanings. Of all monsters, vampires and zombies seem to be the trendiest--the most regularly incarnate of the undead and the monsters most frequently represented in the media and pop culture. Moreover, both figures have experienced radical reinterpretations. If in the past vampires were evil, blood-sucking exploiters and zombies were brainless victims, they now have metamorphosed into kinder and gentler blood-sucking vampires and crueler, more relentless, flesh-eating zombies.Although the portrayals of both vampires and zombies can be traced back to specific regions and predate mass media, the introduction of mass distribution through film and game technologies has significantly modified their depiction over time and in new environments. Among other topics, contributors discuss zombies in Thai films, vampire novels of Mexico, and undead avatars in horror videogames. This volume--with scholars from different national and cultural backgrounds--explores the transformations that the vampire and zombie figures undergo when they travel globally and through various media and cultures.
Russell Long: A Life in Politics
by Michael S. MartinRussell Long (1918-2003) occupies a unique niche in twentieth-century United States history. Born into Louisiana's most influential political family, and son of perhaps the most famous Louisianan of all time, Long extended the political power generated by other members of his family and attained heights of power unknown to his predecessors, including his father, Huey. The Long family and its followers pervaded Louisiana politics from the late 1920s through the 1980s. Being a Long--especially a son of Huey Long--preordained Russell for a political life. His father's assassination set the wheels in motion for his eventual political career. In 1948, Russell followed his father and his mother to a seat in the United States Senate. In due course, he rose to the politically eminent positions of majority whip and chair of the Senate Finance Committee. Russell Long: A Life in Politics examines Long's public life and places it within the context of twentieth-century Louisiana, southern, and national politics. In Louisiana, Long's politics arose out of the Longite/ Anti-Longite period of history. Yet he transcended many of those two groups' factional squabbles. In the national realm, Long's politics exhibited a working philosophy that straddled the boundaries between New Deal liberalism and southern conservatism. By the time of his retirement in early 1987, he had witnessed the demise of one political paradigm--the New Deal liberal consensus--and the creation of one dominated by a new style of conservatism.
Slavery, Propaganda, and the American Revolution
by Patricia BradleyUnder the leadership of Samuel Adams, patriot propagandists deliberately and conscientiously kept the issue of slavery off the agenda as goals for freedom were set for the American Revolution. By comparing coverage in the publications of the patriot press with those of the moderate colonial press, this book finds that the patriots avoided, misinterpreted, or distorted news reports on blacks and slaves, even in the face of a vigorous antislavery movement. The Boston Gazette, the most important newspaper of the Revolution, was chief among the periodicals that dodged or excluded abolition. The author of this study shows that The Gazette misled its readers about the notable Somerset decision that led to abolition in Great Britain. She notes also that The Gazette excluded anti-slavery essays, even from patriots who supported abolition. No petitions written by Boston slaves were published, nor were any writings by the black poet Phillis Wheatley. The Gazette also manipulated the racial identity of Crispus Attucks, the first casualty in the Revolution. When using the word slavery, The Gazette took care to focus it not upon abolition but upon Great Britain's enslavement of its American colonies. Since propaganda on behalf of the Revolution reached a high level of sophistication, and since Boston can be considered the foundry of Revolutionary propaganda, the author writes that the omission of abolition from its agenda cannot be considered as accidental but as intentional. By the time the Revolution began, white attitudes toward blacks were firmly fixed, and these persisted long after American independence had been achieved. In Boston, notions of virtue and vigilance were shown to be negatively embodied in black colonists. These devil's imps were long represented in blackface in Boston's annual Pope Day parade. Although the leaders of the Revolution did not articulate a national vision on abolition, the colonial anti-slavery movement was able to achieve a degree of success, but only in drives through the individual colonies.
Long, Long Tales from the Russian North
by Jack V. HaneyThis volume of folktales from the Far North of European Russia features seventeen works by five narrators of the Russian tale, all recorded in the twentieth century. The tales, distinguished by their extraordinary length and by the manner in which they were commonly told, appear to have flourished only in the twentieth century and only in Russian Karelia. Although the tales are easily recognized as wondertales, or fairy tales, their treatment of the traditional matter is anything but usual. In these tales one encounters such topics as regicide, matricide, patricide, fratricide, premarital relations between the sexes and more, all related in the typical manner of the Russian folktale. The narrators were not educated beyond a rudimentary level. All were middle-aged or older, and all were men. Crew members of a fishing or hunting vessel plying the White Sea or lumberjacks or trappers in the vast northern forests, they frequently began the narration of a tale in an evening, then broke off at an appropriate moment and continued at a subsequent gathering. Such tales were thus told serially. Given their length, their thematic and narrative complexity, and their stylistic proficiency, one might even refer to them as orally delivered Russian short stories or novellas.
Samuel M. Gore: Blessed with Tired Hands
by Barbara GaunttBorn in Coolidge, Texas, Samuel Marshall Gore was the sixth of ten children born to a Baptist preacher and a mother described as “an angel.” From early childhood, Samuel Gore remembers enjoying making things, and gives credit to his mother and grandmother for his interest in art. Gore went on to be an art teacher and professor for more than fifty years, mostly at Mississippi College in Clinton, Mississippi. He has shown work in exhibitions and galleries for more than forty years. In 2012 the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters honored him with its Lifetime Achievement Award. In the first part of this volume, Barbara Gauntt traces how a concept in the mind of the artist comes to execution. Gore uses sketches on scraps of paper to inform studies in clay, as the piece Christ, Fulfillment of the Law begins to take its inspired shape. The project, expected to take about a year, lasts nearly two as Gore works to capture the constantly changing image forming in his mind. The 12' x 8' bronze, bas relief sculpture, a sister piece to Moses, Deliverer of the Law commissioned for the Mississippi College School of Law, moves from a small work area in the sculptor’s home to a shop on his property. There he builds the full-size piece on an armature of wood, foam board, and netting covered with clay. From chaos arises the beauty of detailed faces and a work of art that tells a story. The second section of the book covers the artist’s career from the late 1940s into the twenty-first century. Superb photographs of both two- and three-dimensional pieces show the artist’s diverse style and talent. Gore says that he “want[s] people to put their hands on [his] sculpture” because that is how he experiences his art. Gore sees no end in sight to his work. Moses started preaching at the age of eighty, so Gore figures that he is just getting started. This volume features detailed information about all of the artwork included; an interview with Samuel Gore in which the artist discusses his career, technique, and philosophy; a timeline of his life and career; and a foreword by noted Mississippi artist and former student, Wyatt Waters.
Operation Pretense: The FBI's Sting on County Corruption in Mississippi
by James R. CrockettDuring the 1980s fifty-seven of Mississippi's 410 county supervisors from twenty-six of the state's eighty-two counties were charged with corruption. The FBI's ploy to catch the criminals was code-named Operation Pretense. Ingenious undercover investigation exposed the supervisors' wide-scaled subterfuge in purchasing goods and services. Because supervisors themselves controlled and monitored the purchasing system, they could supply sham documentation and spurious invoices. Operation Pretense was devised in response to the complaint of a disgruntled company owner, a Pentecostal preacher who balked at adding a required ten percent kickback to his bid. Detailing the intricate story, this book gives an account of the FBI's stratagem of creating a decoy company that ingratiated itself throughout the supervisors' fiefdoms and brought about a jolting exposé, sweeping repercussions, and a crusade for reform. The case was so notable that CBS's Mike Wallace came to Mississippi to cast the 60 Minutes spotlight on this astonishing sting and on the humiliated public servants it exposed to public shame. The conditions that gave rise to such pervasive malfeasance, the major players on both sides, the mortifying indictments, and the push to finish the clean up are all discussed here. In the wake of Operation Pretense were ruined careers, a spirit of watchdog reform, and an overhauled purchasing system bared to public sunshine. However, this cautioning book reveals a system that remains far from perfect. This narrative report on the largest public corruption scandal in Mississippi history serves as a reminder of the conditions that allow such crime to flourish.
Seth: Conversations (Conversations with Comic Artists Series)
by Eric Hoffman Dominick GraceCanadian cartoonist Gregory Gallant, pen name Seth, emerged as a cartoonist in the fertile period of the 1980s, when the alternative comics market boomed. Though he was influenced by mainstream comics in his teen years and did his earliest comics work on Mister X, a mainstream-style melodrama, Seth remains one of the least mainstream-inflected figures of the alternative comics' movement. His primary influences are underground comix, newspaper strips, and classic cartooning. These interviews, including one career-spanning, definitive interview between the volume editors and the artist published here for the first time, delve into Seth's output from its earliest days to the present. Conversations offer insight into his influences, ideologies of comics and art, thematic preoccupations, and major works, from numerous perspectives—given Seth's complex and multifaceted artistic endeavors. Seth's first graphic novel, It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken, announced his fascination with the past and with earlier cartooning styles. Subsequent works expand on those preoccupations and themes. Clyde Fans, for example, balances present-day action against narratives set in the past. The visual style looks polished and contemplative, the narrative deliberately paced; plot seems less important than mood or characterization, as Seth deals with the inescapable grind of time and what it devours, themes which recur to varying degrees in George Sprott, Wimbledon Green, and The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists.
Reminiscences of an Active Life: The Autobiography of John Roy Lynch
by John Roy LynchBorn into slavery on a Louisiana plantation, John Roy Lynch (1847–1939) came to adulthood during the Reconstruction Era and lived a public-spirited life for over three decades. His political career began in 1869 with his appointment as justice of the peace. Within the year, he was elected to the Mississippi legislature and was later elected Speaker of the House. At age twenty-five, Lynch became the first African American from Mississippi to be elected to the United States Congress. He led the fight to secure passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1875. In 1884, he was elected temporary chairman of the Eighth Republican National Convention and was the first black American to deliver the keynote address. His autobiography, Reminiscences of an Active Life, reflects Lynch's thoughtful and nuanced understanding of the past and of his own experience. The book, written when he was ninety, challenges a number of traditional arguments about Reconstruction. In his experience, African Americans in the South competed on an equal basis with whites; the state governments were responsive to the needs of the people; and race was not always a decisive factor in the politics of Reconstruction. The autobiography, which would not be published until 1970, provides rich material for the study of American politics and race relations during Reconstruction. It sheds light on presidential patronage, congressional deals, and personality conflicts among national political figures. Lynch's childhood reflections reveal new dimensions to our understanding of black experience during slavery and beyond. An introduction by John Hope Franklin puts Lynch's public and private lives in the context of his times and provides an overview of how Reminiscences of an Active Life came to be written.
Race and the Obama Phenomenon: The Vision of a More Perfect Multiracial Union
by G. Reginald Daniel and Hettie V. WilliamsThe concept of a more perfect union remains a constant theme in the political rhetoric of Barack Obama. From his now historic race speech to his second victory speech delivered on November 7, 2012, that striving is evident. “Tonight, more than two hundred years after a former colony won the right to determine its own destiny, the task of perfecting our union moves forward,” stated the forty-fourth president of the United States upon securing a second term in office after a hard-fought political contest. Obama borrows this rhetoric from the founding documents of the United States set forth in the US Constitution and in Abraham Lincoln's “Gettysburg Address.” How naive or realistic is Obama's vision of a more perfect American union that brings together people across racial, class, and political lines? How can this vision of a more inclusive America be realized in a society that remains racist at its core? These essays seek answers to these complicated questions by examining the 2008 and 2012 elections as well as the events of President Obama's first term. Written by preeminent race scholars from multiple disciplines, the volume brings together competing perspectives on race, gender, and the historic significance of Obama's election and reelection. The president heralded in his November 2012, acceptance speech, “The idea that if you're willing to work hard, it doesn't matter who you are, or where you come from, or what you look like . . . . whether you're black or white, Hispanic or Asian or Native American.” These essayists argue the truth of that statement and assess whether America has made any progress toward that vision.
The Egg Bowl: Mississippi State vs. Ole Miss, Second Edition
by William G. BarnerFrom the contentious delay of the first clash in 1901 to the battle in 2009, The Egg Bowl covers the Ole Miss–Mississippi State rivalry in depth. For each game the narrative includes every scoring drive, every player who crossed the goal line, and every final score. More than 150 photos illustrate the intensity of action on the field and capture the players and exploits faithful fans will always remember. This updated edition features full accounts of the games in 2007, 2008, and 2009, including new photos and statistics. For the booster who demands to know every statistic, The Egg Bowl creates the ultimate reference. Which player has scored the most touchdowns? Who rushed for the longest run or threw the longest touchdown pass? How many kickoffs have been returned for touchdowns? Why is November 30 of consequence? Which two men have coached at both schools? And surprisingly, which three players have lettered at Mississippi State and Ole Miss? The intensity of the rivalry cannot be understated. Student leaders created the treasured Golden Egg, trophy of the yearly contest, to quell frequent fisticuffs in the stands. While intended to cool the fervor, the Egg has been controversially remodeled, refurbished, and even kidnapped. The story continually simmers. This ideal gift for the football fanatic will only stoke those passions.
In Defense of Freedom: Stories of Courage and Sacrifice of World War II Army Air Forces Flyers
by Colonel Wolfgang W. SamuelThe twenty-seven stories in this book serve as a graphic reminder of the selfless heroism of America's World War II Army Air Forces flyers and how necessary they were to achieve Allied victory. Wolfgang Samuel and the pilots he interviewed reveal the peril these men faced to achieve a daunting task, impossible without their bravery. And their sacrifices were stunning—American bomber crews suffered the highest casualties (KIA, MIA, POW, wounded) of all American armed services in World War II. The stories preserved in this book bear that grave danger out. A member of a heavy bomber crew in the 8th Air Force in the period from mid-1942 to spring 1944 was less likely to survive than a US Marine fighting on Iwo Jima or Okinawa. The stories in this unique book are about men who went face to face with their adversaries, who saw their buddies die, who crashed planes, and who became prisoners of war. Many later went on to become the backbone of the postwar Air Force, serving in Korea and Vietnam and during the Cold War. Young Ken Chilstrom led a flight of eight A-36 fighter bombers on a low-level foray in Italy. Only he and two others came home. Bob Hoover thought he could take on the entire German air force, but on his first mission he was shot down, nearly perished, and suffered the remainder of the war in a prisoner-of-war camp. Wolfgang Samuel's new book is all about men like Ken, Bob, and the many friends they lost, who saw World War II through to the end and gave freedom to so many others.
Jazz Transatlantic, Volume I: The African Undercurrent in Twentieth-Century Jazz Culture (American Made Music Series)
by Gerhard KubikA CHOICE 2018 Outstanding Academic TitleIn Jazz Transatlantic, Volume I, renowned scholar Gerhard Kubik takes the reader across the Atlantic from Africa to the Americas and then back in pursuit of the music we call jazz. This first volume explores the term itself and how jazz has been defined and redefined. It also celebrates the phenomena of jazz performance and uncovers hidden gems of jazz history. The volume offers insights gathered during Kubik's extensive field work and based on in-depth interviews with jazz musicians around the Atlantic world. Languages, world views, beliefs, experiences, attitudes, and commodities all play a role. Kubik reveals what is most important--the expertise of individual musical innovators on both sides of the Atlantic, and hidden relationships in their thoughts.Besides the common African origins of much vocabulary and structure, all the expressions of jazz in Africa share transatlantic family relationships. Within that framework, musicians are creating and re-creating jazz in never-ending contacts and exchanges. The first of two volumes, Jazz Transatlantic, Volume I examines this transatlantic history, sociolinguistics, musicology, and the biographical study of personalities in jazz during the twentieth century. This volume traces the African and African American influences on the creation of the jazz sound and traces specific African traditions as they transform into American jazz. Kubik seeks to describe the constant mixing of sources and traditions, so he includes influences of European music in both volumes. These works will become essential and indelible parts of jazz history.
The Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, Antiwar, and Black Power Movements (Race, Rhetoric, and Media Series)
by Kristen HoerlWinner of the 2018 Book Award from the American Studies Division of the National Communication AssociationOngoing interest in the turmoil of the 1960s clearly demonstrates how these social conflicts continue to affect contemporary politics. In The Bad Sixties: Hollywood Memories of the Counterculture, Antiwar, and Black Power Movements, Kristen Hoerl focuses on fictionalized portrayals of 1960s activism in popular television and film. Hoerl shows how Hollywood has perpetuated politics deploring the detrimental consequences of the 1960s on traditional American values. During the decade, people collectively raised fundamental questions about the limits of democracy under capitalism. But Hollywood has proved dismissive, if not adversarial, to the role of dissent in fostering progressive social change.Film and television are salient resources of shared understanding for audiences born after the 1960s because movies and television programs are the most accessible visual medium for observing the decade's social movements. Hoerl indicates that a variety of television programs, such as Family Ties, The Wonder Years, and Law and Order, along with Hollywood films, including Forrest Gump, have reinforced images of the "bad sixties." These stories portray a period in which urban riots, antiwar protests, sexual experimentation, drug abuse, and feminism led to national division and moral decay. According to Hoerl, these messages supply distorted civics lessons about what we should value and how we might legitimately participate in our democracy.These warped messages contribute to "selective amnesia," a term that stresses how popular media renders radical ideas and political projects null or nonexistent. Selective amnesia removes the spectacular events and figures that define the late-1960s from their motives and context, flattening their meaning into reductive stereotypes. Despite popular television and film, Hoerl explains, memory of 1960s activism still offers a potent resource for imagining how we can strive collectively to achieve social justice and equality.
Without Regard to Race: The Other Martin Robison Delany
by Tunde AdelekeBefore Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois lifted the banner for black liberation and independence, Martin Robison Delany (1812-1885) was at the forefront. He was the first black person appointed as a combat major in the Union army during the Civil War. He was a pan-Africanist and a crusader for black freedom and equality in the nineteenth century. For the past three decades, however, this precursor has been regarded only as a militant black nationalist and “racial essentialist.” To his discredit, his ideas, programs, and accomplishments have been maintained as models of uncompromising militancy. Classifying Delany solely for his militant nationalist rhetoric crystalizes him into a one-dimensional figure. This study of his life and thought, the first critical biography of the pivotal African American thinker written by a historian, challenges the distorting portrait and, arguing that Delany reflects the spectrum of the nineteenth-century black independence movement, makes a strong case for bringing him closer to the center position of the liberal mainstream. He displayed a far greater degree of optimism about the future of blacks in America than has been acknowledged, and he faced pragmatic socioeconomic realities that made it possible for him to be flexible for compromise. Focusing on neglected phases in his intellectual life, this book reveals Delany as a personality who was neither uncompromisingly militant nor dogmatically conservative. It argues that his complex strategies for racial integration were much more focused on America than on separateness and nationalism. The extreme characterization of him that has been prominent in the contemporary mind reflects ideologies of scholars who came of age during the civil rights era, the period that initially inspired great interest in his life. This new look at him paints a portrait of the “other Delany,” a thinker able to reach across racial boundaries to offer compromise and dialogue.
Eric Rohmer: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)
by Fiona HandysideThe 1969 film Ma Nuit chez Maud catapulted its shy academic film director Eric Rohmer (1920-2010) into the limelight, selling over a million tickets in France and earning a nomination for an Academy Award. Ma Nuit chez Maud remains his most famous film, the highlight of an impressive range of films examining the sexual, romantic, and artistic mores of contemporary France, the temptations of desire, the small joys of everyday life, and sometimes, the vicissitudes of history and politics. Yet Rohmer was almost fifty years old when Maud was released and had already had a career as the editor of Cahiers du Cinéma, a position he lost in a political takeover in 1963. The interviews in this book offer a range of insights into the theoretical, critical, and practical circumstances of Rohmer's remarkably coherent body of films, but also allow Rohmer to act as his own critic, providing us with an array of readings concerning his interest in setting, season, color, and narrative. Alongside the application of a theoretical rigor to his own films, Rohmer's interviews also discuss directors as varied as Godard, Carné, Renoir, and Hitchcock, and the relations of film to painting, architecture, and music. This book reproduces little-known interviews, such as a debate Rohmer undertakes with Women and Film concerning feminism, alongside detailed discussions from Cahiers and Positif, many produced in English here for the first time.
Mississippians in the Great War: Selected Letters
by Anne L. WebsterEven Mississippi textbooks rarely mention the part Mississippi men and women played in World War I. Mississippians in the Great War presents in their own words the story of Mississippians and their roles. This body of work divides into five sections, each associated with crucial dates of American action. Comments relating to various military actions are interspersed throughout to give the reader a context of the wide variety of experiences. Additionally, where possible, Anne L. Webster provides information on the soldier or sailor to show what became of him after his service. Webster examined newspapers from all corners of the state for “letters home,” most appearing in newspapers from Natchez, Greenville, and Pontotoc. The authors of the letters gathered here are from soldiers, aviators, sailors, and relief workers engaged in the service of their country. Letter writing skills varied from citizens of minimal literacy to those who would later become published authors and journalists. These letters reflect the experiences of green, young Mississippians as they endured training camp, voyaged across the Atlantic to France, and participated in horrific battles leaving some scarred for life. To round out the picture, Webster includes correspondence from nurses and YMCA workers who describe drills, uniforms, parades, and celebrations.
The Struggle for America's Promise: Equal Opportunity at the Dawn of Corporate Capital
by Claire GoldsteneIn The Struggle for America's Promise, Claire Goldstene seeks to untangle one of the enduring ideals in American history, that of economic opportunity. She explores the varied discourses about its meaning during the upheavals and corporate consolidations of the Gilded Age. Some proponents of equal opportunity seek to promote upward financial mobility by permitting more people to participate in the economic sphere thereby rewarding merit over inherited wealth. Others use opportunity as a mechanism to maintain economic inequality. This tension, embedded with the idea of equal opportunity itself and continually reaffirmed by immigrant populations, animated social dissent among urban workers while simultaneously serving efforts by business elites to counter such dissent. Goldstene uses a biographical approach to focus on key figures along a spectrum of political belief as they struggled to reconcile the inherent contradictions of equal opportunity. She considers the efforts of Booker T. Washington in a post-Civil War South to ground opportunity in landownership as an attempt to confront the intersection of race and class. She also explores the determination of the Knights of Labor to define opportunity in terms of controlling one's own labor. She looks at the attempts by Samuel Gompers through the American Federation of Labor as well as by business elites through the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Civic Federation to shift the focus of opportunity to leisure and consumption. The Struggle for America's Promise also includes such radical figures as Edward Bellamy and Emma Goldman, who were more willing to step beyond the boundaries of the discourse about opportunity and question economic competition itself.
Made in Mexico: Tradition, Tourism, and Political Fermant in Oaxaca
by Chris GoertzenMade in Mexico examines the aesthetic, political, and sociopolitical aspects of tourism in southern Mexico, particularly in the state of Oaxaca. Tourists seeking "authenticity" buy crafts and festival tickets and spend even more on travel expenses. What does a craft object or a festival moment need to look like or sound like to please both tradition bearers and tourists in terms of aesthetics? Under what conditions are transactions between these parties psychologically healthy and sustainable? What political factors can interfere with the success of this negotiation, and what happens when the process breaks down? With Subcommandante Marcos and the Zapatistas still operating in neighboring Chiapas and unrest on the rise in Oaxaca itself, these are not merely theoretical problems. Chris Goertzen analyzes the nature and meaning of a single craft object, a woven pillowcase from Chiapas, thus previewing what the book will accomplish in greater depth in Oaxaca. He introduces the book's guiding concepts, especially concerning the types of aesthetic intensification that have replaced fading cultural contexts, and the tragic partnership between ethnic distinctiveness and oppressive politics. He then brings these concepts to bear on crafts in Oaxaca and on Oaxaca's Guelaguetza, the anchor for tourism in the state and a festival with an increasingly contested meaning.
Faulkner and Postmodernism (Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Series)
by John N. Duvall Ann J. AbadieSince the 1960s, William Faulkner, Mississippi's most famous author, has been recognized as a central figure of international modernism. But might Faulkner's fiction be understood in relation to Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow as well as James Joyce's Ulysses? In eleven essays from the 1999 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, held at the University of Mississippi, Faulkner and Postmodernism examines William Faulkner and his fiction in light of postmodern literature, culture, and theory. The volume explores the variety of ways Faulkner's art can be used to measure similarities and differences between modernism and postmodernism. Essays in the collection fall into three categories: those that use Faulkner's novels as a way to mark a period distinction between modernism and postmodernism, those that see postmodern tendencies in Faulkner's fiction, and those that read Faulkner through the lens of postmodern theory's contemporary legacy, the field of cultural studies. In order to make their particular arguments, essays in the collection compare Faulkner to more contemporary novelists such as Ralph Ellison, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon, Walker Percy, Richard Ford, Toni Morrison, and Kathy Acker. But not all of the comparisons are to high-culture artists, since even Elvis Presley becomes Faulkner's foil in one of the essays. A variety of theoretical perspectives frame the work in this volume, from Fredric Jameson's pessimistic sense of postmodernism's possibilities to Linda Hutcheon's conviction that cultural critique can continue in postmodernism through innovative new forms such as metafiction. Despite the different theoretical premises and distinct conclusions of the individual authors of these essays, Faulkner and Postmodernism proves once again that in the key debates surrounding twentieth-century fiction, Faulkner is a crucial figure.
My Triumph over Prejudice: A Memoir (Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography)
by Martha Wyatt-RossignolMy Triumph over Prejudice is the autobiography of a black girl growing up in Mississippi during the civil rights era. Born in 1949, Martha Wyatt-Rossignol came of age during some of the most crucial and dangerous years of the civil rights movement. She examines those years and what happened when the movement upended her small town of Fayette. She describes the conditions under which blacks lived during segregation and how those oppressive rules changed, despite massive resistance from whites. Wyatt-Rossignol faced racial hatred when she was chosen for an early school desegregation program. Her failed marriage to an African American led to her dating and later wedding a white man, a civil rights worker from the North, to whom she is still married. That union sparked disapproval from both the white and black communities, revealing entrenched complexities of race and racism in her hometown. Her story also follows the politics of that volatile era in a local context. Black politicians, helped by national civil rights figures, assumed more power and began improving life for all races in this rural area. Then came a betrayal felt by many blacks as these key figures overreached their authority and started pursuing their own selfish agendas. An intimate, revealing portrait of Charles Evers, the first black mayor of Fayette and brother of Medgar Evers, is included in this section. The memoir goes on to portray how the author learned to hate whites as a result of her experiences and how she later overcame that animosity. Wyatt-Rossignol's story concludes with her move out of Mississippi to the island of Bermuda, where she encountered a very different racial environment.