scholarly journals Political Advocacy Without a Choice

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2/3) ◽  
pp. 241-258
Author(s):  
Donisha Shepherd ◽  
Suzanne Pritzker
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Black Migration ◽  
Political Empowerment ◽  
Jim Crow Era

From social work’s early days, African American social workers were engaged in what today is termed as political social work, yet their work is often overlooked in both social work education and the broader retelling of our profession’s history. This article examines the early history of African American political social work, using Lane and Pritzker’s (2018) five domains of political social work. We outline ways in which African American social workers’ lived experiences led them to engage in political social work to support community survival and to challenge injustice during the Black Migration period post-slavery, the Jim Crow Era, and the Civil Rights Movement. Even as broader structural dynamics sought to exclude African Americans from the political arena, dynamic and influential African American social workers laid the groundwork for modern political social work. They politically engaged their communities, lobbied for legislation, worked in the highest levels of government, supported campaigns, and ran and held elective office to ensure that civil rights were given and maintained. This manuscript calls for a shift from social work’s white-dominant historical narrative and curricula (Bell, 2014; DeLoach McCutcheon, 2019) to assertive discussion of the historic roles African American political social work pioneers played in furthering political empowerment and challenging social injustice.

Religion, Race, and Sports

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Scholes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The United States ◽  
Baseball Player ◽  
Sports History ◽  
Jim Crow Era ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
African American Race

Race, religion, and sports may seem like odd bedfellows, but, in fact, all three have been interacting with each other since the emergence of modern sports in the United States over a century ago. It was the sport of boxing that saw a black man become a champion at the height of the Jim Crow era and a baseball player who broke the color barrier two decades before the civil rights movement began. In this chapter, the role that religion has played in these and other instances where race (the African American race in particular) and sports have collided will be examined for its impact on the relationship between race and sports. The association of race, religion, and sports is not accidental. The chapter demonstrates that all three are co-constitutive of and dependent on each other for their meaning at these chosen junctures in American sports history.

Race Women

2019 ◽  
pp. 70-100
Author(s):  
Jelani M. Favors
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
New Negro ◽  
American Women ◽  
Single Sex ◽  
History Of

This chapter examines the fascinating history of Bennett College – one of only two single sex colleges dedicated to educating African American women. Although Bennett would not make that transition until 1926, the institution played a vital role in educating African American women in Greensboro, North Carolina from the betrayal of the Nadir to the promises of a New Negro Era. The latter period witnessed Bennett, under the leadership of David Dallas Jones, mold scores of young girls into politically conscious race women who were encouraged to resist Jim Crow policies and reject the false principals of white supremacy. Their politicization led to a massive boycott of a theatre in downtown Greensboro and helped to set the tone for Greensboro’s evolution into a critical launching point for the modern civil rights movement.

Eugene Kinckle Jones

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix L. Armfield
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Social Work ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Migration ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Urban League ◽  
The Great Migration

A leading African American intellectual of the early twentieth century, Eugene Kinckle Jones (1885–1954) was instrumental in professionalizing black social work in America. In his role as executive secretary of the National Urban League, Jones worked closely with social reformers who advocated on behalf of African Americans and against racial discrimination in the United States. Coinciding with the Great Migration of African Americans to northern urban centers, Jones' activities on behalf of the Urban League included campaigning for equal hiring practices, advocating for the inclusion of black workers in labor unions, and promoting the importance of vocational training and social work for members of the black community. Drawing on rich interviews with Jones' colleagues and associates, as well as recently opened family and Urban League papers, the book freshly examines the growth of African American communities and the new roles played by social workers. In calling attention to the need for black social workers in the midst of the Great Migration, Jones and his colleagues sought to address problems stemming from race and class conflicts from within the community. This book blends the biography of a significant black leader with an in-depth discussion of the roles of black institutions and organizations to study the evolution of African American life immediately before the civil rights era.

Social Justice

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet L. Finn ◽  
Maxine Jacobson
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
21St Century ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Work History ◽  
Core Value ◽  
Social Work History

This entry examines the concept of social justice and its significance as a core value of social work. Diverse conceptualizations of social justice and their historical and philosophical underpinnings are examined. The influence of John Rawls' perspectives on social justice is addressed as are alternative conceptualizations, such as the capabilities perspective. The roots of social justice are traced through social work history, from the Settlement House Movement to the Rank and Film Movement, Civil Rights Movement, and contemporary struggles in the context of globalization. Challenges for social justice-oriented practice in the 21st century are address. The discussion concludes with concrete example of ways in which social workers are translating principles of social justice into concrete practices.

The Adoption of African American Children by Whites: A Renewed Conflict

1996 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
pp. 156-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla M. Curtis
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Family Court ◽  
African American Children ◽  
Transracial Adoptions ◽  
Cultural Genocide ◽  
American Children ◽  
Family Court Judges

During the turbulent 1960s and the civil-rights movement, African Americans called for the reexamination of major institutional policies. One of the policy changes demanded by African American social workers was the cessation of Whites adopting African American children. The view of the fledgling Association of Black Social Workers was that such practices would result in cultural genocide. This view influenced policy as family-court judges and child advocates pursued same-race adoption with respect to African American children. Some child advocates called the policy of excluding Whites from adopting African American children imprudent and discriminatory, and in the 1980s, judges began to rule in favor of White parents who wanted to adopt Black children. Legislation was introduced and signed into law that makes it illegal for states or agencies receiving federal funding to consider race in the adoption of children. This shift in policy has enraged many African American social workers and resulted in major disagreements between them and individuals who advocate for transracial adoptions. The author explores the arguments of each side and suggests policy recommendations.

scholarly journals Kneading, Needing, and Eating Black Bodies

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2/3) ◽  
pp. 217-240
Author(s):  
Fabienne Snowden ◽  
Willie Tolliver ◽  
Amanda McPherson
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black People ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Historical Review ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Black Bodies ◽  
History Of

Social workers have been on the frontlines alongside marginalized communities since the profession’s emergence. This stance continues with supporting the Black Lives Matter Movement and centering the structural inequities that the COVID-19 pandemic highlights. A narrative that centers the history of social work’s concern for Black citizenship in the profession’s formation is neglected in the literature. This historical review traces the genesis of the profession’s work to expand access to the entitlements of citizenship among Black communities. Thematic analysis of secondary sources is used to investigate the formation of the profession and its work to ensure access to resources among Blacks communities. Study findings identify that the profession emerged from the bonds between the Abolitionist Movement and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, then moved away from working with Black people during the Settlement Movement and did not return to addressing the needs of these communities until the 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement. Black social workers answered the call to support Black and non-Black communities in the absence of the profession’s national organization’s presence. Social work needs, kneads, and eats Black bodies by being in complicity with systems of oppression. The history of social work and its concern and lack of concern for Black citizenship is a pedagogical innovation that addresses the historical amnesia that White domination fosters. The findings of this analysis call social workers to task to disrupt White dominant epistemologies of ignorance by incorporating this historical context into their social work pedagogy.

The Street Ran through Cities: Faulkner and the Early African American Migration Narrative

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Smethurst ◽  
Jay Watson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Literature ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
Black Migration ◽  
Light In August ◽  
Black Authors ◽  
Jim Crow Era ◽  
American Migration

For the most part, when the topic of Faulkner and African American literature is discussed, the intellectual conversation is primarily concerned with the undeniable influence of Faulkner’s fiction on black novelists. However, this chapter focuses on the major impact of the African American migration novel in the early Jim Crow era on Faulkner’s work, particularly Light in August and Absolom, Absolom! While the peripatetic, rootless, and often mixed-race characters of such novels by black authors as Pauline Hopkins’s Contending Forces, Paul Laurence Dunbar’s The Sport of the Gods, James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, Jean Toomer’s Cane, and Nella Larsen’s Quicksand informs the creation of the protagonists/speakers of much modernist U.S. fiction and poetry; it is in Faulkner’s work, with possible exception of Gertrude Stein’s “Melanctha,” that one sees the clearest adaptation of the characters and cultural geography of the early black migration narrative.

“The cry of the Negro should not be remember the Maine, but remember the hanging of Bush”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Race Riots ◽  
Slave Resistance ◽  
Jim Crow Era ◽  
Significant Area ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Central Illinois

This chapter analyzes lynching scholars' treatment of African American resistance, and traces African American responses to that racially inspired mob murder in central Illinois in the early years of the Jim Crow era. Academic interest in slavery, especially in slave resistance, escalated after the civil rights and Black Power movements. Moreover, race riots became a major topic of scholarly inquiry only after the 1960s urban insurrections. Scholarly attention to lynching has followed a similar pattern as historians' interest coincided with the 1980s-era resurgence in private racial violence. Consequently, lynching only emerged as a key concern among historians in the 1980s. By the late 1990s, lynching had become a significant area of historical research.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lucander
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Depression Era ◽  
Second World

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the March on Washington Movement (MOWM). MOWM was arguably the most effective African American protest organization during the Second World War, and in some ways this period represented the zenith of A. Philip Randolph's power. By creating MOWM, Randolph gave local activists and organizers a platform on which they could fight against Jim Crow in innovative and sometimes powerful ways. This organization stands at a critical junction between the Roosevelt era and the years traditionally associated with the Civil Rights Movement, a chronological crossroads that makes it something of a generational interstice. Occupying this unique place in the chronology of twentieth-century campaigns by African Americans to attack Jim Crow segregation makes MOWM something of an anomaly. Its roots were firmly planted in Depression-era activism, but its branches spread through the next three decades and reached into the Civil Rights Movement.

Not as It Is Written

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-100
Author(s):  
Benjamin Houston
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
International Exhibition ◽  
Black Experience ◽  
American Perspective ◽  
History Of ◽  
Black Life ◽  
Made In

This article discusses an international exhibition that detailed the recent history of African Americans in Pittsburgh. Methodologically, the exhibition paired oral history excerpts with selected historic photographs to evoke a sense of Black life during the twentieth century. Thematically, showcasing the Black experience in Pittsburgh provided a chance to provoke among a wider public more nuanced understandings of the civil rights movement, an era particularly prone to problematic and superficial misreadings, but also to interject an African American perspective into the scholarship on deindustrializing cities, a literature which treats racism mostly in white-centric terms. This essay focuses on the choices made in reconciling these thematic and methodological dimensions when designing this exhibition.

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