Alas, Alas, Babylon!
In the 1970s, in central California, some high school students read Pat Frank’s novel Alas, Babylon in their sophomore English classes. I know this because my grandmother, who went to college in her...
View ArticleBearing Gifts We Traverse Afar
‘Tis the season for wise men and wise women bearing marvelous gifts. Recently, I received such a gift from such a person: a couple of reams of archival materials spanning about seven years of...
View ArticleThe Tragedy–and Hope–of African American History
In 2007, Andrew Sullivan wrote a cover essay for The Atlantic in which he argued that the rise of Barack Obama to the national stage meant an end to the divisive cultural politics that defined American...
View ArticleNeoliberalism, the Culture Wars, and Oingo Boingo.
Recently, the shuffle on my computer’s playlist scrounged up a track from one of my favorite bands, Oingo Boingo. Endearingly titled “Wild Sex in the Working Class,” the song proceeds from the point of...
View ArticleCoretta Scott King and American Intellectual History
Normally, around this time of year, we at S-USIH would post something about Martin Luther King, Jr. and American intellectual history. Considering that today is King’s actual birthday—we as a nation...
View ArticleBlack Bookstores and the African American Mind
Yesterday Black Perspectives published a fascinating essay on the importance of black bookstores to the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Joshua Clark Davis’ piece, a summation of a chapter...
View ArticleFraming Post-World War II African American History
First off—Happy Black History Month! Traditionally my favorite time of the academic calendar as a young boy, Black History Month offers plenty of new things for everyone to learn. As intellectual...
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