Monday, March 31, 2014

The Evolution of the Trillion Dollar African American Consumer Market

As part of the Created Equal series made possible through a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, UCM will host Dr. Robert E. Weems, William W. Garvey Distinguished Professor of Business History at Wichita State University on April 4, 2014.  Dr. Weems will present a talk titled "The Evolution of the TRILLION DOLLAR African American Consumer Market" at Noon in the James C. Kirkpatrick Library room 1260.  The event is offered in conjunction with UCM's Politics and Social Justice Week with a grant from the UCM Professional Enhancement Committee.  For more information call (660) 543-4404 or email dgillis@ucmo.edu.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Created Equal Film Series: Freedom Riders

The Department of History and Anthropology is hosting the second event of our NEH Created Equal Film Series on Saturday, February 22 from 2 to 4 pm at the Black Archives of Mid-America (1722 E. 17th Terrace, Kansas City, MO, 64108).  Please RSVP by email to info@blackarchives.org or by calling 816-221-1600.

The event will include a screening of portions of the PBS American Experience film Freedom Riders followed by a panel discussion with speakers: Sharon Sanders Brooks, former Kansas City Councilwoman and Missouri State Representative; Dr. Bonita Butner, Associate Professor and Division Chair, Educational Leadership, Policy & Foundations, University of Missouri- Kansas City; Michael Patton, retired educator with the Kansas City, Missouri, School District; Dr. Gregory Streich, Professor of Political Science at the University of Central Missouri and author of Justice Beyond "Just Us": Dilemmas of Time, Place, and Difference in American Politics  and Urban Social Capital: Civil Society and City Life.

The "Created Equal" film series is made possible through a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of its "Bridging Cultures" initiative and in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Prince Among Slaves

Tonight, at 7:00 in Twomey Auditorium, we host the second National Endowment for the Humanities event of the semester, this one being a part of the Bridging Cultures: Muslim Journeys grant.  This event is co-sponsored at UCM by the James C. Kirkpatrick Library and the Department of History and Anthropology.  Dr. Jessica Cannon will lead the discussion, which will follow a public viewing of the PBS film Prince Among Slaves.  The focus will be on Abdul-Rahman Ibrahima, an African prince who was captured and sold into slavery, spent forty years as a slave on a cotton plantation outside of Natchez, Mississippi, and eventually was given his freedom through an amazing twist of fate--John Cox, a white doctor whom his family had once saved along the African coast, runs into Ibrahima some twenty years later in America.  Through letters written to Africa and U.S. officials, including the President, Ibrahima is eventually freed and given passage back to Africa.

Ibrahima was not the only West African slave who brought Muslim religious traditions to the American South; some tens of thousands of enslaved individuals lived similar lives trying to acculturate to the Protestant south.  Nor is he the only slave to escape slavery, as the recent movie Twelve Years a Slave attests.  These lesser-known stories of resistance and individuality amid the destructive forces of slavery are beginning to receive long-deserved attention.

There are many additional resources to investigate if these topics interest you.  You can check out the PBS movie Prince Among Slaves from the JCK Library at UCM, along with the book by the same name from author Terry Alford.  There are several dozen other books and videos in the library as part of the Muslim Journeys Bookshelf you can also check out.

Online, an excellent resource is the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database which documents almost 35,000 slaving voyages between 1514 and 1866.  The website is: http://slavevoyages.org/tast/index/faces .


Sunday, October 6, 2013

Women in the Antislavery Movement

For those interested in a view of the abolition movement from the bottom up, Julie Roy Jeffrey’s, The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism, Ordinary Women in the Antislavery Movement (University of North Carolina Press, 1998) focuses our attention on the hundreds of “silent” women who worked tirelessly in deceptively ordinary ways, to promote abolition in rural communities and churches. According to Jeffrey, their continuous efforts on behalf of abolition evolved over time and helped sustain the movement. Although most did not become the radical feminists we associate with abolition, Jeffrey argues their activities on behalf of abolition did cause them to stretch themselves and to question traditional ideas about gender.

Dr. Sara Brooks Sundberg

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

John Brown

The Abolitionists film segment we watched, which is part of the first episode, mentioned John Brown's conversion experience and his determination to fight slavery in America.  Episode three of the film series addresses this topic in much more detail, talking at length about John Brown's actions in Kansas and at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in 1856 and 1859 respectively.

John Brown has been a controversial figure in both public memory and historical accounts since the 1850s.  Some see his violent actions to bring about an immediate end to slavery as unjustified, while others argue that the nation needed some sort of 'shock' to recognize the realities of the institution of slavery that was itself violent and abusive.  When is moral suasion not enough and more determined action to end slavery is necessary?

The Smithsonian's Museum of American History has an interesting video on their YouTube channel (about 7 minutes long) which asks us to consider exactly that moral dilemma--as a member of John Brown's "jury" in 1859, how would you respond to his actions and his motives?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcoIkUIUS6s&feature=plcp

As we approach the anniversary of Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, October 16-18, it seems appropriate to examine this question here.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Web Resources for Slavery and Emancipation in the United States

Here are a few additional websites with primary sources and secondary interpretive essays covering the topics of slavery and emancipation in the United States.

The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record
http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/index.php

The Abolition of the Slave Trade
http://abolition.nypl.org/home/

Freedmen and Southern Society Project
http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/sampdocs.htm