Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom

Brown, Elsa Barkley

doi:10.1215/08992363-7-1-107

Cited by 171 publications

(25 citation statements)

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“…Their local citizenship expressed deep love for the city, its people, and its potential, drawing on a long tradition of black political engagement even in the face of exclusion and oppression (E. B. Brown, 1994;Du Bois, 1999[1935; Glenn, 2011;Macleod, 2011).…”

Section: Policy Recommendations and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Race, Power and Economic Extraction in Benton Harbor, MI

Seamster¹

2017

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My dissertation investigates twin financial interventions-urban development and emergency management-in a single small town. Once a thriving city drawing blacks as blue-collar workers during the Great Migration, Benton Harbor, Michigan has suffered from waves of out-migration, debt, and alleged poor management. BentonHarbor's emphasis on high-end economic development to attract white-collar workers and tourism, amidst the poverty, unemployment, and disenfranchisement of black residents, highlights an extreme case of American urban inequality. At the same time, many bystanders and representative observers argue that this urban redevelopment scheme and the city's takeover by the state represent Benton Harbor residents' only hope for a better life. I interviewed 44 key players and observers in local politics and development, attended 20 public meetings, conducted three months of observations, and collected extensive archival data. Examining Benton Harbor's time under emergency management and its luxury golf course development as two exemplars of a larger relationship, I find that the top-down processes allegedly intended to alleviate Benton Harbor's inequality actually reproduce and deepen the city's problems. I propose that the beneficiaries of both plans constitute a white urban regime active in Benton Harbor. I show how the white urban regime serves its interests by operating an extraction v machine in the city, which serves to reproduce local poverty and wealth by directing resources toward the white urban regime and away from the city.vi

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Section: Policy Recommendations and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Race, Power and Economic Extraction in Benton Harbor, MI

Seamster¹

2017

Preprint

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“…But, congregational and community activities of congregations like First African cannot be reduced to programs and services directed toward racial uplift and thus social integration. Elsa Barkeley Brown described First African Church in this way: "The church provided more than a physical space, financial resources and a communication network: it also provided a cultural base that validated emotion and experience as ways of knowing, and drew on a collective call and response, encouraging the active participation of all (Brown 2003)." First African became a central social institution from which African Americans in the Reconstruction era created a black public sphere over and against the social mores and injustices of the dominant white society.…”

Section: Early Formationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…After Richmond's First African completed their new building in the late nineteenth century, the church's new building policies changed the nature of black community politics. "Having completed, at considerable expense, their new edifice," Elsa Barkley Brown writes, "First African worried about avoiding damage and excess wear and tear (Brown 2003)." Though First African's sanctuary was the largest facility open to African Americans in Richmond, and previously a site of regular community events, the church started to prohibit political meetings, community lectures, and graduations.…”

Section: Ethical Concernsmentioning

confidence: 99%

For Where Two or Three (Thousand) Are Gathered in My Name! A Cultural History and Ethical Analysis of African American Megachurches

Walton

2011

J Afr Am St

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African American megachurches are part of a larger trend in American Protestantism reflecting the ecclesial shifts that have taken place in America during the final quarter of the previous century. There are, however, historical and religious distinctions that differentiate African American congregations from this broader, largely evangelical phenomenon. The purpose of this article, then, is to introduce and analyze African American megachurches in such a way that they are historically situated, racially located, and ecclesiastically differentiated. This article addresses the precipitous rise of black megachurch congregations in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries and ethically examines shared institutional and ideational values. And it argues that the professional identity, mass culture compatibility, and theological creativity that broadly define black megachurches represent creative fusions and internal tensions that pose ethical challenges to their congregational missions.One of the more popular occurrences within recent American Protestant history involves the congregational megachurch. Megachurches are typically identified as congregations with an average Sunday morning attendance of 2,000. Yet, such congregations tend to have both quantitative and qualitative characteristics. Megachurches are full-service Christian campuses that create shopping-mall-like environments and foster comprehensive Christian lifestyles for the entire family. Private schools, childcare and after-school programs, fitness facilities, athletic leagues, restaurants, book stores, and community volunteer opportunities are just a few of the services megachurches provide. Due to the grandness of J Afr Am St (2011) 15:133-154

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“…Political theorists have already shown how the top-down, pulpit-pew flow of authority can shut down a critical public sphere, reducing opportunities for radical political praxis (Brown 1994;Cohen 2004;Higginbotham 1993;Payne 1995;19. For more information about the Black Youth Project, see blackyouthproject.com, from which the quotation is taken.…”

Section: They Tell You What They Want Show You What They Want You Tomentioning

confidence: 99%

“It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp... with... a Whole Lot of Bitches Jumpin' Ship”: Navigating Black Politics in the Wake of Katrina

Michael¹

2009

Public Culture

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If not quite in these words, some scholars and activists who have promoted a social movement based on the civil rights movement have implied that their project is undermined by “a whole lot of bitches jumpin' ship,” while few bother to question whether and to what extent that movement provides the best strategy for liberation. Fewer still have solicited insight from populations that—instead of mere cowardice or sheer apathy—might possess a social critique that could provide the basis for a reinvigorated post–civil rights political project. In the spirit of developing the critical stance that might attend to this mission, this essay considers the relationship among oratory, textuality, and gendered authority by discussing how The Covenant with Black America is strategically deployed (though its contents are scarcely discussed) during the 2006 State of the Black Union political performance and exploring the spellbinding power of masculine leadership in Hustle and Flow, where the labor of an entire household is required to produce a male rapper as an icon of fame whose lyrical talent propels him into the spotlight. I consider these two episodes against the political backdrop of 2005–6, defined primarily by the tragic events of Hurricane Katrina, which intensified longing for a black leader who could quell the crisis. Revisiting this event helps me track efforts to recuperate a male leader that conform to popular ideas about how social movements proceed but which ignore the need for different perspectives in any political project that will succeed in undoing persistent inequalities—and that refuse to question whether and to what extent civil rights frontiership provides the default strategy for a political project designed to empower African Americans and other oppressed constituencies.

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Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom

Cited by 171 publications

References 0 publications

Race, Power and Economic Extraction in Benton Harbor, MI

Race, Power and Economic Extraction in Benton Harbor, MI

For Where Two or Three (Thousand) Are Gathered in My Name! A Cultural History and Ethical Analysis of African American Megachurches

“It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp... with... a Whole Lot of Bitches Jumpin' Ship”: Navigating Black Politics in the Wake of Katrina

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