African American Community Practice Models shows you what you can “see” and “learn” when people of African American descent are put in the center of community analysis and change. This text celebrates African American experiences and challenges you to understand the black experience from the inside out rather than from the outside in. The contributors provide excellent historical and current case studies of leaders and programs that provide you with models for program and community development in African American communities today. For the contemporary social worker, these historical comparisons reveal what strategies have been needed in African American communities in the past because of political and social climates. The studies of current successful programs instruct those in community-based African American programs, general service networks, and students on how to continue to better serve the black community. The contributing authors use a new lens for understanding social welfare history and social service development. They encourage social workers to explore new model-building and to pursue new knowledge about African Americans in the social work classroom. In addition to tracing the history of community development, African American Community Practice Models specifically: presents the black community from a position of strength and leadership documents leadership in the black community to ground national advocacy organizations traces women’s leadership in community development documents the unrecognized history of African Americans in the development of the Settlement Movement highlights examples of current self-help programs sponsored by African American communities to change negative behavior patterns documents the impact of racism on service delivery and the response to develop community support programs presents a challenge to expand community development for both internal and external advocacy Professors of the core courses in social work--HBSE, research, policy, and practice--and of specialized courses in community practice, macropractice, and African Americans would benefit from teaching from African American Community Practice Models. Students and faculty in these and other study areas concerned with this community will get community tactics and program development ideas from this book that connect with African American people. The importance of community development from within the African American community, historical and current methods of dealing with the ongoing impact of racism and economic disadvantage, the responsibility of professionals and community leaders to build empowerment strategies within African American communities, and the need to advocate for rights and opportunities in larger society for black Americans are key issues addressed throughout the book, which begins to fill the void of positive presentations of black community development.

A thoroughly researched account of weapons innovation and industrialization in South Carolina during the Civil War and the man who made it happen. A year after seceding from the Union, South Carolina and the Confederate States government faced the daunting challenge of equipping soldiers with weapons, ammunition, and other military implements during the American Civil War. In The Best Gun in the World, Robert S. Seigler explains how South Carolina created its own armory and then enlisted the help of a weapons technology inventor to meet the demand. Seigler mined state and federal factory records, national and state archives, and US patents for detailed information on weapons production, the salaries and status of free and enslaved employees, and other financial records to reveal an interesting, distinctive story of technological innovation and industrialization in South Carolina. George Woodward Morse, originally from New Hampshire, was a machinist and firearms innovator, who settled in Louisiana in the 1840s. He invented a reliable breechloading firearm in the mid-1850s to replace muzzleloaders that were ubiquitous throughout the world. Essential to the successful operation of any breechloader was its ammunition, and Morse perfected the first metallic, center-fire, pre-primed cartridge, his most notable contribution to the development of modern firearms. The US War Department tested Morse rifles and cartridges prior to the beginning of the Civil War and contracted with the inventor to produce the weapons at Harpers Ferry Armory. However, when the war began, Morse, a slave-holding plantation owner, determined that he could sell more of his guns in the South. The South Carolina State Military Works originally designed to cast cannon, produced Morse’s carbine and modified muskets, brass cartridges, cartridge boxes, and other military accoutrements. The armory ultimately produced only about 1,350 Morse firearms. For the next twenty years, Morse sought to regain his legacy as the inventor of the center-fire brass cartridges that are today standard ammunition for military and sporting firearms. “Does justice to one of the greatest stories in American firearms history. If George Woodward Morse had not sided with the Confederacy, his name might be as famous today as Colt or Winchester.” —Gordon L. Jones, Atlanta History Center “Excellent and well-researched.” —Patrick McCawley, South Carolina Department of Archives and History “For connoisseurs and scholars of military history (especially Civil War), history of technology, or Southern/South Carolina history, this is a must-read and reference volume pertaining to a previously little-known aspect of the nineteenth century that had a far-reaching impact in the manner wars would be fought by soldiers decades later.” —Barry L. Stiefel, College of Charleston