In the era of the American Civil Rights Movement, and barely three years after Africas most populous nation celebrated her independence from colonial rule, the Nigerian government brought her full weight to bear in a world championship title boutthe first ever in Black Africa. The Dick Tiger vs. Gene Fullmer III fight, held in Liberty Stadium in Ibadan, Nigeria, on August 10, 1963, was a forerunner for all the big fights in the African continent. Westerners didnt believe that a newly independent African nation could dare muster the audacity, or financial backbone, to stage a world championship event. In Africas Honor chronicles this groundbreaking fight while narrating the details of Richard (Dick Tiger) Ihetus life in and out of the boxing ring. Presented as a play by Justina Ihetu, Dick Tigers daughter, and complete with archival photos, this drama showcases the patriotism and heroism of a boxer who had an inauspicious beginning. Ihetu provides insight into the wheeling and dealing behind the match, and she humanizes the principle playerslaying bare their innermost thoughts and anxieties to help form a deeper understanding of the character, and circumstances that reveal Africas promise, of unity, dignity, and honor.

A groundbreaking investigation into the migration of martial arts techniques across continents and centuries The presence of African influence and tradition in the Americas has long been recognized in art, music, language, agriculture, and religion. T. J. Desch-Obi explores another cultural continuity that is as old as eighteenth-century slave settlements in South America and as contemporary as hip-hop culture. In this thorough survey of the history of African martial arts techniques, Desch-Obi maps the translation of numerous physical combat techniques across three continents and several centuries to illustrate how these practices evolved over time and are still recognizable in American culture today. Some of these art traditions were part of African military training while others were for self-defense and spiritual discipline. Grounded in historical and cultural anthropological methodologies, Desch-Obi's investigation traces the influence of well-delineated African traditions on long-observed but misunderstood African and African American cultural activities in North America, Brazil, and the Caribbean. He links the Brazilian martial art capoeira to reports of slave activities recorded in colonial and antebellum North America. Likewise Desch-Obi connects images of the kalenda African stick-fighting techniques to the Haitian Revolution. Throughout the study Desch-Obi examines the ties between physical mastery of these arts and changing perceptions of honor. Including forty-five illustrations, this rich history of the arrival and dissemination of African martial arts in the Atlantic world offers a new vantage for furthering our understanding of the powerful influence of enslaved populations on our collective social history.

Offering an intimate look at the lives of African women trying to reconcile motherhood with new professional roles, the author argues that Beti women delay motherhood as part of a broader attempt to assert a modern form of honor only recently made possible by formal education, Catholicism, and economic change.

Africa, Empire and Globalization is a set of original essays in honor of the distinguished historian, Professor A. G. Hopkins, whose career of over fifty years covers three main areas that are global in reach, but connect to ideas that are generated in such major cities as Lagos and London. The volume celebrates the key principles that have emerged from the cumulative body of Hopkins'' work: searching for originality; extending the frontier of knowledge through new data and interpretations; questioning received assumptions and wisdom; promoting conversations between multiple, often divergent, sets of ideas from different disciplines; presenting ideas such that those within and outside of the academy can benefit; and applying theories drawn from various disciplines to organize the evidence and to present it in digestible form. The first section covers Africa, with essays on the economic history of Lagos and West Africa, the connections between economic change and imperialism, and the role of Africa in the world economy, including the trans-Saharan, trans-Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean World. The role of Africans in creating wealth and responding to new economic opportunities receives prominent attention in some chapters. In the second section, new topics on imperialism are explored, such as the British expansion to India, the role of trade in the Gambia, and the overall impact of the empire. Hopkins'' idea of "gentlemanly capitalism" generates considerable debate in various chapters, and is also applied to various contexts and places. The current issues around the theme of globalization are developed in the third section in terms of the relevance of the concept, the contributions that historians can make to the subject, the arguments for and against, and its impact on capitalism and democracy. From peace to war, from economic prosperity to economic decline, from the use of power to nationalist resurgence, the section looks at the dominant concerns of our time. Hopkins'' career, as the volume amply demonstrates, is rich, held together by interest in the connections between the local and the national, the national and the regional, and the regional and the global. In thus interconnecting the world, a philosophy of history emerges--how economic forces shape political realities. His work, while being quite broad-ranging spatially, has remained topically focused on economic history, for the most part. This emphasis will be a large part of what he passes on to future scholarly generations. As we pay various tributes through the original essays collected here, we believe that, for our shared benefit, Professor A. G. Hopkins has demonstrated how to remain candidly involved in the debates over one''s work, to defend oneself when appropriate, to reconsider one''s work when necessary, and continually to build upon one''s own body of work in compelling and relevant version. This book is part of the African World Series, edited by Toyin Falola, Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, University of Texas at Austin. "This weighty and impressive book is a thoroughly appropriate scholarly festschrift for Tony Hopkins....Wherever one cares to dip into the volume, one finds finely crafted, densely textured pieces of historical research." -- Journal of African History "[A]n important volume and a fitting tribute to the work of A.G. Hopkins....[T]he anthology may look and feel like a tome, but it is a delight to read. The breadth of topics and careful scholarship should ensure this collection receives a broad readership and stimulates further debates over Africa, empire, and globalization." -- H-Net Reviews "...this is not a deferential miscellanea, but a volume of the widest interest to all those who practise in the fields in which Tony Hopkins has worked. It is the best possible tribute." -- The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

Christianity and Social Change in Africa is the most comprehensive look at the African encounter with Christianity in recent years. The book's themes are drawn from the pioneering work of J.D.Y. Peel, building on his creative explanation of the African experience of Christianity. The volume covers a broad range of themes, including religious expansion, the rise of Pentecostalism, and the use of new media and technologies to convert people and reform believers. The various manifestations of religious impact run through all the chapters, covering aspects of culture, politics, the economy, and the landscape. The volume also explores the success of Africans in exporting Christianity to other parts of the globe, a phenomenon that has redefined both the message and meaning of this religion. The contributors are a distinguished roster of scholars who draw on years of experience and research to present remarkable ideas and original interpretations of the forces Christianity exerts in Africa. The essays reflect the importance of comparative historical inquiry, inter-disciplinary perspectives, Peel's contributions to the transformation of history and sociology, and the paths that a new generation of scholars must chart to comprehend the power of African Christianity. "For all interested in the processes and power relations of cultural (self)representation and (self)determination in the African context, this book is essential." -- The International Journal of African Historical Studies "The chapters are well written, persuasive and well structured. The book is a useful tool for the study of social transformation and cultural persistence in African, diaspora and cultural studies." -- Journal of African History "This is an important book for scholars of Nigeria and the Yoruba world, but also for those interested in the ongoing question of religious change in Africa and the diaspora. Indeed, some of the individual essays have the potential to become classics... This book is a fitting salute to the legacy of John Peel." -- African Studies Review "At a time when Christianity in Africa is experiencing a great leap forward, Christianity and Social Change in Africa facilitates an exploration of some of the themes more critical to this development... The book signals interesting directions for future research and should be welcomed by anyone interested in the still unfolding landscape that is Christianity in Africa." -- Pneuma

A collection of essays by some of the most prominent and influential scholars, writers and critics of the African arts and humanities, including Abiola Irele, Wole Soyinka, Tim Crib, Femi Osofisan and more. Though literary critics and theorists constitute about half of the contributors to the volume, there is a special focus on interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary perspectives. This is particularly pertinent to the wide and complex theme of the collection: Africa in the world and the world in Africa.

In September 1991, archaeologists began to turn up graves and bodies in lower Manhattan. Well-known maps had shown that this was the site of New York's first burial ground for slaves and free blacks. "Breaking Ground, Breaking Silence" uses the rediscovery of the burial grounds as a window on a fascinating side of colonial history and as an introduction to the careful science that is uncovering all of the secrets of the past.

This book demonstrates the links between emancipation and the redefinition of honour among all classes of people on the island of Pemba.

Imagining Vernacular Histories is centered on the idea of engaging with indigenous African cosmologies that signal at pluriversality. In conversation with Toyin Falola’s reading of the African pluriverse and his exploration of the idea of “ritual archives,” the contributors to this volume rethink the historical archive in search of vernacular histories. Simultaneously, they recognize the contributions from various other disciplines in pluralizing the term vernacular. The book brings together a wide range of topics, such as reflections on African historiography; the relationship between memory, history and literature; gender relations; and the construction of historical archives. While appropriating Falola’s conception of vernacular histories, the contributors collectively argue that pluriversality and ritual archives can potentially rescue African historical and creative scholarship from the sustained practices of epistemicide. Simultaneously, Imagining Vernacular Histories focuses on the emerging interdisciplinary conversations on constructing the pluriverse as well as on the geopolitics of knowledge production. Through a critical appreciation of Falola’s engagement with the ideas of postcoloniality, decolonizing epistemologies, and pluriversality, this book locates his scholarship in relation to postcolonial theory emerging from the Global South.

In this previously untold story of African American self-education, Heather Andrea Williams moves across time to examine African Americans' relationship to literacy during slavery, during the Civil War, and in the first decades of freedom. Self-Taught traces the historical antecedents to freedpeople's intense desire to become literate and demonstrates how the visions of enslaved African Americans emerged into plans and action once slavery ended. Enslaved people, Williams contends, placed great value in the practical power of literacy, whether it was to enable them to read the Bible for themselves or to keep informed of the abolition movement and later the progress of the Civil War. Some slaves devised creative and subversive means to acquire literacy, and when slavery ended, they became the first teachers of other freedpeople. Soon overwhelmed by the demands for education, they called on northern missionaries to come to their aid. Williams argues that by teaching, building schools, supporting teachers, resisting violence, and claiming education as a civil right, African Americans transformed the face of education in the South to the great benefit of both black and white southerners.