In 1947 John Hope Franklin, then a professor of history at North Carolina College for Negroes, wrote From Slavery to Freedom. Now in its eighth edition, that book, which redefined our understanding of American history, remains the preeminent record of the African American experience. With it and a dozen other books, Franklin has been established as the intellectual father of black studies. Tributes to John Hope Franklin focuses on this esteemed scholar's academic achievements, his humanitarian contributions, and his extraordinary legacy. This collection of comments by Franklin's students, colleagues, family, and friends captures the man and his work for future generations. Tributes offered by Franklin's admirers, Walter B. Hill Jr., David Levering Lewis, Alfred A. Moss Jr., Darlene Clark Hine, Loren Schweninger, Daryl Michael Scott, George M. Fredrickson, Mary Frances Berry, and many others, attest to Franklin's commitment to his intellectual pursuits, to public service, and, most important, to his students. Franklin's dedication to mentoring those who sought his help, as well as providing for his family, is beyond compare. In one essay, John W. Franklin offers an inside view of growing up with John Hope and Aurelia Franklin, detailing the travels and associations that were a part of his experience as their son. Alfred Moss, coauthor of the last three editions of From Slavery to Freedom, shares special images of Franklin as mentor to a young Anglican priest. Genna Rae McNeil shows us the quintessential teacher through the eyes of a passionate young scholar beginning her own voyage into the study of American history. George Fredrickson takes on the challenge of explaining the complexity of the work of this man who has been both a fervent proponent of racial equality and a practitioner of "detached, objective, dispassionate historical scholarship." Each of the pieces-by men and by women, by blacks and by whites, by several generations of participants in the twentieth century's journey toward a better America-recalls for us what a vital role John Hope Franklin has played in that voyage. Tributes to John Hope Franklin is a joy to read and an incredible opportunity to celebrate a life and a body of historical work dedicated to achieving and sharing the wisdom that scholarly excellence provides.

In Vibrant Matter the political theorist Jane Bennett, renowned for her work on nature, ethics, and affect, shifts her focus from the human experience of things to things themselves. Bennett argues that political theory needs to do a better job of recognizing the active participation of nonhuman forces in events. Toward that end, she theorizes a “vital materiality” that runs through and across bodies, both human and nonhuman. Bennett explores how political analyses of public events might change were we to acknowledge that agency always emerges as the effect of ad hoc configurations of human and nonhuman forces. She suggests that recognizing that agency is distributed this way, and is not solely the province of humans, might spur the cultivation of a more responsible, ecologically sound politics: a politics less devoted to blaming and condemning individuals than to discerning the web of forces affecting situations and events. Bennett examines the political and theoretical implications of vital materialism through extended discussions of commonplace things and physical phenomena including stem cells, fish oils, electricity, metal, and trash. She reflects on the vital power of material formations such as landfills, which generate lively streams of chemicals, and omega-3 fatty acids, which can transform brain chemistry and mood. Along the way, she engages with the concepts and claims of Spinoza, Nietzsche, Thoreau, Darwin, Adorno, and Deleuze, disclosing a long history of thinking about vibrant matter in Western philosophy, including attempts by Kant, Bergson, and the embryologist Hans Driesch to name the “vital force” inherent in material forms. Bennett concludes by sketching the contours of a “green materialist” ecophilosophy.

As African American women left the plantation economy behind, many entered domestic service in southern cities and towns. Cooking was one of the primary jobs they performed, feeding generations of white families and, in the process, profoundly shaping southern foodways and culture. Rebecca Sharpless argues that, in the face of discrimination, long workdays, and low wages, African American cooks worked to assert measures of control over their own lives. As employment opportunities expanded in the twentieth century, most African American women chose to leave cooking for more lucrative and less oppressive manufacturing, clerical, or professional positions. Through letters, autobiography, and oral history, Sharpless evokes African American women's voices from slavery to the open economy, examining their lives at work and at home.

John Hope Franklin lived through America's most defining twentieth-century transformation, the dismantling of legally protected racial segregation. A renowned scholar, he has explored that transformation in its myriad aspects, notably in his 3.5-million-copy bestseller, From Slavery to Freedom. Born in 1915, he, like every other African American, could not help but participate: he was evicted from whites-only train cars, confined to segregated schools, threatened—once with lynching—and consistently subjected to racism's denigration of his humanity. Yet he managed to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard; become the first black historian to assume a full professorship at a white institution, Brooklyn College; and be appointed chair of the University of Chicago's history department and, later, John B. Duke Professor at Duke University. He has reshaped the way African American history is understood and taught and become one of the world's most celebrated historians, garnering over 130 honorary degrees. But Franklin's participation was much more fundamental than that. From his effort in 1934 to hand President Franklin Roosevelt a petition calling for action in response to the Cordie Cheek lynching, to his 1997 appointment by President Clinton to head the President's Initiative on Race, and continuing to the present, Franklin has influenced with determination and dignity the nation's racial conscience. Whether aiding Thurgood Marshall's preparation for arguing Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, marching to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965, or testifying against Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987, Franklin has pushed the national conversation on race toward humanity and equality, a life long effort that earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in 1995. Intimate, at times revelatory, Mirror to America chronicles Franklin's life and this nation's racial transformation in the twentieth century, and is a powerful reminder of the extent to which the problem of America remains the problem of color.

For the 380,000 African American soldiers who fought in World War I, Woodrow Wilson's charge to make the world "safe for democracy" carried life-or-death meaning. Chad L. Williams reveals the central role of African American soldiers in the global conflict and how they, along with race activists and ordinary citizens, committed to fighting for democracy at home and beyond. Using a diverse range of sources, Torchbearers of Democracy reclaims the legacy of African American soldiers and veterans and connects their history to issues such as the obligations of citizenship, combat and labor, diaspora and internationalism, homecoming and racial violence, "New Negro" militancy, and African American memories of the war.

Scholarship on African American history has changed dramatically since the publication of George Washington Williams’ pioneering A History of the Negro Race in America in 1882. Organized chronologically and thematically, What is African American History? offers a concise and compelling introduction to the field of African American history as well as the black historical enterpriseÑpast, present, and future. Pero Gaglo Dagbovie discusses many of the discipline’s important turning points, subspecialties, defining characteristics, debates, texts, and scholars. The author explores the growth and maturation of scholarship on African American history from late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries until the field achieved significant recognition from the ‘mainstream’ U.S. historical profession in the 1970s. Subsequent decades witnessed the emergence and development of key theoretical approaches, controversies, and dynamic areas of concentration in black history, the vibrant field of black women’s history, the intriguing relationship between African American history and Black Studies, and the imaginable future directions of African American history in the twenty-first century. What is African American History? will be a practical introduction for all students of African American history and Black Studies.

DIVCritical biography of Sessue Hayakawa, a Japanese actor who became a popular silent film star in the U.S., that looks at how Hollywood treated issues of race and nationality in the early twentieth century./div

LaWanda Cox is widely regarded as one of the most influential historians of Reconstruction and nineteenth-century race relations. Imaginative in conception, forcefully argued, and elegantly written, her work helped reshape historians' understanding of the age of emancipation. Freedom, Racism, and Reconstruction brings together Cox's most important writings spanning more than forty years, including previously published essays, excerpts from her books, and an unpublished essay. Now retired from Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Cox gave Donald G. Nieman her full cooperation on this project. The result is a cohesive book of refreshing and sophisticated analysis that illuminates a pivotal era in American history. It not only serves as a lasting testament to a highly original scholar but also makes available to readers a remarkable body of scholarship that remains required reading for anyone who wishes to understand the age of emancipation and the historian's craft.

Journalist, activist, popular historian, and public intellectual, Lerone Bennett Jr. left an indelible mark on twentieth-century American history and culture. Rooted in his role as senior editor of Ebony magazine, but stretching far beyond the boundaries of the Johnson Publishing headquarters in Chicago, Bennett’s work and activism positioned him as a prominent advocate for Black America and a scholar whose writing reached an unparalleled number of African American readers. This critical biography—the first in-depth study of Bennett’s life—travels with him from his childhood experiences in Jim Crow Mississippi and his time at Morehouse College in Atlanta to his later participation in a dizzying range of Black intellectual and activist endeavors. Drawing extensively on Bennett’s previously inaccessible archival collections at Emory University and Chicago State, as well as interviews with close relatives, colleagues, and confidantes, Our Kind of Historian celebrates his enormous influence within and unique connection to African American communities across more than half a century of struggle.

The Congressional Record is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress. It is published daily when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record began publication in 1873. Debates for sessions prior to 1873 are recorded in The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States (1789-1824), the Register of Debates in Congress (1824-1837), and the Congressional Globe (1833-1873)