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Colin Grant is the son of Jamaican parents who moved to Britain in the late 1950s. He spent 5 years studying medicine before turning to the stage. He has written and produced numerous plays and is currently a producer for BBC Radio. In his new book, Negro with a a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey Grant looks at one of the most controversial figures in African-American history. Both worshiped and despised, Garvey led an extraordinary life as the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association which had branches in more than 40 countries. In honor of W. E. B. Du Bois’s birthday, which is tomorrow, Grant has taken a closer look at the relationship between Du Bois and Garvey.

A great excitement swirled around the garden reception for W.E.B Du Bois in the grounds of the royal governor of Jamaica’s official residence. On 3 May 1915, the island’s representative men assembled to honor the Harvard-educated African American, feted by the local papers as a scholar who certainly ‘belonged to the aristocracy of intellect in America’. A stocky dark-skinned black man was one of the last in line to extend a proud hand of welcome. Du Bois later recalled his ‘remarkable intensity’ but other than that, little impression was made on him by the man who was destined, over the next decade, to become his nemesis: Marcus Garvey. (more…)

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After a decade of work, on February 4th Oxford University Press and the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute will publish the African American National Biography(AANB). The AANB is the largest repository of black life stories ever assembled with more than 4,000 biographies. To celebrate this monumental achievement we have invited the contributors to this 8 volume set to share some of their knowledge with the OUPBlog. Over the next couple of months we will have the honor of sharing their thoughts, reflections and opinions with you.

To kick things off we have AANB contributor Dr. Marybeth Gasman, an Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Gasman’s has published several books, including Charles S. Johnson: Leadership beyond the Veil in the Age of Jim Crow, Supporting Alma Mater: Successful Strategies for Securing Funds from Black College Alumni, and Uplifting a People: African American Philanthropy and Education. In addition to these works, Dr. Gasman recently finished a book entitled Envisioning Black Colleges: A History of the United Negro College Fund (Johns Hopkins University Press). Recently Dr. Gasman was awarded the Promising Scholar/Early Career Award by the Association for the Study of Higher Education for her body of scholarship.  In the article below Gasman looks at criticism of Historically Black Colleges.

Public discussions of Black colleges’ troubles are often distorted by the tendency to attribute one institution’s shortcomings to the entire group. Furthermore, I have noticed that critics often base their critique on anecdote rather than evidence. As someone who works with and studies Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) on a daily basis, I find this practice to be deeply troubling. Let me offer a few examples. (more…)

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Colin Grant is the son of Jamaican parents who moved to Britain in the late 1950s. He spent 5 years studying medicine before turning to the stage. He has written and produced numerous plays and is currently a producer for BBC Radio. In his new book, Negro with a a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey Grant looks at one of the most controversial figures in African-American history. Both worshiped and despised, Garvey led an extraordinary life as the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association which had branches in more than 40 countries. In the article below Grant looks at Garvey through a modern lens, comparing him to Barack Obama.

During an outbreak of the unique American pastime of lynching in the 1920s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People sent for its secret weapon: Walter White. The NAACP operative was so fair-skinned that he could travel to the South incognito, infiltrate the lynch mobs and investigate their actions without fear of molestation or loss of life. Nonetheless, this unenviable task exacted a psychological toll on his delicate mind. In his later years, White would recall how petrified he was of being uncovered by hateful, bigoted Southerners who had refined their own pseudo-scientific tests for unmasking blacks ‘passing’ for whites. Caught in conversation with one such man, White was bid to hold out his hands so that his finger nails might be examined: ‘Now if you had nigger blood,’ said the smiling Southerner, ‘it would show here on your half-moons.’ Walter White survived the inquisition; his cuticles did not betray him.

In some regards, Barack Obama has pulled off a similar coup. (more…)

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Unfortunately for many, Martin Luther King Jr. Day is simply a day off. This day off though, celebrates one of the most important men in American history, and we thought we would take a moment on the OUPblog to recognize his achievements. In the post below we have excerpted President Lyndon B. Johnson speech which announced the death of MLK Jr. to the American public, from our online resource the African American Studies Center.

Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, my fellow Americans:

Once again, the heart of America is heavy—the spirit of America weeps—for a tragedy that denies the very meaning of our land.

The life of a man who symbolized the freedom and faith of America has been taken. But it is the fiber and the fabric of the Republic that is being tested. (more…)

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Michael J. Klarman, won the Bancroft Prize in 2005 for From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality. Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement, is an abridged, paperback edition of his original masterpiece, which focuses around one major case, Brown v. Board of Education. In the original essay below Klarman, who is the James Monroe Professor of Law and Professor of History at the University of Virginia, explores political backlash.

While we ordinarily think of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) as contributing to the creation of the modern civil rights movement, Brown’s more immediate effect was to crystallize the resistance of southern whites to progressive racial change, radicalize southern politics, and create a climate ripe for violence. Indeed, prominent Court decisions interpreting the U.S. Constitution have often produced political backlashes that undermine the causes that the rulings seem to promote. (more…)

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