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Item “The blood remember don’t it?”: The Ethnocultural Dramatic Structure of Katori Hall’s The Blood Quilt(Continuum: The Journal of African Diaspora Drama, Theatre and Performance, 2017-02-01) Green, ArtisiaThe Yorùbá influenced Ethnocultural Dramatic Structure of Katori Hall’s The Blood Quilt is an example of the enduring philosophical permanence of African aesthetics within the tradition of Black Theatre. Within The Blood Quilt is the manifestation of a Yorùbá traditional divination system and body of orature, the Odù Ifá. Hall acknowledges exploring Yorùbá cultural expressions, yet she refutes any dramaturgical intention to locate the play within the Odù Ifá. Thus, the incarnation of verses of Ifá in the text evidences her belief that a playwright’s consciousness and her work are often phenomenologically informed. This analysis argues that recognizing, understanding, and manipulating the Ethnocultural Dramatic Structure of a play offers an approach to dramatic analysis and play production.Item Regina Taylor's Crowns: The Overflow of "Memories Cupped under the Brim"(Continuum: The Journal of African Diaspora Drama, Theatre and Performance, 2015-08-01) Green, ArtisiaIn crossing the cultural border between the North and the South, Yolanda, the main character in Regina Taylor’s Crowns, is sent on both a physical and metaphysical journey that symbolizes the ideology of the Kongo Cosmogram. South Carolina, Yolanda’s landing point and the play’s geographical context, bears multiple implications for the dramaturgy of Crowns. The land is saturated with memories of the African presence due to slave importation patterns within the coastal Sea Islands and low-country post–Civil War settlement by formerly enslaved people of West Africa and the Caribbean. As such Yorùbá aesthetics and theoretical ideas of the self are evident in the characterizations in Crowns, and Gullah culture shapes its dramatic structure. Taylor employs a dramaturgy of the “mother tongue”—the use of ideological and aesthetic elements (language, rites, “myths, rhythms, and cosmic sensibilities”) (Harrison 1974, 5) of a pre–Trans-Atlantic history—to provide continuity across the oceans and between the river of the living and the departed; to foster healing, order, and liberation in Yolanda’s state of dis-ease and chaos; and to illumine her soul (Ford 1999, 5; Marsh-Lockett and West 2013, 3)Item Dollar Diplomacy by Force: Nation-Building and Resistance in the Dominican Republic, written by Ellen D. Tillman(Brill, 2017-01-01) Turits, Richard L.Excerpt from publication: "Ellen Tillman has produced a major monograph on the U.S. military occupation of the Dominican Republic between 1916 and 1924. In it she offers a novel account of the powerful national army that the occupying forces created there. Prior to the U.S. invasion, a centralized Dominican military existed only nominally. In the eyes of many U.S. policy makers, this created vulnerabilities for U.S. capital and strategic interests. Drawing heavily on Dominican as well as U.S. archival sources, Tillman demonstrates that remedying this with an effective national army shaped by, and loyal to, the U.S. government was the occupation’s most fundamental objective and enduring consequence..."Item Who Was Albert Luthuli?(Ohio University Press, 2018-08-01) Vinson, Robert T.In an excellent addition to the Ohio Short Histories of Africa series, Robert Trent Vinson recovers the important but largely forgotten story of Albert Luthuli, Africa’s first Nobel Peace Prize winner and president of the African National Congress from 1952 to 1967. One of the most respected African leaders, Luthuli linked South African antiapartheid politics with other movements, becoming South Africa’s leading advocate of Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent civil disobedience techniques. He also framed apartheid as a crime against humanity and thus linked South African antiapartheid struggles with international human rights campaigns. Unlike previous studies, this book places Luthuli and the South African antiapartheid struggle in new global contexts, and aspects of Luthuli’s leadership that were not previously publicly known: Vinson is the first to use new archival evidence, numerous oral interviews, and personal memoirs to reveal that Luthuli privately supported sabotage as an additional strategy to end apartheid. This multifaceted portrait will be indispensable to students of African history and politics and nonviolence movements worldwide.Item Introduction to "The Americans Are Coming! Dreams of African American Liberation in Segregationist South Africa"(Ohio University Press, 2012-01-01) Vinson, Robert T.For more than half a century before World War II, black South Africans and “American Negroes”—a group that included African Americans and black West Indians—established close institutional and personal relationships that laid the necessary groundwork for the successful South African and American antiapartheid movements. Though African Americans suffered under Jim Crow racial discrimination, oppressed Africans saw African Americans as free people who had risen from slavery to success and were role models and potential liberators. Many African Americans, regarded initially by the South African government as “honorary whites” exempt from segregation, also saw their activities in South Africa as a divinely ordained mission to establish “Africa for Africans,” liberated from European empires. The Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, the largest black-led movement with two million members and supporters in forty-three countries at its height in the early 1920s, was the most anticipated source of liberation. Though these liberation prophecies went unfulfilled, black South Africans continued to view African Americans as inspirational models and as critical partners in the global antiapartheid struggle. The Americans Are Coming! is a rare case study that places African history and American history in a global context and centers Africa in African Diaspora studies.Item Providential Design: American Negroes and Garveyism in South Africa(University of North Carolina Press, 2009-09-01) Vinson, Robert T.Transcending geographic and cultural lines, From Toussaint to Tupac is an ambitious collection of essays exploring black internationalism and its implications for a black consciousness. At its core, black internationalism is a struggle against oppression, whether manifested in slavery, colonialism, or racism. The ten essays in this volume offer a comprehensive overview of the global movements that define black internationalism, from its origins in the colonial period to the present. From Toussaint to Tupac focuses on three moments in global black history: the American and Haitian revolutions, the Garvey movement and the Communist International following World War I, and the Black Power movement of the late twentieth century. Contributors demonstrate how black internationalism emerged and influenced events in particular localities, how participants in the various struggles communicated across natural and man-made boundaries, and how the black international aided resistance on the local level, creating a collective consciousness. In sharp contrast to studies that confine Black Power to particular national locales, this volume demonstrates the global reach and resonance of the movement. The volume concludes with a discussion of hip hop, including its cultural and ideological antecedents in Black Power.Item Building on the Legacy: African Americans at William & Mary: An Illustrated History of 50 Years and Beyond(William & Mary, 2019-01-01) McLendon, Jacquelyn Y.From its beginning, the success or failure of William & Mary relied on the labor of black people who worked tobacco fields in Virginia and Maryland. The history of African Americans at William & Mary is a rich, albeit complicated, history involving as it does the diverse cultures, personalities, attitudes, beliefs, and opinions that make up a heterogeneous group as a whole. It is integral to the traditional history of William & Mary, and building on the legacy of several scholars who have documented parts of the history of African Americans at William & Mary, I seek to fill in the gaps by providing a more comprehensive account of some of the challenges African Americans have faced but especially the contributions we have made and continue to make to this university. Using archival records, relevant scholarship, individual interviews, and personal experiences, I have pulled together the stories, and sometimes counter-stories, that help to portray a thorough representation of the roles African Americans have played in the development and growth of this institution. To a lesser degree, I address some of the issues and debates that continue to concern blacks in higher education at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) generally and William & Mary specifically.Item Historical Perspectives of the African Burial Ground New York Blacks and the Diaspora(Howard University Press: in association with the General Services Administration, 2009-01-01) Medford, Edna G.The unearthing of the colonial cemetery known historically as the “Negroes Burying Ground” in Lower Manhattan in 1991 has given both scholars and the general public the opportunity to study and comprehend the broad dimensions of the African American experience. The African Burial Ground and the human remains contained within it provide a unique vantage point from which to view New York City’s Africans and their descendants over two centuries. As the final resting place for thousands of enslaved and free black people who lived and labored in the city from roughly 1627 until the end of the eighteenth century, the cemetery offers insight into physical stressors, ethnic identity, cultural continuities, and assimilation. Each burial in and of itself tells an individual story. When considered collectively, however, in combination with archival evidence, these burials enable us to reconstruct a forgotten community and reveal the centrality of a marginalized people.Item The Archaeology of the New York African Burial Ground (Pt. 3): Appendices(Howard University Press: in association with the General Services Administration, 2009-01-01) Perry, Warren R.; Howson, Jean; Bianco, Barbara A.Item The Archaeology of the New York African Burial Ground (Pt. 2): Descriptions of Burials(Howard University Press: in association with the General Services Administration, 2009-01-01) Perry, Warren R.; Howson, Jean; Bianco, Barbara A.Item The Archaeology of the New York African Burial Ground (Pt. 1)(Howard University Press: in association with the General Services Administration, 2009-01-01) Perry, Warren R.; Howson, Jean; Bianco, Barbara A.This volume is one of three disciplinary volumes on the New York African Burial Ground Project. One volume focuses on the skeletal biological analysis of the remains recovered from the site (see Volume 1 of this series, Skeletal Biology of the New York African Burial Ground [Blakey and Rankin-Hill 2009a]). Another focuses on the documentary history, from a diasporic perspective, of Africans who lived and died in early New York (see Volume 3 of this series, Historical Perspectives of the African Burial Ground: New York Blacks and the Diaspora [Medford 2009]). The present volume, consisting of three parts, presents the archaeological research on the New York African Burial Ground. General background on the New York African Burial Ground project is presented in the beginning of the skeletal biology component volume (Blakey and Rankin-Hill 2009a). Here we provide background information that is specifically relevant to the excavated site, the archaeological fieldwork undertaken in 1991–1992 (its planning, personnel, extent, duration, termination, etc.), and the analysis and disposition of nonskeletal material from the excavation.Item The Skeletal Biology of the New York African Burial Ground (Pt. 1)(Howard University Press: in association with the General Services Administration, 2009-01-01) Blakey, Michael L.; Rankin-Hill, Lesley M.The New York African Burial Ground was “rediscovered” in 1989 in the process of preparation for the construction of a proposed 34-story federal office building by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) at 290 Broadway in New York City (Ingle et al. 1990). The site for the proposed building was once part of the African Burial Ground that extended “from Chambers Street on the south to Duane Street on the north and from Centre Street on the east to Broadway on the west” (Yamin 2000:vii). A fullscale archaeological excavation was conducted by Historic Conservation and Interpretation (HCI) and John Milner Associates, Inc. (JMA), preceding the building project, as required under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (NHPA) (as amended) in order to mitigate the destruction of potential cultural resources (Figure 1). The excavation and construction site on the African Burial Ground is located at Foley Square, in the city block bounded by Broadway, Duane, Reade, and Elk Streets in Lower Manhattan, one block north of City Hall.Item Historical Overview of Africans and African Americans in Yorktown, at the Moore House, and on Battlefield Property, 1635-1867 Colonial National Historical Park (Vol. 2)(National Park Services / Eastern National, 2012-01-01) Richter, Julie; Allen, Jody L.The situation for African Americans in Yorktown did not improve much during the antebellum period. The possibility of being willed, sold, or mortgaged by a slaveholder remained. William Vail is one example. Vail had over thirty slaves and mongaged some or all of them at some point. When Vail died in 1834, he owned several lots in Yorktown but gave permission in his will to sell Ambrose, Caesar, Lucy, Bob, and Tom Bailey, if necessary to pay his debts. He left his wife, Louisa, William, Alfred, Molly, Carlia, Charlotte, Alice and her three children, as well as his "man Tom," his "old woman Sue," and the future increase of the female slaves.20 The fate of Vail's slaves is not clear. Again, control of the black population, whether enslaved or free, remained the goal for whites. Free blacks were required to register their presence at the county courthouse. From a twenty first century perspective, this law appears intrusive, but in the nineteenth century, it was also a way for free blacks to protect themselves if their status ever came into question. York County's registry of free blacks provides an interesting picture of blacks in this period. The registry provided names, physical descriptions, the name of the person who freed the individual, unless born free, and often the surname of the former slave.Item Historical Overview of Africans and African Americans in Yorktown, at the Moore House, and on Battlefield Property, 1635-1867 Colonial National Historical Park (Vol. 1)(National Park Services / Eastern National, 2012-01-01) Richter, Julie; Allen, Jody L.The following report focuses on the lives and experiences of Africans and African Americans who lived and worked in Yorktown, at the Moore House, and on Battlefield Property between 1635 and 1867. The goal of this study is to highlight the role that Africans and African Americans played in Yorktown and the surrounding rural area. A wide variety of primary documents contain details about the enslaved men, women, and children who labored in the homes of Yorktown's elite residents, worked in the shops of the town's skilled artisans, and tended fields on nearby plantations. In addition, Yorktown was home to free people of color who worked to support their families and to maintain their freedom. Details about the black residents - enslaved and free - of Yorktown, the Moore House, and portions of the Battlefield is essential information that will be included in future exhibits at the Colonial National Historical Park, waysides located throughout the park, and in interpretive programming offered to visitors to Yorktown. Knowledge about the variety of experiences of the Africans and African Americans in near Yorktown ill help the staff of the Colonial National Historical Park to enhance the experience of their visitors and to add complexity to the information that they provide about the history of Yorktown and its peoples.