Union County Black Americans

"Union County Black Americans is a first-time glimpse into the struggles and triumphs of local Blacks from the first days of English rule to contemporary times. Using a wide array of images and concisely written original text, the book juxtaposes Black historical figures, events, and places with mainstream recordings of local, state, and national history.

A 2018 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title New scholarship provides insights into the archaeology and cultural history of African American life from a collection of sites in the Mid-Atlantic This groundbreaking volume explores the archaeology of African American life and cultures in the Upper Mid-Atlantic region, using sites dating from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. Sites in Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York are all examined, highlighting the potential for historical archaeology to illuminate the often overlooked contributions and experiences of the region’s free and enslaved African American settlers. Archaeologies of African American Life in the Upper Mid-Atlantic brings together cutting-edge scholarship from both emerging and established scholars. Analyzing the research through sophisticated theoretical lenses and employing up-to-date methodologies, the essays reveal the diverse ways in which African Americans reacted to and resisted the challenges posed by life in a borderland between the North and South through the transition from slavery to freedom. In addition to extensive archival research, contributors synthesize the material finds of archaeological work in slave quarter sites, tenant farms, communities, and graveyards. Editors Michael J. Gall and Richard F. Veit have gathered new and nuanced perspectives on the important role free and enslaved African Americans played in the region’s cultural history. This collection provides scholars of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions, African American studies, material culture studies, religious studies, slavery, the African diaspora, and historical archaeologists with a well-balanced array of rural archaeological sites that represent cultural traditions and developments among African Americans in the region. Collectively, these sites illustrate African Americans’ formation of fluid cultural and racial identities, communities, religious traditions, and modes of navigating complex cultural landscapes in the region under harsh and disenfranchising circumstances.

The culmination of years of research in dozens of archives and libraries, this fascinating encyclopedia provides an unprecedented look at the network known as the Underground Railroad - that mysterious "system" of individuals and organizations that helped slaves escape the American South to freedom during the years before the Civil War. In operation as early as the 1500s and reaching its peak with the abolitionist movement of the antebellum period, the Underground Railroad saved countless lives and helped alter the course of American history. This is the most complete reference on the Underground Railroad ever published. It includes full coverage of the Railroad in both the United States and Canada, which was the ultimate destination of many of the escaping slaves. "The Underground Railroad: An Encyclopedia of People, Places, and Operations" explores the people, places, writings, laws, and organizations that made this network possible. More than 1,500 entries detail the families and personalities involved in the operation, and sidebars extract primary source materials for longer entries. This encyclopedia features extensive supporting materials, including maps with actual Underground Railroad escape routes, photos, a chronology, genealogies of those involved in the operation, a listing of Underground Railroad operatives by state or Canadian province, a "passenger" list of escaping slaves, and primary and secondary source bibliographies.

Overview of the Revolution in New Jersey Chronology -- Patriots Part I: The Adamant and Determined -- Patriots Part II: In the Maelstrom -- Straddlers, Trimmers, and Opportunists -- The Society of Friends (Called Quakers): Pacifists and Participants -- Loyalists Part I: The Irreconcilables -- Loyalists Part II: Remained or Returned.

A “gripping, sensitive” biography of the trailblazing singer who carved a path for African American artists including Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson (The Atlanta Voice). Performing in a country rife with racism and segregation, the tenor Roland Hayes was the first African American man to reach international fame as a concert performer. He became one of the few artists in the world who could sell out Town Hall, Carnegie Hall, Symphony Hall, and Covent Garden. Performing the African American spirituals he was raised on, his voice was marked with a unique sonority which easily navigated French, German, and Italian art songs. A multiculturalist both on and off the stage, he counted among his friends George Washington Carver, Eleanor Roosevelt, Ezra Pound, Pearl Buck, Dwight Eisenhower, and Langston Hughes. This “substantial and well-documented” biography spans the history of Hayes’s life and career and the legacy he left behind as a musician and a champion of African American rights (BBC Music Magazine). It is an authentic, panoramic portrait of a man who was as complex as the music he performed. “Like many generations of celebrated African American concert artists, I am an inheritor of the legacy left by the great Roland Hayes. Yet, we hardly know his name today. With this long overdue book, the oversight is now remedied.” —Lawrence Brownlee, Metropolitan Opera “A wonderful journey through Hayes’ performances, racial plight and acceptance.” —Examiner.com

Untold thousands of black North Carolinians suffered or died during the Jim Crow era because they were denied admittance to white-only hospitals. With little money, scant opportunities for professional education and few white allies, African American physicians, nurses and other community leaders created their own hospitals, schools of nursing and public health outreach efforts. The author chronicles the important but largely unknown histories of more than 35 hospitals, the Leonard Medical School and 11 hospital-based schools of nursing established in North Carolina, and recounts the decades-long struggle for equal access to care and equal opportunities for African American health care professionals.

This is a selection of writings on themes of trauma and transformation, hope and anguish, in a time of reckoning. The first section offers biographical fragments about life after the "bulldozer" runs you over. How do you get up? How do you live with others who don't understand? How do you keep walking? They draw upon life experiences in Boston, Iona, and New Jersey. Faith is not so much about agreeing with doctrine, but a dynamic, active, seeking, questioning, trust in God. It includes both audacity and humility. The second section draws upon fragments of historical reflection, "On Violent Innocence, Mourning, and Metanoia in New Jersey." This is an exploration of the principality of white racism, state-based violence, and exploitation of the poor. It asks the question: How did the Confederate flag get in the front window of the Presbyterian church on Lincoln's birthday? Some of the white terrorism that happened at the Capitol is prefigured here. Yet there is grace hidden in judgment. We cannot heal from what we do not name. The third section contains fragments of prophetic wisdom from Lorna Goodison, Richard Fenn, Mike Gecan, Karen Hernandez-Granzen, and Archange Antoine. Along with Traci West and Chris Hedges, their voices are strong and true.

This book is about the true history of black Americans, which started about the seventeenth century with indentured servitude in British America and progressed on to the election of Barack Obama as the forty-fourth president of the United States. Between those landmarks were other events and issues, both resolved and ongoing, that were faced by black Americans. Some of these were slavery, reconstruction, development of the black community, participation in the great military conflicts of the United States, racial segregation, and the civil rights movement. Black Americans make up the single largest minority in the United States, the second-largest group after whites in the United States. The Great Migrations, Underground Railroad and Abolitionist, Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Movement, and Women in Black-American History.

This book is the chronological history of one of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sororitys graduate chapters, Phi Eta Omega of Scotch Plains, New Jersey, from its chartering in 1999 through 2013. Ten inactive members (sorors) of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., rekindling a desire to be of service to others, assembled at a sorors home in Plainfield, New Jersey, in the early winter of 1998. Soon this small group grew to fourteen and, ultimately, to seventeen women. These seventeen inactive sorors became an official interest group of the sorority later that year. With the mission to promote harmony and friendship among members, to develop and implement programs to enhance the self-esteem of youth, and to assist others wherever needed in their communities, these women, full of energy and enthusiasm, ventured into unknown waters. Becoming the first Greek letter organization to affiliate with the New Jersey Orators, the Scotch Plains/Union County Interest Group helped foster the development of confidence and public speaking skills in youth ages seven to seventeen. TAG, a weekly tutorial program, was also established. Since its chartering on June 6, 1999, Phi Eta Omega Chapter continues to institute and participate in other altruistic programs: the Angel Network; collection of coats and other winter clothing during local coat drives; donation of suits for Dress Barns Dress for Success; financial support to two Kenyan students in Africa; donation of duffel bags filled with pajamas, clothing, books, and other sundries to Union County Division of Child Protection and Permanency; and the replacement of the headstone of Caesar, a Revolutionary Warfreed slave, at Scotch Plains Baptist Church in Scotch Plains, New Jersey.

This book tells the remarkable story of Robert F. Williams--one of the most influential black activists of the generation that toppled Jim Crow and forever altered the arc of American history. In the late 1950s, as president of the Monroe, North Carolina, branch of the NAACP, Williams and his followers used machine guns, dynamite, and Molotov cocktails to confront Klan terrorists. Advocating "armed self-reliance" by blacks, Williams challenged not only white supremacists but also Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights establishment. Forced to flee during the 1960s to Cuba--where he broadcast "Radio Free Dixie," a program of black politics and music that could be heard as far away as Los Angeles and New York City--and then China, Williams remained a controversial figure for the rest of his life. Historians have customarily portrayed the civil rights movement as a nonviolent call on America's conscience--and the subsequent rise of Black Power as a violent repudiation of the civil rights dream. But Radio Free Dixie reveals that both movements grew out of the same soil, confronted the same predicaments, and reflected the same quest for African American freedom. As Robert Williams's story demonstrates, independent black political action, black cultural pride, and armed self-reliance operated in the South in tension and in tandem with legal efforts and nonviolent protest.

Folder contains an article regarding African American in Union County, Indiana. The article discusses "black laws" and a petition to abolish them.

Preceded by three introductory essays and a chronology of major events in black religious history from 1618 to 1991, this A-Z encyclopedia includes three types of entries: * Biographical sketches of 773 African American religious leaders * 341 entries on African American denominations and religious organizations (including white churches with significant black memberships and educational institutions) * Topical articles on important aspects of African American religious life (e.g., African American Christians during the Colonial Era, Music in the African American Church)

After four centuries of bondage, the nineteenth century marked the long-awaited release of millions of black slaves. Subsequently, these former slaves attempted to reconstruct the basis of American democracy. W. E. B. Du Bois, one of the greatest intellectual leaders in United States history, evaluates the twenty years of fateful history that followed the Civil War, with special reference to the efforts and experiences of African Americans. Du Bois's words best indicate the broader parameters of his work: "the attitude of any person toward this book will be distinctly influenced by his theories of the Negro race. If he believes that the Negro in America and in general is an average and ordinary human being, who under given environment develops like other human beings, then he will read this story and judge it by the facts adduced." The plight of the white working class throughout the world is directly traceable to American slavery, on which modern commerce and industry was founded, Du Bois argues. Moreover, the resulting color caste was adopted, forwarded, and approved by white labor, and resulted in the subordination of colored labor throughout the world. As a result, the majority of the world's laborers became part of a system of industry that destroyed democracy and led to World War I and the Great Depression. This book tells that story.

W. E. B. Du Bois was a public intellectual, sociologist, and activist on behalf of the African American community. He profoundly shaped black political culture in the United States through his founding role in the NAACP, as well as internationally through the Pan-African movement. Du Bois's sociological and historical research on African-American communities and culture broke ground in many areas, including the history of the post-Civil War Reconstruction period. Du Bois was also a prolific author of novels, autobiographical accounts, innumerable editorials and journalistic pieces, and several works of history. Black Reconstruction in America tells and interprets the story of the twenty years of Reconstruction from the point of view of newly liberated African Americans. Though lambasted by critics at the time of its publication in 1935, Black Reconstruction has only grown in historical and literary importance. In the 1960s it joined the canon of the most influential revisionist historical works. Its greatest achievement is weaving a credible, lyrical historical narrative of the hostile and politically fraught years of 1860-1880 with a powerful critical analysis of the harmful effects of democracy, including Jim Crow laws and other injustices. With a series introduction by editor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and an introduction by David Levering Lewis, this edition is essential for anyone interested in African American history.