Books by "John Wesley Cromwell"
6 books found
Writing, publishing, and marketing five politically engaged novels that appeared between 1899 and 1908, Sutton E. Griggs (1872-1933) was among the most prolific African American authors at the turn of the twentieth century. In contrast to his Northern contemporaries Paul Laurence Dunbar and Charles Chesnutt, Griggs, as W. E. B. Du Bois remarked, "spoke primarily to the Negro race," using his own Nashville-based publishing company to produce four of his novels. Griggs pastored Baptist churches in three Southern states and played a leading role in the influential but understudied National Baptist Convention. Until recently, little was known about the personal and professional life of this religious and community leader. Thus, critics could only contextualize his literary texts to a limited degree and were forced to speculate about how he published them. This literary biography, the first written about the author, draws extensively on primary sources and late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century periodicals, local and national, African American and white. A very different Sutton Griggs emerges from these materials--a dynamic figure who devoted himself to literature for a longer period and to a more profound extent than has ever been previously imagined but also someone who frequently found himself embroiled in controversy because of what he said in his writings and the means he used to publish them. The book challenges currently held notions about the audience for, and the content, production, and dissemination of politically engaged US black fiction, altering the perception of the African American literature and print culture of the period.
"Emancipation is the first truly comprehensive reference book covering the first one hundred years of African Americans in the legal profession. Other legal historians and biographers must take Smith's work as a starting point for gauging the impact Black lawyers and institutions have had upon the evolution of the American legal profession."--Black Issues in Higher Education. "The sheer quantity of information contained in Emancipation is overwhelming; the impact of page after page of data, stories and lives, and the thousands of detailed, extensive footnotes and documentation is simply overpowering. It is a monumental achievement."--Southern University Law Review. "A remarkable piece of scholarship. . . . Emancipation contains a wealth of information previously unknown even to those who consider themselves well-informed about African-American history. . . . It will, I am sure, serve as the definitive authority on the history of black lawyers for years to come."--St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "Emancipation is an important and impressive work; one cannot read it without being inspired by the legal acumen, creativity, and resiliency these pioneer lawyers displayed. . . . It should be read by everyone interested in understanding the road African-Americans have traveled and the challenges that lie ahead."--From the Foreword by Justice Thurgood Marshall. J. Clay Smith, Jr., is Professor of Law and formerly Dean at the Howard University School of Law. He has served as President of the Washington Bar Association and as National President of the Federal Bar Association. He was appointed U.S. Commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by President Jimmy Carter and later served as Acting Chairman under President Ronald Reagan. He is the author of Rebels in Law: Voices in History of Black Women Lawyers.
These essays introduce the complexities of researching and analyzing race. This book focuses on problems confronted while researching, writing and interpreting race and slavery, such as conflict between ideological perspectives, and changing interpretations of the questions.
Justice for Ourselves
by John G. Deal, Marienne E. Julienne, Brent Tarter
2024 · University of Virginia Press
A new look at the Black Virginians who defined and realized their freedom after the collapse of slavery “Verily, the work does not end with the abolition of slavery,” wrote Frederick Douglass in 1862, “but only begins.” The Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment altered a legal status; to make freedom a reality represented a different challenge altogether. Justice for Ourselves tells the stories of remarkable Black men and women in post–Civil War Virginia who persevered in the face of overwhelming barriers to seek their freedom and create a new world for themselves and future generations. Drawing on the life stories of individuals from all regions of the state—political leaders, teachers, ministers, journalists, and entrepreneurs—Justice for Ourselves recounts their quests to attain full American citizenship and economic independence before the onset of Jim Crow repression. Centering Black voices, this book includes tales of opportunities seized and opportunities lost and will reshape the narrative of Black history and the history of Virginia in the second half of the nineteenth century.