African Americans in the Furniture City: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Grand Rapids

African Americans in the Furniture City: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Grand Rapids
ISBN-10
0252073479
ISBN-13
9780252073472
Category
African Americans
Pages
217
Language
English
Published
2006
Publisher
University of Illinois Press
Author
Randal Maurice Jelks

Description

African Americans in the Furniture City is unique not only in terms of its subject, but also for its framing of the African American struggle for survival, civil rights, and community inside a discussion of the larger white community. Examining the African-American community of Grand Rapids, Michigan between 1850 and 1954, Randal Maurice Jelks uncovers the ways in which its members faced urbanization, responded to structural racism, developed in terms of occupations, and shaped their communal identities. Focusing on the intersection of African Americans' nineteenth-century cultural values and the changing social and political conditions in the first half of the twentieth century, Jelks pays particularly close attention to the religious community's influence during their struggle toward a respectable social identity and fair treatment under the law. He explores how these competing values defined the community's politics as it struggled to expand its freedoms and change its status as a subjugated racial minority.

Similar books

  • Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
    By R. Thomas Cobourn

    Recounts the life and career of the Los Angeles Lakers star, and describes his encounters with racism and his conversion to Islam The aim of the game is to get the ball and put it in the basket, and no one has ever been more successful at ...

  • Black History Makers: A Sampling of Great Men and Women from the Past and Present
    By C. Cabell Carter, Karen Bryant

    Each person pulled from history and presented in this book had unique circumstance to bring forth their contribution and role in history as well as social conditions relating to the times.

  • Spies!: David Mortimore Baxter Cracks the Case
    By Karen Tayleur

    After David receives a new game called Spy Moves he never expects to be asked to solve a realy mystery.

  • African American Heritage in the Upper Housatonic Valley: A Project of the Upper Housatonic Valley Heritage Area
    By DAVID LEVINSON, Rachel Fletcher, Frances Jones-Sneed

    African American Heritage in the Upper Housatonic Valley: A Project of the Upper Housatonic Valley Heritage Area

  • Martin Luther King, Jr.: Civil Rights Hero
    By Anna Claybourne

    Civil Rights Hero Anna Claybourne. Further Information Martin Luther King , Jr. Civil Rights Hero he gave. Glossary artery ( AR - tuh - ree ) A large blood vessel . assassin ( uh - SASS - in ) A killer who murders a famous person ...

  • Al on America
    By Al Sharpton

    We go into the booth and cast our vote for who we think will win , instead of the candidate that best fits our needs . People don't go into the voting booth and look at the candidates and say , “ I agree with this one , ” or “ I share ...

  • Hattiesburg: An American City in Black and White
    By William Sturkey

    American Biography, 45–47, graduation date and financial statistics on 46; Genealogical and Family History of the Wyoming and Lackawanna Valleys, 181–183; William Richard Cutter, ed., New England Families. Genealogical and Memorial (New ...

  • Make Haste Slowly: Moderates, Conservatives, and School Desegregation in Houston
    By William Henry Kellar

    Rupert N. Richardson, Wallace, and Adrian Anderson, Texas: Lone ... Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992), 156-57; Barr, Black Texans, 84-85,136-37; Brophy, ...

  • The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader
    By Imamu Amiri Baraka, William J. Harris

    The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader includes poems from Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, The Dead Lecturer, Black Magic, Hard Facts, It's Nation Time, & Poetry for the Advanced; the plays Dutchman, Great Goodness of Life, & What Was ...

  • Step by Step to the Top: The Saga of a President of a Historically Black University
    By William Percy Hytche

    Autobiography by William P. Hytche, who from 1976 to 1997 was chief executive officer/chancellor then president of University of Maryland Eastern Shore.