What's New in the Oxford African American Studies Center
What's New: February 2012
For the February 2012 update, the editors of the Oxford African American Studies Center have added 25 new primary source documents with accompanying commentary detailing women's lives during the era of slavery and the following civil rights movement. Several of these documents deal with the problem of violence against women during Reconstruction, including the "Testimony of Harriet Hernandez before the Joint Congressional Committee on the Ku Klux Klan (1871)". Also included, are several important speeches—such as the "Speech Delivered by Lorraine Hansberry at The Association of Artists for Freedom Town Hall (1964)"—as well as several slavery era statutes regarding the condition of female slaves, including "Landon Carter Discusses Medical Treatment of His Slave, Winney (1758)". Please see below for the full list of newly added primary source documents.
This update also includes 101 new online-only biographies from the African American National Biography project. Among the new biographies is a Tuskegee Airman and the first black police officer in Hartford, Connecticut, Lemuel Rodney Custis; John Africa, the founder of the MOVE organization as well as MOVE disciple and current group spokeswoman, Ramona Africa. Writers and artists are also featured in this update, including Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters and columnists E.R. Shipp and Isabel Wilkerson; famous young adult author, Walter Dean Myers; and Georgia-born concert singer, Emma Harris. These brand new entries are only available through the Oxford African American Studies Center.
A number of biographies from the African American National Biography project were additionally updated this month, keeping the content within the Oxford African American Studies Center up-to-date and accurate. Some of these updates include the biographies of Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Tiger Woods, and Maya Angelou.
The lists of African American recipients of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Humanities Medal, and the National Medal of Arts, as well as the list of African American members of Congress, have also been updated.
Intended to chart some of the most accomplished African American families while highlighting the reference resources available in the Oxford African American Studies Center, this update sees a new family tree on the Bustill family, whose heroic contributions to the Underground Railroad helped to rescue countless fugitive slaves. Surmounting the numerous challenges presented to the study of African American family history by the legacy of slavery, these trees use oral tradition, census reports, plantation records, and ship logs, as well as advances in DNA research, to piece together a family's ancestry.
A Guest Editorial by J. Todd Moye, author of Freedom Flyers, on the Tuskegee Airmen has been added, as well as a Letter from the Editor, in which Henry Louis Gates Jr. discusses the expansion of the African American National Biography to include all of the African American winners of the Medal of Honor. An interview with Melissa Harris-Perry on the content of her new book, Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America, is also featured.
Two lesson plans were added to the to the Learning Center including a lesson plan by Cameron Van Patterson, Harvard University, on the Black Arts Movement and a lesson plan by Kaye Whitehead, Loyola University, on the contributions of the abolitionist Sarah Parker Remond.
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Primary Source Documents Added in February 2012
A Colored Female of Philadelphia Calls for Blacks to Emigrate to Mexico (1832)
Advertisement for a Slave Woman and Her Child in the Pennsylvania Gazette (c. 1750)
An Act Concerning Servants and Slaves (1705)
An Address Delivered by Maria Stewart at the African Masonic Hall (1833)
An Elegiac Poem by Phillis Wheatley (1770)
Children of Negro Women to Serve According to the Condition of the Mother (1662)
Duty of Females (1832)
Journal of Charlotte Forten (1862)
Landon Carter Discusses Medical Treatment of His Slave, Winney (1758)
Letter from Harriet Thompson to Pope Pius IX (1853)
Please Stop Using the Word Negro (1949)
Preamble to the Constitution of the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society (1834)
Reading (1895)
Speech Delivered by Angela Davis at Embassy Auditorium, Los Angeles (1972)
Speech Delivered by Dorothy Height at the First Scholarly Conference on Black Women (1979)
Speech Delivered by Lorraine Hansberry at The Association of Artists for Freedom Town Hall (1964)
Stories of Slave Resistance from the Port Royal Experiment (1893)
Testimony of Harriet Hernandez before the Joint Congressional Committee on the Ku Klux Klan (1871)
Testimony of Lucy Tibbs Before the Committee on the Memphis Riots (1866)
Testimony of Mrs. Statts Regarding the New York City Anti-Draft Riot (1863)
The Lynching of Berry Washington (1919)
The Race Problem—An Autobiography by "A Southern Colored Woman" (1904)
Two Advertisements Calling for the Return of Fugitive Female Slaves (1734–1735)
What It Means to be Colored in Capital of the U.S. (1906)
Women in the Gospel (1879)
Focus On
In addition to our ongoing editorial update program, the Oxford African American Studies Center's editors commission and publish bi-monthly a publicly-available Focus On feature, designed to provide insights into topics of current and historical relevance.
Past Focus On features have included Jazz Greats, the March on Washington, Kwanzaa, Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Art and Artists, Women and Literature, Hip Hop's Early Influences, and Blacks in Politics. Features can include a specially-commissioned essay by a renowned scholar, as well as photo essays illustrating the events and topics covered. Focus On features and their related articles are free to the public for two months, and the featured essays and photo essays remain publicly available on the site.
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