Black People Book Reviews Samples For Students

- In what way did Dr. Martin King Luther King use non-violent protests in the Civil Rights Movement?
At the staff retreat of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), King talked about the dangers of violence. King said, “Violence has been the inseparable twin of materialism, the hallmark of its grandeur”, and he stood his ground against it on the basis that hate engenders violence. Hence, to curb hate and violence, King saw the importance of participating in peaceful protests no matter how unjust the situations they were in and how difficult it was for Black people to ...

1. What were conditions like for black people in the U.S. in the early 1960’s? From the textbook: What legal and societal mechanisms created and kept black people in these conditions?
Conditions for black people in the United States during the early 1960’s where bleak, they faced social, economic and educational discrimination. These forms of discrimination, created by an informal but controlling white male elite political governing consortium reached back into the anti-bellum tradition. These mechanisms kept black people in these conditions by allowing entrenched areas or the country to remain severely segregated. Even when Brown ...

The color line that defines the history of the United States, from the antebellum period to the years of the Civil Rights movement, is evident in Melissa Fay Greene’s work. Dubbed Praying for Sheetrock, the text revolves around the changes in the cultural norms that guided the society of McIntosh County, Georgia, in the last half of the twentieth century. For that reason, the book allows readers to witness an extension of the Civil Rights Movement that historians tend to overlook, one that is away from the streets of Alabama and Atlanta. Thus said, the protagonist and the ...

Alex Kotlowitz follows the lives of two young boys, Lafeyette Rivers and Pharaoh Rivers, in their Chicago neighborhood, living in the Henry Horner Project, a housing scheme for underclass black people. The boys grow up in a rough neighborhood, where the only option is to join a gang once they enter adolescence. Their mother is 35 years old, and she had eight children, among whom, one is serving a jail term and the second born, an eighteen-year-old, has been arrested for a record forty-six times, making him a strong candidate to serving jail terms like his elder brother. When ...

In Richard Wright’s novel, Black Boy, he deals with many fundamental difficulties of being a young black man being raised in the American south. Unlike many of his other works of fiction, this work covers autobiographically the life of Richard Wright. What one sees is the importance of he relationship between slavery, race and citizenship and how it has always been closely intertwined in the post-Civil War American society. On one hand, slavery was a cruel institution that was used to deny people of fundamental rights of citizenship such as freedom of movement, economic freedom and even freedom of having a ...

Manning, Marable, Dispatches From the Ebony Tower: Intellectuals Confront the African American Experience, New York, Columbia University Press, 2000-written by manning Marable.

Manning -one of the leading scholars of African American history is a professor of political science and history at Columbia University in New York City where he also holds the position of director in the institute for research in Africa American studies. He is considered as one of the America’s most widely convert and influential scholars.
Manning has brought together insightful minds who display a willingness to be outspoken in their criticisms, yet who are without a ...

“Coming of Age in Mississippi” is a classic autobiography of Anne Moody that was first published in the year 1968. Readers get to know about Moody’s life of her childhood and till late twenties. The book presents the struggle faced by African-Americans in Mississippi, and how it was to be grown up in a very racial state. The autobiography of Moody is unique in a sense that it reflects direct voice of a poor, oppressed black women, who is struggled to change the society and tried to make it a better pace for African-Americans. Moody was grown up in a society where racism was ...

English: Book Review

“Selling of Joseph: A Memorial” is a three page essay written by Samuel Sewall and published in 1700 in Boston. In his short essay, Samuel discusses his viewpoint about the slavery in America in a very interesting manner. The paper attempts to analyze the essay with a view to highlight writer’s viewpoint on slavery and discuss any similarities or differences with the early explorer’s viewpoint on natural rights.
Samuel was a leading jurist of the Massachusetts and was involved in the Salem witch trial that brought him popularity; however, his stance changed after the trial and he apologized for his ...

This paper describes the social movements that Blacks participated in during the period from 1900 to date. It tackles the ways in which the movements can be described as one long civil rights movement, and also how were they distinct movements. The paper further assesses their goals and the manner in which they have effected change in the United States. The paper also points out prominent civil rights activists that played an important role in spearheading the civil rights movements.
Most of the black social movements from 1900 to date have basically been fighting against racism. The 20th Century ...

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Anderson, James D. Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935. The University of North Carolina Press.
In “Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935” Anderson covers the years before the Civil War (1861-1865) and those that followed. Anderson tries to “tell the story of the unique system of public and private education that developed by and for black southerners between 1860 and 1935” (1). As the pro-slavery force, the Southerners found it hard to view previous slaves as their equals. Slaves were viewed as mere property and ...

The Civil Rights Movement

The Movements of the New Left, 1950-1975:
A Brief History with Documents by Van Gosse
Hannah Wilson
In the 1960s, America underwent a monumental change, and everything changed in terms of its culture, status of specific population categories, domestic and foreign policies, and many other aspects under the large-scale, massive, and irreversible influence of the New Left movements. The 1960s were obviously a highly revolutionary period in the US history, mainly due to the rise of many fundamental social movements such as feminists, civil rights protectors, anti-Vietnam war pacifists, and voting rights. For example, Gosse (2005) noted that “ ...

Summary of Chapter 3-7 of American Crucible

American Crucible by Gary Gerstle stems from the racialism and ethnicity. This was after Roosevelt led his riders to victory in a war between America and Spain he boasted a lot about Americans been strengthened by war and years later would still inspire the Americans. The objective of this paper is to analyze the book from chapter 3 to chapter seven focusing on the key points and arguments of the author.

Chapter 3

In chapter 3 Gary tries to focus on the boundaries of the nation, 1917 to 1929. Roosevelt’s dream in this chapter is coming true in a battle where they are ...

There Are no Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz

There Are no Children Here – Reaction Paper
Introduction
The following reaction paper is about the book entitled “There are no Children Here” written by Alex Kotlowitz. In this reaction paper, I am going to highlight the important parts of the book as well as how changed my views in life. There are various parts of the book that are worth reading as it relates to some of my experiences. The purpose of this reaction paper is to emphasize such events that made the book worth reading by highlighting events in each theme will affect my point of ...

‘The Psychological Legacy of Slavery’ is the title of Chapter 1. The chapter discusses a type of slavery that is invisible but very powerful. The author Dr. Na’im Akbar explains that slavery lasted three centuries and still affects contemporary African Americans. I agree that for the psychology of people something as traumatic as slavery must leave psychological scars on the group of people who were slaves, even several generations after the legal end of slavery. After the Civil War nothing was done to help the former slaves adjust to their new lives as free men and women. Nothing ...

How Race Survived U.S. History
How Race Survived U.S. History
David R. Roediger, history professor at the University of Illinois, delves deep in his book, “How Race Survived US History: From Settlement and Slavery to the Obama Phenomenon” in order to investigate how the race was created around 1600 and was kept breathing to the present day America. Roediger recalls how the idea of race used to exist during the significant moments of American history. Racism travelled from American Revolution through the American civil war and to the modern status of United States of America.
Roediger ...

Introduction

The book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell is about how we think without thinking. This can be further explained by illustrating that the choices made instantly in the blink of an eye without actually thinking why they are made. The world around us requires that decisions should be footnoted. This means that if we say how we feel about something we must be ready to elaborate about why we feel a certain way. Blink discloses that a quality of good decision maker is not who can spend time providing deliberate answers or process the information effectively but the one who has perfected ...

Book review: Jubilee by Margaret Walker

The novel Jubilee is basically a story about slavery in America. The novel goes on to narrate how reconstruction took place in the perspective of the black people who were the most affected by the vice. The novel is built on the life and history of Vyry brown. She is a woman of mixed race and she is raised in slavery. Her mother was constantly molested by the master and conceived 15 children. This shows how the slaves were mistreated and the masters could do anything to them. The novel basically follows the life of this lady from her childhood to ...

Book Review - Overcoming Our Racism: The Journey to Liberation

In Derald Wing Sue's Overcoming Our Racism: The Journey to Liberation, the author mostly examines sociological and cultural factors that lead to ingrained racism in all individuals, no matter their personal perception of their tolerance. Written for a white audience, the overall goal of the book is to get people to understand the concepts of white privilege and to comprehend their role in the continued oppression of minorities, regardless of their level of involvement with racial politics. The result is an eye-opening and well researched book of sociology, psychology and counseling that allows for an honest look at American society, ...

Black Boy by Richard Wright

Black Boy is definitely one of the books which makes the blood boil as it is difficult to intrinsically accept what went on in the Deep South of the 1950’s and 1960’s where black people were treated as worse than animals and children were made to suffer inordinately without much hope of a better chance in life. The rural South was obviously a place where racism was rampant and opportunities for youngsters were few and far between but if you were a black person than those chances were virtually nil.
In this excellent book, Wright also traces the origins ...