White Book Reviews Samples For Students

Introduction: Historically, female Black slaves endured the worse treatment, but have received the least amount of attention than their male counterparts in North American Slavery (Hine, 2007). There are longstanding myths that surround the experiences of female Black slaves, and struggles they face daily trying to survive. Deborah Gray White provides an intimate look into female slavery that until 1985 was long overdue. In her book she stated “Slave women were the only women in America who were sexually exploited with impunity, stripped and whipped with a lash, and worked like oxen” (White, 1999, p. 162). In the nineteenth ...

The story of Bigger Thomas, by Richard Wright, was an evidence of a social and economic disconnects which was prevailing between the Negro and the white Americans. The setting of the book was in the South, and the closeness between the black and the white brought about hostility and hatred among the two races. Bigger who was living in the Southern part of Chicago is portrayed as a black who had both hatred and fear towards he white. In his every action throughout the book, Bigger portrays an obsessive fear that existed between the black and the white in ...

The book titled “Here is New York” written by E. B. White gives an account of the differences between the New York that White visited when he was young and the New York of the year 1948 . In this book, White provides a great deal of information about the metropolis and explains that he possesses a clear place for the city and defends the same. White describes his reactions about New York, which has transformed to a great extent in the modern day. He also gives various reasons as to why he left his hometown Maine for New York to write for ...

The book explores the history, role, and contribution of Rosa Parks, a human activist on modern social and economic transformation and changes. Rosa Parks, a renowned African American activist was born on February 1913. Many professionals and researchers refer Rosa as the first lady of civil rights due to her contribution in fighting for human right and equality in America. In an effort to recognise the role and contribution of Rosa Parks in America, the country commemorates her birth and the days she was arrested for her intensive effort of fighting for human rights in America. The day is especially common ...

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 ...

‘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 ...

Ralph Reavis wrote Apostles of Self-Help and Independence as a history of the Virginia Seminary and College (since 1996 the Virginia University of Lynchburg) of which he has served as the current president since 2000. Like the majority of the university’s past sixteen presidents, he is also one of its graduates. He has written works on Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, and has taught at William and Mary and Howard Universities and the University of Richmond. Reavis defends the Seminary’s tradition of autonomy and freedom from the control of white donors and institutions, which was a ...

Katznelson is one of those leading writers who have proved themselves in providing much knowledge to the readers about social and political history. A professional in political science and history, he is best known for his influential research upon United States and covered topics such as social knowledge, liberal state, inequality, and institutions. His work always brings exceptional aspects that have been most important in the history of America. He has highlighted various features that have been a part of American history and has unfolded the inequalities that were evidenced in the 20th century. A collection of his books ...

“To kill a mocking bird” is a novel by American author Harper Lee. It was first published in 1960 and won Pulitzer Prize for literature. Despite being White herself, Lee was frustrated over the issues of racial bias and injustice done with Black Americans after the great depression. The unequal treatment with Blacks in the American society of that particular time is the most evident theme of this novel, for which Lee even received Presidential Medal of Freedom. Courage, compatibilities, and friendships amongst the family and community members are also some of themes of the novel. As the book covers ...

“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 ...

Great Black Women of the World

Part I: (Please Add where in your textbook to find the appropriate topic: Slavery, racism, women’s issues) I have written about two African women sold into slavery Abina and Ama and about Mary Church Terrell. Terrell is a great African-American woman who not many people know about. I did not know about her until I started browsing the web links that were suggested for this assignment. Ama and Terrell show the same strength and spirit as Abina. They are all women with a strong sense of what is right and what is wrong in the world. Two were born in Ghana ...

Introduction

The book is important to the people with an interest in homeland security of the United States of America. It is because of how the book author has developed the theme or the purpose of the book. Unlike many books published many years ago, the book is current having been published in the year 2011. It one of the greatest book in the market concerning the subject of the homeland security. The book TERRORISM HOMELAND SECURITY is the 7th edition of the publications, and it was published in the year 2011 being the latest in that series. It was ...

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The book An American Betrayal: Cherokee Patriots and the Trail of Tears finds its basis in the historical context of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The dispute between the two groups took place with President Jackson Andrew leading the Americans and Ross John leading the Cherokee Indians. Smith attempts to give an account of the events following the aforementioned Indian Removal Act of 1830through the eyes of the Cherokees. The Red Indians felt betrayed by the white man and as a result, tension mounted between the two opposing sides and eventually ...

How Race Survived History by David R. Roediger explores various ways in which the idea of race was initially created and recreated in American history. In his book, David reveals how race played a critical role in a progressive national history. He illustrates the ways in which race intersected all that was progressive and dynamic in U.S history, right from economic development, democracy to globalization and immigration. Based on what has happened in the past, Roediger explores the evidence that U.S will eventually become a ‘non-white’ majority nation probably in the next fifty years or so. In a nutshell, this masterful history depicts ...

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 ...

Elizabeth Clerk-Lewis in her book narrates the experiences and lives of African American in Washington and how women worked for wealthy white families. This writer has given detailed and reliable information regarding the African American racism, since a grandmother was part of the great migration of the African American, and she could give an oral history regarding the migration. This has enabled her to publish a book with first-hand information that is not biased. Over the last few decades, the essential meaning of gender and sex had been transformed to mean something different apart from its actual meaning. Racial discrimination was ...

Jonathan Kozol’s book The Shame of a Nation discusses and examines the incredibly prevalent issue of wealth and income inequality as it relates to education. In short, the kind of segregation that occurred between black and white during the Jim Crow era of the 20th century is still happening to a large extent, and it is dramatically affecting the lives and educations of many families. Wealth inequality dramatically dictates who goes to school where, and the quality of their education at present prevents them from uplifting themselves into any kind of better future. Social mobility is at a standstill, as the ...

The zoot suit culture was flamboyant embedded in fashion, unique patterns of speech, lindy hop dancing, jazz, swing music and jitterbug among other factors captivating the youth in the 1940’s. In this book, Luis Alvarez explains the relationship between race, region and politics of culture during the World War II in the urban America. He argued that most of the American youth from diverse communities such as African American, Mexican and American youths adopted the popular culture in opposing the commonly accepted modes of youthful behaviors. For example, the dominance of white, middle class expectations and behaviors was ...

There are two radically different and competing versions of family and community in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. One of these is the semi-feudal status quo of rigid divisions by race, gender, caste and social class and the other a more democratic, integrated and humane community of the future symbolized by Atticus Finch, his children and supporters. Broadly speaking, these two conflicting ideologies are not simply taking place in the small, fictional community of Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression. They are in conflict throughout the entire country and perhaps the world, and are not confined to one particular ...

Approximately 100 years after Union troops settled the issue of slavery, a second Civil War played out in America’s courts and on the streets of the America South. In Mississippi, as in Alabama, Georgia and other states where the Civil Rights movement played out, the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown vs. the Board of Education and the ensuing battle over school integration inflamed white folks, who adopted every available tactic to maintain the doctrine of “separate but equal.” Black folks responded with incredible courage, implementing strategies that would eventually turn the tide in the battle for civil ...

The book Hannah Mary Tabb and the Disembodied Torso is written by a well-known individual named Kali Nicole Gross. The book discloses the beliefs about sex, justice, and race in 1887 in Philadelphia. A Philadelphia woman named Tabb and George Wilson, an eighteen-year-old man, are the main characters in the book. The book is a recapitulation of matters that resonate with today’s world. It highlights racial bias in the police force, unreliable eyewitnesses, and coerced confessions. The writer, Kali Nicole Gross, has written the story in the book with a lot of evidence. She uses the city archive's ...

35 Dumb Things Well-intended People Say: Surprising Things We Say that Widen the Diversity Gap by Maura Cullen (2008) provides valuable insight on the choice of words in communicating with people during the course of our daily life. Words have different meanings in different contexts and cultures. So we should know which words are acceptable and which words are offensive, and also the contexts and cultures where they are applicable. Those who want to maintain good personal relationships with people in their social and business circles should take special ...

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 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 “ ...

A clear depiction of the nature of slavery in the south of Antebellum America is present in Douglass’ “A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.”As an African American Born into slavery and raised as such, Douglass’ narration gives his readers insight into his life and his struggle with the slavery institution. The book revolves around Frederick Douglass’ experiences at the hands of different slave masters before finally escaping to the northern states and joining the abolitionists’ movement. As the book commences, Frederick Douglass shows his confusion over the basis of slavery and in turn, makes his conclusions ...

In his book Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe attempts to set the world upright for Africans in many ways. To begin with, he uses Okonkwo, the protagonist, to show that change is inevitable. This is because; Okonkwo is wealthy, very hardworking and respected in the village unlike his late father who was lazy and disrespected. He wants to prove to the villagers that he is totally different from his father. Therefore, Achebe shows that Africans have embraced change by not accepting the western people to rule over them. Secondly, after a white man destroys Abame village, the villagers kill him ...

The book review herein, and critical literary analysis seeks to present a cogent, well-thought out evaluation of the work written by Sherman Alexie entitled ‘The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.’ At the outset, it is important to note that the main literary device the writer uses is a personal, first-person perspective and narrative. The tone is frank, casual and simple-structured English. Also, as the author provides myriad vignettes and short anecdotal stories throughout the book, the reader has an opportunity to deeply feel empathy for Alexie’s protagonist – but, sometimes cannot decipher whether to laugh or cry.
...

- Cole and Birdie speak Elemeno, a language named after their favorite letters in the alphabet, "with no verb tenses, no pronouns, just words floating outside time and space, without owner or direction" (p. 6). What purpose does this language serve? How does Elemeno reflect the sisters' positions in their family and in the world? Why does Elemeno continue to be so important to Birdie throughout the novel?
The language that the sisters share determines their connection with each other. Considering that they share a special bond as sisters, both Cole and Birdie could understand each other that seem to ...

Redemption: The last Battle of the Civil War is a book written by Nicholas Lemann. The book basically discusses American history with a bias to racism and racial violence in the 1800s in the United States. The author opens the account of this historic period with an incidence of racial violence. The book trails the life of Adelbert Ames who was a general during the civil war and was later appointed a provisional governor of postwar Mississippi, later a senator for the same state in 1870 and then a governor in 1873. The author explains an incident in Colfax, Louisiana in which white militia comprising ...

The religious impulse is one of the most deeply seated within all of us. Because it involves the totality of our response to the events of our lives, it begins with our emotional responses to events when we are too young to have the ability to process those events on a more rational level. Often, it is the effects of these events that shape the way that we deal with others our whole lives. When one is in an ethnic group that is the object of discrimination, religion can become an important part of one’s life, as the suffering ...

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, ...

Blacks live in complete poverty in Maycomb and have hardly any rights at all, but most of the whites are also poor, and the whole county is basically backward and marginalized, especially because of the Great Depression. Most of the whites do not even have money to pay the legal bills that they owe Atticus, but in compensation they do have a sense of racial superiority over the blacks, who are even poorer and more degraded than they are. That someone like Atticus even exists there is highly surprising, although he has no real chance of changing system as it ...

The book analyses the lives of white females with regard to the harsh conditions they encountered in the slave social order prior to the Civil War. The author focuses on the letters, diaries as well as memoirs of hundreds of planer women and daughters. The book provides dramatic details relating to the day to day life with reference to the mistress and the uncertainty of her liaison situation in the hierarchical setting between the master and slave. Further, the author brings to the fore the challenges stumbled upon by the plantation mistress and makes informing interpretations as regards the ...

When we hear the word civil rights we think of the civil rights movement. What comes to mind Martin Luther king Jr. The million man march, the infamous words free at last free at last. The memories of the atrocities suffered by Blacks in America over the last 200 years going right back to the founding fathers of America. The pacifism of Martin L. King and the militancy of Malcom X Ann Moody publishes her autobiography. Coming of age is an intimately tell the life of an African American woman living, working and existing in Racist America. It also ...

When two unique cultures meet, there is bound to be a clash. The novel “Ceremony” examines this dispute and the impact it has on the day to day lives of those that adhere to the two cultures. It seeks to bridge the understanding of the white's culture often seen as the modern one and that of the Native Americans which in the eyes of the whites is backward.
Silko, the author, shows the interaction between the two through the life of Tayo. Tayo embodies the meeting of the two cultures through his mixed origins. The novel is also on ...

“Ceremony,” Leslie Marmon Silko's novel, mainly seeks to explore the contradictions and the effects of two unique cultures mixing. In the novel, these contradictions are brought out by having a closer look at Tayo's life. Tayo not only bears the cultural contradictions in him but also a physical one as espoused in his green eyes. They symbolize the mix of white and the Native American origins in him.
The two cultures have adverse effects on the lives of the Native Americans, both positive and adverse. Tayo, an admirer of his Native American culture, happens to be educated in a ...

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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 ...

How Race Survived U.S. History
The book, “How Race Survived US History: From Settlement and Slavery to the Obama Phenomenon” is a highly acclaimed book, authored by David R. Roediger, who teaches history at the University of Illinois. The author, in his book, examines the issue of race in a broader manner and presents a very good analysis before the readers. This paper intends to discuss the above named book and further presents a succinct analysis of the book.
Roediger explores the issue of race and examines how race was created deliberately in order to ensure the dominance of white people ...

Hernstein & Murray’s The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, offers a controversial statistical argument about social stratification and race being concretely linked to intelligence. However, the book more effectively investigates the consequences of American social stratification. The rich and educated members of society are increasingly isolating themselves in zip code enclaves instead of contributing to the American ideal of diversity. As a result, society has become increasingly divided by education, class and race. Overall, the book attempts to deconstruct complex socioeconomic issues of race, class and intelligence using statistical analysis. Intelligence is an important part of social ...

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. By Michelle Alexander (New York, The New Press, 2012) 1- 289 pp. Reviewed by (Name), November, 3, 2014>

Introduction

Michelle Alexander is a celebrated civil rights advocate who has been an active participant in the anti- racial profiling campaign in the United States. Born in 1967, Alexander has been persistently advocating reforms in the US criminal justice system. As a law professor and a writer, her name is hugely synonymous to the struggle for racial justice in the United States and has been fighting the war on racial segregation in law enforcement ...

The story “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” is housed together with the story “Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There” in one book volume. In this case, I shall consider the first story only.

The story “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” was originally published in mid 1860s. It is the story of a young Alice after her dream when she fell asleep. After waking up, Alice relates the story to her sister. The story is about the series of events which take place in Alice’s dream when she fell asleep in the course of her lessons. In the dream, the ...

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 ...

Discovery of identity is an important factor that controls the characters in various well known tales that have remained in our minds and hearts for centuries. The Grace of Silence and The Girl Who Fell from the Sky revolve around Rachel and Michel's journey while they attempt to ascertain their identities and the crests and troughs that they face during this voyage. This paper will be an attempt to acknowledge the sharp contrast between the characters here which is related to the theme that how does racism, outer reflections and relative connections control the paths that Michele and ...

Book Review: How Race Survived U.S. History
Roediger (2012) in his book “How Race Survived US History: From Settlement and Slavery to the Obama Phenomenon” presents a good analysis of U.S. history to the readers. The book is considered as one of the best works, performed in the field of American history. Roediger is history professor at University of Illinois, and has a great understanding of the subject which is clearly reflected in the book. The book presents a detailed analysis of race related issues that were prevailing during the past. This paper presents an analysis of the book and discusses ...

Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America by Laura Wexler, Scribner, January 13, 2004 288pp

‘Fire in a canebrake’ is quite a scorcher by Laura Wexler and which focuses on the last mass lynching which occurred in the American Deep South, the one in the heartland of rural Georgia, precisely Walton County, Georgia on 25th July 1946, less than a year after the Second World War. Wexler narrates the story of the four black sharecroppers who met their end ‘at the hand of person’s unknown’ when an undisclosed number of white men simply shot the blacks to death. The author concentrates on the way the evidence was collected in those eerie post war times and how ...

Introduction

Research shows that the concerns of sexual stereotypes ends up associated with class and racial differentials in America. There is a need to consider the influences of race and the social status of families on the level of communication about sexuality between teenagers and their parents. The research by Elliot reported in the book entitled “Not My Kid: What Parents Believe about the Sex Lives of their Teenagers” cuts across different races under varying social status. Elliot reveals how different classes of individual from varying races perceive sexuality and works towards passing the underlying stereotypes to their children. Statistics shows ...

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 ...

In the beginning of 1924, the United States’ immigration had reached a record high. It is said the percentage of immigrants entering the country from foreign countries was so high that it warranted government intervention. The White Americans who are still the majority population up to the present started fearing that the immigrants would star taking over their businesses and infringe on their culture and traditions. Since they were the ruling class, they had to make due with law provisions that would restrict immigration. The major immigrants were from Europe, Mexico and the larger Latin America and the African Americans. ...

This is a book about Oliveira Fransisca da Silva (1732-1796) (Furtado 10). This is a woman who was born in slavery but ended up becoming powerful and rich. This woman’s life has inspired very many. Popularly known as the queen who became a queen, her life has been a source of inspiration for very many works in literature, theatre, films and television.
She was born in Vila do Principe in Minas Gerais in the north in Brazil. Her residence was in Diamantina (formerly known as Arrail do Tijuco). Her father was a Portuguese man. Antonio Caetano and his black save lover (Maria ...

Up from Slavery is an autobiography by Booker T. Washington that details the struggles that Booker T. Washington had to go through in his bid to get an education. As depicted in the book, the fact that Washington’s family was poor was one of the leading frustrative factors that hindered him from getting an education. His hope to achieve an education would also be thwarted by the fact that he was born of slave parents (which essentially rendered him a slave); at the time, in was illegal for slaves to receive education.
Convinced that his local school had ...

In the book”Crazy Horse and Custer: The Parallel Lives of Two American Warriors” by Stephen E. Ambrose, the lives of these two great historical rivals are revealed. The author intends to reveal a clash of two cultures during the Civil War of Little Bighorn, on June 25, 1876. His two main characters being Crazy Horse, a Native American warrior, and General Custer, a white American cavalry officer. Through Ambrose’s revelations one can gain a better understanding of their character by comparing and contrasting these two warriors, revealing both their triumphs and failures.
Culture played a big part in the conflict. The ...

A Saint on Death Row by Thomas Cahill

A saint on death row is a story that was written by an Irish-American author Thomas Cahill. In this tragic and heart wrenching story of a death row inmate known as Dominique Green, Thomas brings out the injustices and flaws that surround the American legal system. The issue of racism also comes up because the death row inmate (Dominique Green) was African American.

About the Author

Thomas Cahill is an American scholar born in New York in 1940 to Irish- American parents. Cahill grew up in Queens and the Bronx. He studied at Greek and Latin Literature, scripture and theology as well as medieval ...

The idea upon which John Howard Griffin’s “Black Like Me” is based had haunted him for several years until he finally started writing the book. For many years Griffin had wondered that if a white man became a black, what kind of changes in his life he would have to make. He basically wanted to get a firsthand perspective of the everyday life of the black minority. John Howard Griffin, who was born white, actually medically altered his skin tone to become black. Griffin’s book is an autobiographical account, a memoir of his personal experience during the ten months after artificially ...

Introduction

The devil in the white city is one of the literatures by Erik Larson, which highlights some developments in the eighteenth century. This was a defining moment in United States where various architectural designs wee being adopted. Technical education had just hit its peak as many more people acquired skills. With the knowledge, they looked for creative ways of beautifying the city (Johnson, 73). They realized the need of planning everything and ensuring that both buildings, roads, rails and parks were placed at their right positions. One of the weaknesses that such architectural designs and designers had was the fact ...

Book Review: Black Power on Campus: The University of Illinois, 1965-75

In Joy Ann Williamson's Black Power on Campus: The University of Illinois, 1965-75, the author charts an interesting time in higher education, as the Civil Rights Movement and its aftermath began to be felt on college campuses, integrating black and white students. The Black student movement at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was a perfect example of that phenomenon, as black students doubled in enrollment during this decade. Mostly white universities experienced the most dramatic increase in enrollment, creating a new black presence in the student body reflective of the need of American schools to accept a more racially diverse world. ...

Introduction

Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s book Colored People is an extra ordinary book that captures moments in history for the African American community and all the communities which existed during the transition period in America in the second half of the twentieth century. The author portrays this unique period in the American cultural life history by focusing on one small town in West Virginia as a microcosm for what was happening in the fifties and sixties across the American racial landscape.
Piedmont was Gates home as a child and the color lines between the communities living there were almost deteriorating. ...

Handbook for an Unpredictable Life: How I Survived Sister Renata and My Crazy Mother, and Still Came Out Smiling (with Great Hair) is the story of broadway and film star Rosie Perez’s tumultuous and turbulent childhood. As a very young child, Rosie was placed in a Catholic home for children in the heart of New York City where she and numerous other children suffered unspeakable abuse at the hands of the nuns. Amazingly, Perez was able to turn the abuse she suffered into fuel and determination to drive her wildly successful dance and theatre career. Perez broke boundaries ...

Before reviewing this book, it’ important to get some things out of the way regarding slavery and its importance as an institution and the impact that it has had on American history. Slavery more than any other single thing has shaped the history of the United States, it has created a divided country one where whites are superior to blacks and all of this was done in the name of creating wealth for one group on the backs of the other. There is a reason why stories like Nat Turner’s are so incredible is because they are the ...

“A man's life was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer to his ancestors” (Achebe 122). – One of the impacts of colonization is the disappearance of cultural or traditional practices. This quote shows how a life of an individual is related to his or her culture or origin.
“Behind them was the big and ancient silk-cotton tree which was sacred. Spirits of good children lived in that tree waiting to be born. On ordinary days young women who desired children came to sit under the shade” (Achebe 46). – This quote illustrates the richness of the culture of ...

A reading of Wakatsuki Houston’s Farewell to Manzanar and Melba Pattillo Beals’ Warriors Don't Cry reveals that racial prejudice in the twentieth-century societies of the United States was against anybody who was not Caucasian. In other words, while Houston’s work focuses on the Japanese-Americans’ experiences after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the internment that came after, Beals talks of black segregation and the laws that declared black people inferior to the whites. Hence, there are similarities between the two books as they revolve around ideas of white supremacy that placed persons of African and Japanese descent ...