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February is National Black History Month, and related titles from Kent State University Press include a wide variety of books, covering topics as disparate as civil war soldiers, the 1972 Olympics, or poetry and photography, are available in both print and ebook formats.

Discover black history and learn more about important aspects of our shared history.

An Integrated Boyhood

| Filed under: Autobiography & Memoirs, Discover Black History, Voices of Diversity

In An Integrated Boyhood, Richards candidly describes how this exemplary middle-class Cleveland sojourn left him hopelessly confused and dislocated at the very moment of his parents’ triumph. His narrative of success provides the background to a more private turmoil: Richards’s struggle to read the shifting meanings of his privileged experience amid the city’s shifting racial lines, the fringe on the Left, the tumult of rising black consciousness, and the fears of nervous white suburban neighbors. This coming-of-age story sings the undersong of an older generation’s hard-won success. Like all black Clevelanders, Richards was forced to struggle for his understanding of the city’s—and his own—endless racial confusion in the midst of frightening historical change. It is this reality that recurs throughout Richards’s memoir: the early encounters of a scared, bookish African American boy from Mt. Pleasant with what can only be described as the real world.

 


Campfires of Freedom

| Filed under: Civil War Era, Discover Black History
Wilson Book Cover

Three related themes are examined in this fascinating study: the social dynamics of race relations in Union Army camps, the relationship that evolved between Southern and Northern black soldiers, and the role off-duty activities played in helping the soldiers meet the demands of military service and the challenges of freedom. By vividly portraying the soldiers’ camp life and by carefully analyzing their collective memory, the author sets the camp experience in the broader context of social and political change.

 


The Musical World of Halim El-Dabh

| Filed under: Biography, Discover Black History
Musical Book Cover

Egyptian-born composer Halim El-Dabh has studied with the giants of 20th-centruy musical composition and conducting. Although The Musical World of Halim El-Dabh focuses on his career from his arrival in the U.S. in 1950 to his retirement from the faculty of Kent State University in 1991, his early life in Egypt, its influence on him musically, and his creative life following retirement are also presented.

 


Race and Medicine in Nineteenth-and Early-Twentieth-Century America

| Filed under: Discover Black History, History
Savitt Book Cover

In Race and Medicine historian Todd Savitt presents revised and updated versions of his seminal essays on the medical history of African Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially in the South. This collection examines a variety of aspects of African American medical history, including health and illnesses, medical experimentation, early medical schools and medical professionals, and slave life insurance.

 


Herbert Woodward Martin and the African American Tradition in Poetry

| Filed under: African American Studies, Biography, Discover Black History
Primeau Book Cover

Herbert Woodward Martin and the African American Tradition in Poetry chronicles the writing and performing career of Herbert W. Martin, focusing on the way his life has informed his art and situating his creative work within the context of the African American tradition. Author Ronald Primeau examines Martin’s place in American literature with particular emphasis on his multidisciplinary talents and his contributions to the arts through his highly regarded performances of poetry (especially that of Paul Laurence Dunbar) and his acting, playwriting, and composing.

 


Inscribing My Name

| Filed under: Discover Black History, Poetry
Inscribing Book Cover

Martin’s poetry captures life in the Midwest through the authenticity of his voice, his dramatic sense, and the wonderful innovation of his multidisciplinary talents (poet, scholar, teacher, librettist, and performer). From his first volume of poetry in 1969 to Inscribing My Name, Martin’s work brings alive important issues and struggles in our understanding of what it means to be human. This accomplished body of work is a unique combination of traditional poetic forms, the African American musical tradition, and Martin’s extensive experience creating and performing theater and opera.

 


Revelations

| Filed under: Award Winners, Discover Black History, Photography, Sacred Landmarks
Revelations Book Cover

Revelations captures the spirit of the African American worship experience through arresting images of congregants’ facial expressions and body language, their colorful uniforms and dress, and the solemnity of their worship. The images of baptisms, weddings, funerals, Sunday services, and special celebrations are at once serene and exaltant, pensive and inspirational. Revelations honors not only the spiritual dimension of the African American church but the pride and dignity that prevails within the churchgoing family.

 


Confronting the Odds

| Filed under: African American Studies, Discover Black History, History
House Book Cover

The history of African American entrepreneurship has produced a number of studies of economic development on the national level, but very few have examined this growth at the local level. Confronting the Odds was written to bridge that gap, and Bessie House-Soremekun provides this historical analysis of African American entrepreneurship in Cleveland, Ohio, from the early 1800s to the present. Additionally, in examining these historical and current trends, House-Soremekun presents brief biographies of several successful entrepreneurs, among them George C. Fraser, best-selling author; Robert P. Madison, internationally acclaimed architect; Leroy Ozanne, founder of Ozanne Construction Company; and Rachel Y. Daniel, Chief Customer Experience Officer, Synergy International Limited, Inc. and Decision Point Marketing and Research, Inc.

 


We Wear the Mask

| Filed under: African American Studies, Discover Black History, Literature & Literary Criticism
Harrell Book Cover

Willie Harrell has assembled a collection of essays on Dunbar’s work that builds on the research published over the last two decades. Employing an array of approaches to Dunbar’s poetic creations, these essays closely examine the self-motivated and dynamic effect of his use of dialect, language, rhetorical strategies, and narrative theory to promote racial uplift. They situate Dunbar’s work in relation to the issues of advancement popular during the Reconstruction era and against the racial stereotypes proliferating in the early twentieth century while demonstrating its relevance to contemporary literary studies.

 


The Sage of Tawawa

| Filed under: Biography, Discover Black History
Sage Book Cover

In The Sage of Tawawa, Annetta L. Gomez-Jefferson offers Ransom as a symbol of an era and a larger movement and recalls him to be a man of deep faith and conviction. Educated at Wilberforce University in Ohio (after losing his scholarship from Oberlin College for protesting the segregation of the campus dining halls), Reverdy Cassius Ransom worked with and for the African Methodist Episcopal Church. His duties saw him run for Congress, be elected bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, serve as editor of the A.M.E. Church Review, and serve as church historiographer. In July 1941, Ransom received a letter from President Roosevelt appointing him to the Volunteer Participation Committee in the Office of Civilian Defense.

 



This is a series archive