New Social Movements In The African Diaspora

In the last few decades the people of the African diaspora have intensified their struggles against racial discrimination and for equality. This account of these social movements include action in Latin America, the Indian Ocean World, Europe, Canada and the United States.

For people of African descent, music constitutes a unique domain of expression. From traditional West African drumming to South African kwaito, from spirituals to hip-hop, Black life and history has been dynamically displayed and contested through sound. Shana Redmond excavates the sonic histories of these communities through a genre emblematic of Black solidarity and citizenship: anthems. An interdisciplinary cultural history, Anthem reveals how this “sound franchise” contributed to the growth and mobilization of the modern, Black citizen. Providing new political frames and aesthetic articulations for protest organizations and activist-musicians, Redmond reveals the anthem as a crucial musical form following World War I. Beginning with the premise that an analysis of the composition, performance, and uses of Black anthems allows for a more complex reading of racial and political formations within the twentieth century, Redmond expands our understanding of how and why diaspora was a formative conceptual and political framework of modern Black identity. By tracing key compositions and performances around the world—from James Weldon Johnson's “Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing” that mobilized the NAACP to Nina Simone's “To Be Young, Gifted & Black” which became the Black National Anthem of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)—Anthem develops a robust recording of Black social movements in the twentieth century that will forever alter the way you hear race and nation. Shana L. Redmond is Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. She is a former musician and labor organizer.

The rise of the masses

"The African Diaspora" uses essays from a variety of disciplines to introduce students to the African Diaspora and the contributions of African peoples at a time when these are being marginalized on a global scale. The text explores the origins of the Diaspora, and unearths evidence about the development of the Diaspora in the New World. It discusses the transformative role of cultural art forms in people s lives, and details how Twentieth Century Africans navigated time and space in a new environment. The material also emphasizes how ideology provided a framework for constructing new identities, and highlights the formation of the Black Power ideology. The final section makes the journey back to Africa to examine setbacks and challenges affecting the Motherland. Throughout the text, students are encouraged to read critically to understand the various methodologies and perspectives of the writers. Godfrey Vincent earned his Ph.D. from Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Vincent is an assistant professor of history in the Department of History and Political Science at Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama. His current research includes labor studies and focuses on the Caribbean, imperialism, colonialism, and decolonization in West Africa and the Caribbean, the African Diaspora, radical political formations in the Americas, neoliberal globalization, and social movements and change. Dr. Vincent is currently working with a group to develop alternative models of development that place subaltern groups at the center rather than the periphery."

Around the world, the formal structures of capitalist patriarchy - slavery, apartheid, pay inequality - are gradually being dissembled. But what of the informal structures? The unspoken solidarity of countries in the global north that cause them to protect each other's interests at the expense of those of the global south, for example. In this book - part activist-memoir, part detailed economic analysis, John Saul makes apparent the previously unacknowledged global alliances that profoundly shape world politics.

This collection of empirical and theoretical studies of social movements in Africa is a corrective to a literature that has largely ignored that continent. It shows that Africa s social movements have distinctive features that are related to its specific history.

The Black Power movement has often been portrayed in history and popular culture as the quintessential "bad boy" of modern black movement-making in America. Yet this impression misses the full extent of Black Power's contributions to U.S. society, especially in regard to black professionals in social work. Relying on extensive archival research and oral history interviews, Joyce M. Bell follows two groups of black social workers in the 1960s and 1970s as they mobilized Black Power ideas, strategies, and tactics to change their national professional associations. Comparing black dissenters within the National Federation of Settlements (NFS), who fought for concessions from within their organization, and those within the National Conference on Social Welfare (NCSW), who ultimately adopted a separatist strategy, she shows how the Black Power influence was central to the creation and rise of black professional associations. She also provides a nuanced approach to studying race-based movements and offers a framework for understanding the role of social movements in shaping the non-state organizations of civil society.