Rocket City Rock Soul

In a state widely considered ground zero for civil rights struggles, Huntsville became an unlikely venue for racial reconciliation. Huntsville's recently formed NASA station drew new residents from throughout the country, and across the world, to the Rocket City. This influx of fresh perspectives informed the city's youth. Soon, dozens of vibrant rock bands and soul groups, characteristic of the era but unique in Alabama, were formed. Set against the bitter backdrop of segregation, Huntsville musicians--black and white--found common ground in rock and soul music. Whether playing to desegregated audiences, in desegregated bands or both, Huntsville musicians were boldly moving forward, ushering in a new era. Through interviews with these musicians, local author Jane DeNeefe recounts this unique and important chapter in Huntsville's history.

This “surprising and insightful” history profiles ten African American engineers, mathematicians, and others who worked for NASA’s space program (Lauren Helmuth, New York Times Book Review). The Space Age began just as the struggle for civil rights forced Americans to confront the bitter legacy of slavery, discrimination, and violence against African Americans. NASA itself became an agent of social change, with President Kennedy opening its workplaces to African Americans. In We Could Not Fail, Richard Paul and Steven Moss profile ten pioneer African American space workers whose stories illustrate the role NASA and the space program played in promoting civil rights. Paul and Moss recount how these technicians, mathematicians, engineers, and an astronaut candidate surmounted barriers and navigated being the sole African American in a NASA work group. These brave and determined men went on to help transform Southern society by integrating colleges, patenting new inventions, holding elective office, and reviving and governing defunct towns. Adding new names to the roster of civil rights heroes and a new chapter to the story of space exploration, We Could Not Fail demonstrates how African Americans broke the color barrier by competing successfully at the highest level of American intellectual and technological achievement.

Huntsville, Alabama musicians are a wonderful way to personalize an event and set the tone for the festivities. From weddings to intimate dinner parties, musicians of all genres create a specific mood while also entertaining your guests. Huntsville's recently formed NASA station drew new residents from throughout the country, and across the world, to the Rocket City. This influx of fresh perspectives informed the city's youth. Soon, dozens of vibrant rock bands and soul groups, characteristic of the era but unique in Alabama, were formed. Set against the bitter backdrop of segregation, Huntsville musicians black and white' found common ground in rock and soul music. Whether playing to desegregated audiences, in desegregated bands, or both, Huntsville musicians were boldly moving forward, ushering in a new era. Through interviews with these musicians, local author Jane DeNeefe recounts this unique and important chapter in Huntsville's history.

Progressive and libertarian, anti-Communist and revolutionary, Democratic and Republican, quintessentially American but simultaneously universal. By the late 1980s, rock music had acquired a dizzying array of political labels. These claims about its political significance shared one common thread: that the music could set you free. Rocking in the Free World explains how Americans came to believe they had learned the truth about rock 'n' roll, a truth shaped by the Cold War anxieties of the Fifties, the countercultural revolutions (and counter-revolutions) of the Sixties and Seventies, and the end-of-history triumphalism of the Eighties. How did rock 'n' roll become enmeshed with so many different competing ideas about freedom? And what does that story reveal about the promise-and the limits-of rock music as a political force in postwar America?

In March 1977, John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon of the punk band the Sex Pistols looked over the Berlin wall onto the grey, militarized landscape of East Berlin, which reminded him of home in London. Lydon went up to the wall and extended his middle finger. He didn't know it at the time, but the Sex Pistols' reputation had preceded his gesture, as young people in the "Second World" busily appropriated news reports on degenerate Western culture as punk instruction manuals. Soon after, burgeoning Polish punk impresario Henryk Gajewski brought the London punk band the Raincoats to perform at his art gallery and student club-the epicenter for Warsaw's nascent punk scene. When the Raincoats returned to England, they found London erupting at the Rock Against Racism concert, which brought together 100,000 "First World" UK punks and "Third World" Caribbean immigrants who contributed their cultures of reggae and Rastafarianism. Punk had formed networks reaching across all three of the Cold War's "worlds". The first global narrative of punk, Punk Crisis examines how transnational punk movements challenged the global order of the Cold War, blurring the boundaries between East and West, North and South, communism and capitalism through performances of creative dissent. As author Raymond A. Patton argues, punk eroded the boundaries and political categories that defined the Cold War Era, replacing them with a new framework based on identity as conservative or progressive. Through this paradigm shift, punk unwittingly ushered in a new era of global neoliberalism.