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Books by Jacqueline
Bacon
The Humblest May Stand Forth /
Freedom's Journal: The First African-American Newspaper
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Freedom's Journal
The First African-American Newspaper
By Jacqueline Bacon
Book Review by
Kam Williams
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While the
Constitution declares that all men are born
free and equal, the wise corporation of the
city of Washington… see proper to proscribe
the rights of a certain portion of the
community… Ought such laws to exist? Ought
Congress to allow Washington, the spot which
alone of all others should be sacred to the
rights of man… to be polluted by the
footsteps of a slave? . . . Many who there
plead for the equal rights of man, are the
very men who… buy and sell their brethren
like beasts of burden.”
Excerpted from an 1827 editorial by John B.
Russwurm (page 88) |
Freedom’s Journal, the first African-American
newspaper ever published in the United States, debuted
on March 16, 1827. The short-lived periodical was the
brainchild of two black men, Samuel E. Cornish and John
B. Russwurm. The former was a Presbyterian minister who
had been born free in Delaware, while the latter was a
mulatto, the college-educated son of a white Jamaican
plantation owner and one of his servants.
Although the pair printed
the paper in New York City, their ambitious mission, as
stated in the inaugural edition, was to reach the “five
hundred thousand free people of color” spread across the
country. And while
Freedom’s Journal would fall far short of that
goal and fold in 1829, it nevertheless must be credited
with making a seminal contribution to the abolitionist
movement by kickstarting a dialogue about the evils of
slavery which would survive its unfortunate demise.
Cornish and Russwurm were
visionaries who penned some surprisingly insightful
editorials, given that they were writing early in the 19th
century. While it cannot be definitively stated exactly
why they created the paper, conventional wisdom, in part
disputed here, stipulates that they were initially
motivated to counter the daily diatribes of Mordecai
Noah, owner of several tabloids, including the New
York Enquirer.
They castigated Noah, a
Jew who had taken to pumping out hateful pro-slavery
propaganda, for pandering to racists in a way which was
placing black folks in a very vulnerable state. In this
representative op-ed, Cornish and Russwurm made a futile
attempt to appeal to him as a member of an ethnic group
which had suffered its share of discrimination:
“We should think, if
Major Noah were a man of reflection, he would be the
last to aggravate the wrongs of the oppressed. Has he
forgotten that this is the only country in which the
descendants of Abraham sustain a standing equal to that
of the African? We should expect him to sympathize with
the oppressed of every hue.
Thanks to Dr. Jacqueline
Bacon, we now have an in-depth, scholarly analysis of
the first African-American paper which establishes that
there was no monolithic black mindset, but rather often
competing attitudes about such prevailing, hot-button
subjects as the back to Africa movement versus
assimilation in the U.S., and gradualism and
accommodation versus violent insurrection as the answer
to enslavement.
The author, who has a
Ph.D. in English from the University of Texas at Austin,
is a syndicated journalist whose other progressive,
thought-provoking books and articles have covered a
cornucopia of topics ranging from reparations to
rhetoric to religion. With the fairly exhaustive and
painstakingly-researched
Freedom’s Journal, she proves herself a gifted
historian, for this engaging tome is an invaluable
teaching tool for the ages, touching on more themes than
can be satisfactorily addressed in this space.
Don’t be surprised to get
goose bumps or to be moved to tears periodically while
revisiting the dawn of the black press, since many of
the issues so eloquently and bravely addressed by
ancestors Cornish and Russwurm way back when remain the
cornerstone of concerns of vital interest to the
African-American community today.
For
more information on author and her writings, visit her
website:
http://www.jacquelinebacon.com
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Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered
the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It
By H. W. Brands
In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 11 July 2006
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