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Khalil Gibran Muhammad
Great-Grandson
of Nation of Islam Leader Elijah Muhammad
Chosen New
Director of Schomburg Center
NEW YORK, NY
(November 17, 2010) – The New York Public Library (NYPL)
announced today that
Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a
scholar of African-American history from Indiana
University, has been selected as the next Director of
the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture,
effective July 2011.
Dr. Muhammad will
succeed
Howard Dodson Jr., who last year announced his
plan to retire after more than 25 years of leadership,
having cemented the Schomburg as the world’s leading
repository on the global Black experience. The
appointment was made by Library President
Dr. Paul LeClerc after the unanimous recommendation of a
nine-member search committee. (A complete list of
committee members follows.)
“The entire
committee enthusiastically supports and is delighted
with the choice of Khalil Muhammad,” Search Committee
Co-Chairmen and Library Trustees
Gordon J. Davis and
Henry Louis Gates Jr. said in a joint statement. “We are
confident that the extensive search process, involving
many strong candidates out of a pool of more than 200,
has brought to the Schomburg a leader of unique vision
and inspiration who will bridge the many communities and
generations served by the Center.”
Dr. Muhammad, a
native of Chicago’s South Side, has served as Assistant
Professor of History at Indiana University for five
years, where he completed a major interpretive book in
African-American studies,
The Condemnation of Blackness:
Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America,
published recently by Harvard University Press. A
great-grandson of Elijah Muhammad, he has deep roots in
Black history and in Harlem. His father is the noted
Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times photographer Ozier
Muhammad.
“This appointment
is a tremendous honor and for me one of life’s special
moments,” said Dr. Muhammad. “I look forward to
continuing the Schomburg’s remarkable legacy as a
world-class institution that simply has no peer, to
extending its reach to those who may not yet be part of
the Schomburg community, and to the Center’s playing a
crucial role in moving Black history from the margins to
the center of American public discourse.”
“There has never
been a more exciting time in the history of the
Schomburg Center,” said Aysha Schomburg,
great-granddaughter of Schomburg Center founder Arturo
Schomburg, President of the Schomburg Corporation, and
Search Committee member. “Without any doubt, Khalil has
the skills and the passion to build on the legacy. This
is a great day for New York and especially for Harlem.
We welcome him.”
As an academic, Dr. Muhammad is at
the forefront of scholarship on the enduring link
between race and crime, that has shaped and limited
opportunities for African Americans.
“The
Condemnation of Blackness renders an incalculable service to civil
rights scholarship by disrupting one of the nation’s
most insidious, convenient, and resilient explanatory
loops: whites commit crimes, but black males are
criminals. Khalil’s cutting-edge civil rights
scholarship, dynamic university teaching, administrative
experience, grasp of information technology, and
understanding of the Schomburg's uniqueness will sustain
and advance the scholarly mission of this historic
institution," said NYU Professor of History and two-time
Pulitzer Prize winner David Levering Lewis.
Of joining the
Schomburg Center, Dr. Muhammad says, “I treasure this
opportunity to wed my passion for African-American
history with my commitment to scholarship. I am
committed to promoting the voice of Black people as they
have engaged in the most significant issues of our
times. What matters to me is that they and people of the
African Diaspora are able to articulate why their
humanity matters, to show and showcase their
contributions to the world, and to have in a sense a
history that is validated and respected and made
meaningful to humanity at large.”
Dr. Muhammad,
currently nominated for tenure at Indiana University, is
now working on a book-length history of the racial
politics surrounding the creation and swift dissolution
of Prohibition-era “tough-on-crime” laws, specifically
New York’s four-strikes law of 1926. He is also an
Associate Editor of
The Journal of American History.
“My hope for the
Schomburg Center,” he stated, “is to develop it as the
premier brand for historical expertise on the great race
debates of our time; privileging documents, material
culture, visual historical media, living artists, and
widely disseminated scholarship to raise public
consciousness and historical literacy in the United
States and around the globe.” Dr. Muhammad plans to
build upon the Schomburg’s strong beginnings in online
studies under Howard Dodson, “encouraging staff and
users to embrace digital technologies as we reach out to
youth, especially by creatively opening up the Center’s
resources and exhibitions so that they can come to know
us on their own terms.”
“I am most pleased
to extend my congratulations to Khalil Muhammad,” said
Dodson. “I am both confident and excited about his
continuing the Schomburg’s critical mission and
legacy. I have felt strongly that the next Center leader
must come from the next generation, and I intend to help
ensure that he is well prepared to hit the ground
running.”
“After spending
time with Dr. Muhammad, it was easy for me to see why he
was the unanimous choice of the Search Committee. He is
a brilliant scholar doing pathbreaking work in
African-American studies, is eloquent and charismatic,
is deeply committed to the Harlem community, embraces
the Schomburg’s function of acquiring and preserving the
cultural record of peoples of African descent, and knows
how to exploit the Internet to bring young people into
the Schomburg to discover its extraordinary treasures,”
said Dr. LeClerc. “I know that his career at the
Schomburg Center will be one of excellence and
innovation, and that the Center will flourish under his
creative guidance.”
Dr. Muhammad
graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a
B.A. in Economics in 1993. After working at Deloitte &
Touche LLP, he received his Ph.D. in American History
from Rutgers University in 2004, specializing in
20th-century U.S. and African-American history. He spent
two years as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at
the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit criminal
justice reform agency in New York City, before joining
the faculty of Indiana University.
Dr. Muhammad is
married to Stephanie Lawson-Muhammad, a network
operations manager at Verizon Wireless. They have three
children, Gibran Mikkel (10), Jordan Grace (8), and
Justice Marie (4).
The public will have an opportunity to meet Dr. Muhammad
at various future events including a community forum.
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17 November 2010—Harlem,
NY—l to r:
Rev. Dr.
Calvin Butts, Member of The Schomburg Search
Committee and Pastor, Abyssinian Baptist
Church, Howard Dodson, Director, Schomburg
Center, Aysha Schomburg, Member of the
Schomburg Search Committee and Great Grand
Daughter of Arturo Schomburg, Dr. Khalil
Gibran Muhammad and Paul LeClerc, President,
New York Public Library at The New York
Public Library Press Conference announcing
Dr. Khalil Muhammad as the next Director of
the Schomburg Center
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About the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
The Schomburg
Center for Research in Black Culture is recognized as
one of the leading institutions of its kind in the
world. A cultural center as well as a repository, this
Harlem-based modern research library also sponsors a
wide array of interpretive programs, including
exhibitions, scholarly and public forums, and cultural
performances. For over eighty years The Schomburg Center
has collected, preserved, and provided access to
materials documenting the global Black experience and
promoted the study and interpretation of Black history
and culture. To learn more about the Schomburg, visit
www.schomburgcenter.org.
About The
New York Public Library
The New York Public
Library was created in 1895 with the consolidation of
the private libraries of
John Jacob Astor and
James
Lenox with the
Samuel Jones Tilden Trust. The Library provides free
and open access to its physical and electronic
collections and information, as well as to its services.
Its renowned research collections are located in the
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at Fifth Avenue and
42nd Street;
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
at Lincoln Center; the
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in
Harlem; and the
Science,
Industry and Business Library at 34th Street and
Madison Avenue. Eighty-eight branch libraries provide
access to circulating collections and a wide range of
other services in neighborhoods throughout the Bronx,
Manhattan, and Staten Island. Research and circulating
collections combined total more than 50 million items.
In addition, each year the Library presents thousands of
exhibitions and public programs, which include classes
in technology, literacy, and English for speakers of
other languages. All in all The New York Public Library
serves more than 17 million patrons who come through its
doors annually and millions more around the globe who
use its resources at www.nypl.org.
Source:
NYPL
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Meet the Next Director of the Schomburg Center, Dr.
Khalil Gibran Muhammad (video)
Left
of Black—Khalil Gibran Muhammad and Ben Carrington
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Appointment of
Schomburg Center's New Director Angers City's Black
Leadership—November 18, 2010—By Jeff Mays—HARLEM—
Strong opposition is mounting against the appointment of
the latest director of the world renowned Schomburg
Center for Research in Black Culture. The selection of
Khalil Gibran Muhammad,
a 38-year-old professor of African-American history from
Indiana University, the great-grandson of Nation of
Islam leader
Elijah Muhammad, was announced Wednesday by the New
York Public Library, which oversees the Lenox Avenue
cultural institution.
Almost as soon as
the press release went out, prominent politicians
expressed their surprise that Muhammad was chosen over
African-American scholar
Molefi Kete Asante. Asante, a 68-year-old professor
at Temple University, appeared to have the backing of
the Harlem community and black leaders in the city.
Omawale Clay, an aide to State Sen. Bill Perkins and a
member of the Save the Schomburg Coalition, compared the
appointment of Muhammad to the controversial selection
of
Cathie Black as schools chancellor. "This young
brother is a babe in the world of Afro-American,
Afrocentric global politics and culture," said Clay. "He
is a babe in the woods. He is an assistant professor and
he hasn't even obtained tenure yet. No disrespect, but a
brother like that would be an excellent research person
under Molefi Asante."
Councilman Charles Barron also said he was
disappointed
"I don't know this
brother here at all," Barron said of Muhammad. "I have
no comment on him because I have never heard of him." "I
cannot fathom someone who has more credentials, has
written more books, is known by more African leaders and
has had more of an impact on Afrocentric scholarship
than
Molefi Asante out of Temple." Muhammad was selected
by a committee headed by Henry Louis Gates Jr.—DNinfo
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New director
chosen for NYC black research center—17 November 2010—
He will succeed
Howard Dodson Jr..,
who plans to retire after 25 years leading the Schomburg
center. The 80-year-old organization collects,
preserves, and helps scholars to research black life.—Wall
Street Journal
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The Condemnation of Blackness
Race,
Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban
America
By
Khalil Gibran Muhammad
Lynch
mobs, chain gangs, and popular views of
black southern criminals that defined the
Jim Crow South are well known. We know less
about the role of the urban North in shaping
views of race and crime in American society.
Following the 1890 census, the first to
measure the generation of African Americans
born after slavery, crime statistics, new
migration and immigration trends, and
symbolic references to America as the
promised land of opportunity were woven into
a cautionary tale about the exceptional
threat black people posed to modern urban
society. Excessive arrest rates and
overrepresentation in northern prisons were
seen by many whites—liberals and
conservatives, northerners and
southerners—as indisputable proof of blacks’
inferiority. In the heyday of “separate but
equal,” what else but pathology could
explain black failure in the “land of
opportunity”? |
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The idea of black
criminality was crucial to the making of modern urban
America, as were African Americans’ own ideas about race
and crime. Chronicling the emergence of deeply embedded
notions of black people as a dangerous race of criminals
by explicit contrast to working-class whites and
European immigrants, this fascinating book reveals the
influence such ideas have had on urban development and
social policies.
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.— WashingtonPost
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The Warmth of Other Suns
The Epic Story of America's Great
Migration
By Isabel Wilkerson
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a
sharecropper's wife, left Mississippi
for Milwaukee in 1937, after her cousin
was falsely accused of stealing a white
man's turkeys and was almost beaten to
death. In 1945, George Swanson Starling,
a citrus picker, fled Florida for Harlem
after learning of the grove owners'
plans to give him a "necktie party" (a
lynching). Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
made his trek from Louisiana to
California in 1953, embittered by "the
absurdity that he was doing surgery for
the United States Army and couldn't
operate in his own home town." Anchored
to these three stories is Pulitzer
Prize–winning journalist Wilkerson's
magnificent, extensively researched
study of the "great migration," the
exodus of six million black Southerners
out of the terror of Jim Crow to an
"uncertain existence" in the North and
Midwest. Wilkerson deftly incorporates
sociological and historical studies into
the novelistic narratives of Gladney,
Starling, and Pershing settling in new
lands, building anew, and often finding
that they have not left racism behind.
The drama, poignancy, and romance of a
classic immigrant saga pervade this
book, hold the reader in its grasp, and
resonate long after the reading is done.
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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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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
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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 19 November 2010
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