Print Books
Memory of Kin: Stories About Family by Black Writers by Mary Helen Washington
PS509.F27 M46 1991
Critic, essayist, and anthologist Mary Helen Washington has chosen as the theme of her newest collection "the family as a living mystery." She selected nineteen stories and twelve poems by some of this century's leading black authors that oblige the reader to observe the complexities of the family in new and provocative ways.
The Black Calhouns: From Civil War to Civil Rights, with one African American Family by Gail Lumet Buckley
CT274.C34 B83 2016
In The Black Calhouns, Gail Lumet Buckley–daughter of actress Lena Horne–delves deep into her family history, detailing the experiences of an extraordinary African American family from Civil War to Civil Rights. Beginning with her great-great grandfather Moses Calhoun, a house slave who used the rare advantage of his education to become a successful businessman in postwar Atlanta, Buckley follows her family’s two branches: one that stayed in the South, and the other that settled in Brooklyn. Through the lens of her relatives’ momentous lives, Buckley examines major events throughout American history. From Atlanta during Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow, from the two World Wars to New York City during the Harlem Renaissance and then the Civil Rights Movement, this ambitious, brilliant family witnessed and participated in the most crucial events of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Combining personal and national history, The Black Calhouns is a vibrant portrait of six generations during dynamic times of struggle and triumph.
The Best Kept Secret: Single Black Fathers by Roberta L. Coles
HQ759.915 .C65 2009
The Best Kept Secret studies the often-overlooked group of single, African American custodial fathers. While the media focuses on the increase of single mothers and the decline in marriage in the black community, Roberta Coles paints a nuanced picture of single black dads. Based on qualitative research, the author looks at the parenting experience of these fathers, who may have become single parents through nonmarital births, divorce, widowhood and adoption. The fathers, ranging in age from 20 to 76, discuss their motivations for taking custody of their children, what roles they enact as parents, what they hope for their children, how they socialize their children in a diverse society, how parenting daughters differs from sons, and what parenting has done for them personally. Coles then recommends policy changes to improve the situations for children and single parents-particularly often-unseen fathers. Filled with dynamic interviews and intriguing case studies, The Best Kept Secret shows that single black custodial fathers do exist and looks at the ways raising children has shaped their lives.
Family Pride: The Complete Guide to Tracing African-American Genealogy by Donna Beasley
E185.96 .B36 1997
Beasley can trace her family back to 1790, but it has taken her 14 years to do so. The story of how she succeeded, this book illustrates how her steps can be followed by other amateur genealogists. In separate chapters, Beasley discusses getting started; using oral history, the census, church, manumission records and records from the Freedman's Bureau and the Negro baseball leagues, and searching the Internet. She provides instructions on how to conduct the search, gather findings, and publish the finished manuscript. Three chapters address specifically periods of slavery and freedom and the African connection. Six appendixes provide useful details on African American historical and genealogical societies, libraries and consulates, family information forms, and more.
Black Genealogy by Charles L. Blockson
CS21 .B55 1991
First published in 1977, Black Genealogy remains a unique guide guide among standard genealogical references. Author Charles Blockson, a noted genealogist and African American historian, traced his own family roots back through the 18th century. along his journey, he discovered obstacles and advantages that make searching for black family history a rewarding experience.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
PS3573 .A425 C6 1985
A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown, the novel draws readers into its rich and memorable portrayals of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery and Sofia and their experience. The Color Purple broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, narrating the lives of women through their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery. Deeply compassionate and beautifully imagined, Alice Walker’s epic carries readers on a spirit-affirming journey towards redemption and love.
Becoming by Michelle Obama
E909 .O24 A3 2018
In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it—in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations—and whose story inspires us to do the same.
Down the up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Family by Bruce D. Haynes and Syma Solovitch
F128.9.N4 H38 2017
Down the Up Staircase tells the history of three generations of a black middle-class family against the backdrop of the three-story brownstone at 411 Convent Avenue in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem. The home once belonged to its patriarch, George Edmund Haynes, a migrant from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, who went on to become the first African American to earn a PhD at Columbia University and found the National Urban League. He was the first prominent black economist in the country, the first to predict the great sweeping migration of blacks from the rural South to the urban North, a power broker of the Harlem Renaissance, and the first black to serve in a federal sub-cabinet post, where he mobilized the new Black migrants for the war effort. His wife, Elizabeth Ross Haynes, was a noted children's author of the period and a prominent social scientist. Yet these early advances and gains provided little anchor to the succeeding generations. Their son had dreamed of becoming an engineer but spent his entire career as a parole officer in the Bronx. Their eldest grandson graduated from the prestigious Horace Mann High School but spent much of his adult life in and out of drug rehabilitation clinics, psychiatric hospitals, and the streets. Their second grandson was slain on the streets of the Bronx during his last semester of college, at age twenty-three. Only the youngest grandson--the book's author, Bruce Haynes--was able to build on the gains of his forefathers. Haynes brings sociological insight to a familiar American tale, one where the notion of social mobility and black middle class is a tenuous term.
African American Families Today: Myths and Realities by Angela J. Hattery and Earl Smith
E185.86 .S637 2012
From teen pregnancy and single parenting to athletics and HIV/AIDS, myths about African American families abound. This provocative book by two acclaimed scholars of race and ethnicity debunks many common myths about black families in America, sharing stories and drawing on the latest research to show the realities. African American Families Today examines the well-being of African American families around topics including marriage, health, education, incarceration, wealth, and more. Authors Angela J. Hattery and Earl Smith show that even though the election of the first African American president, Barack Obama, has been symbolically important for African Americans, his presidency has not had a measurable impact on the daily lives of African American families. As the book shows, racial inequality persists-we're clearly not in a "post-racial" society.
eBooks
Black Families by Harriet Pipes McAdoo
Following the success of its best-selling predecessors, the Fourth Edition of Harriette Pipes McAdoo′s Black Families retains several now classic contributions while including updated versions of earlier chapters and many entirely new chapters. The goal through each revision of this core text has been to compile a book that focuses on positive dimensions of African American families. The book remains the most complete assessment of black families available in both depth and breadth of coverage.
The African American Father: A Survey of Recent Scholarly Research by Shonda Lawrence
This timely volume covers a wide range of topical areas including but not limited to The Myth of the Missing fathers, defining African American fatherhood, perceptions of fatherhood, capacities of fathers, voices of fathers, fatherhood programs, and father-daughter relationships. This is a remarkable book, an extensive bibliography, and tremendous resource for both teaching and research rolled into one.
On the Move: A Black Family's Western Saga by S.R. Martin
In distinctive, engaging prose, S. R. Martin Jr. crafts the story of his forebears and their westward journey, begun even before the great black migration that occurred around the two world wars. By narrating the struggles and triumphs of his family—both paternal and maternal—during their move west, he illuminates an under-studied facet of African American history. As Martin explains it, he and his brother “arrived on the scene at the confluence of these family streams in time to catch a ride to the shining sea.” Students, scholars, and interested general readers of modern African American history and sociology will be greatly rewarded by reading this warm and vivid personal and family memoir.
Fathering from the Margins: An Intimate Examination of Black Fatherhood by Aasha M. Abdill
Despite a decade of sociological research documenting black fathers 'significant level of engagement with their children, stereotypes of black men as “deadbeat dads” still shape popular perceptions and scholarly discourse. In Fathering from the Margins, sociologist Aasha M. Abdill draws on four years of fieldwork in low-income, predominantly black Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, to dispel these destructive assumptions. She considers the obstacles faced—and the strategies used—by black men with children. Abdill presents qualitative and quantitative evidence that confirms the increasing presence of black fathers in their communities, arguing that changing social norms about gender roles in black families have shifted fathering behaviors. Black men in communities such as Bed-Stuy still face social and structural disadvantages, including disproportionate unemployment and incarceration, with significant implications for family life. Against this backdrop, black fathers attempt to reconcile contradictory beliefs about what makes one a good father and what makes one a respected man by developing different strategies for expressing affection and providing parental support. Black men's involvement with their children is affected by the attitudes of their peers, the media, and especially the women of their families and communities: from the grandmothers who often become gatekeepers to involvement in a child's life to the female-dominated sectors of childcare, primary school, and family-service provision. Abdill shows how supporting black men in their quest to be—and be seen as—family men is the key to securing not only their children's well-being but also their own.
The Pecan Orchard: Journey of a Sharecropper's Daughter by Peggy Vonsherie Allen
This is a true story of the struggle, survival, and ultimate success of a large black family in south Alabama who, in the middle decades of the 20th century, lifted themselves out of poverty to achieve the American dream of property ownership. Descended from slaves and sharecroppers in the Black Belt region, this family of hard-working parents and their thirteen children is mentored by its matriarch, Moa, the author's beloved great grandmother, who passes on to the family, along with other cultural wealth, her recipe for moonshine. Without rancor or blame, and even with occasional humor, The Pecan Orchard offers a window into the inequities between blacks and whites in a small southern town still emerging from Jim Crow attitudes. Told in clean, straightforward prose, the story radiates the suffocating midday heat of summertime cotton fields and the biting winter wind sifting through porous shanty walls. It conveys the implicit shame in “Colored Only” restrooms, drinking fountains, and eating areas; the beaming satisfaction of a job well done recognized by others; the “yessum” manners required of southern society; and the joyful moments, shared memories, and loving bonds that sustain—and even raise—a proud family.
The Myth of the Missing Black Father by Roberta Coles and Charles Green
Common stereotypes portray black fathers as being largely absent from their families. Yet while black fathers are less likely than white and Hispanic fathers to marry their child's mother, many continue to parent through cohabitation and visitation, providing caretaking, financial, and other in-kind support. This volume captures the meaning and practice of black fatherhood in its many manifestations, exploring two-parent families, cohabitation, single custodial fathering, stepfathering, noncustodial visitation, and parenting by extended family members and friends. Contributors examine ways that black men perceive and decipher their parenting responsibilities, paying careful attention to psychosocial, economic, and political factors that affect the ability to parent. Chapters compare the diversity of African American fatherhood with negative portrayals in politics, academia, and literature and, through qualitative analysis and original profiles, illustrate the struggle and intent of many black fathers to be responsible caregivers. This collection also includes interviews with daughters of absent fathers and concludes with the effects of certain policy decisions on responsible parenting.
In Their Voices: Black Americans on Transracial Adoption by Rhonda M. Roorda
While many proponents of transracial adoption claim that American society is increasingly becoming' color-blind,' a growing body of research reveals that for transracial adoptees of all backgrounds, racial identity does matter. Rhonda M. Roorda elaborates significantly on that finding, specifically studying the effects of the adoption of black and biracial children by white parents. She incorporates diverse perspectives on transracial adoption by concerned black Americans of various ages, including those who lived through Jim Crow and the Civil Rights era. All her interviewees have been involved either personally or professionally in the lives of transracial adoptees, and they offer strategies for navigating systemic racial inequalities while affirming the importance of black communities in the lives of transracial adoptive families. In Their Voices is for parents, child-welfare providers, social workers, psychologists, educators, therapists, and adoptees from all backgrounds who seek clarity about this phenomenon. The author examines how social attitudes and federal policies concerning transracial adoption have changed over the last several decades. She also includes suggestions on how to revise transracial adoption policy to better reflect the needs of transracial adoptive families. Perhaps most important, In Their Voices is packed with advice for parents who are invested in nurturing a positive self-image in their adopted children of color and the crucial perspectives those parents should consider when raising their children. It offers adoptees of color encouragement in overcoming discrimination and explains why a 'race-neutral' environment, maintained by so many white parents, is not ideal for adoptees or their families.
Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships, and Motherhood Among Black Women by Mignon Moore
Mignon R. Moore brings to light the family life of a group that has been largely invisible—gay women of color—in a book that challenges long-standing ideas about racial identity, family formation, and motherhood. Drawing from interviews and surveys of one hundred black gay women in New York City, Invisible Families explores the ways that race and class have influenced how these women understand their sexual orientation, find partners, and form families. In particular, the study looks at the ways in which the past experiences of women who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s shape their thinking, and have structured their lives in communities that are not always accepting of their openly gay status. Overturning generalizations about lesbian families derived largely from research focused on white, middle-class feminists, Invisible Families reveals experiences within black American and Caribbean communities as it asks how people with multiple stigmatized identities imagine and construct an individual and collective sense of self.
Ahead of Her Time in Yesteryear: Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman Comes of Age in a Southern African American Family by Kibibi V. Mack-Shelton
Born into a relatively privileged family, Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman earned a reputation as a maverick in her life-long home of Orangeburg, South Carolina, a semi-rural community where race and class were very much governed by the Jim Crow laws. Educated at Nashville's Fisk University, Zimmerman returned to Orangeburg to teach school, serve her community, and champion equal rights for African Americans and women. She was a woman far ahead of her time. Kibibi V. Mack-Shelton offers a vivid portrayal of the kind of black family seldom recognized for its role in the development of the African American community after the Civil War. At a time when “separate-but-equal” usually meant suffering and injustice for the black community, South Carolina families such as the Tatnalls, Pierces, and Zimmermans achieved a level of financial and social success rivaling that of many white families. Drawing heavily on the oral accounts of Geraldyne Pierce Zimmerman, Mack-Shelton draws the reader into the lives of the African American elite of the early twentieth century. Her captivating narrative style brings to life many complicated topics: how skin color affected interracial interactions and class distinctions within the black community itself, the role of education for women and for African Americans in general, and the ways in which cultural ideas about family and community are simultaneously preserved and transformed over the span of generations.
Stormy Weather: Middle-Class African American Marriages Between the Two World Wars by Anastasia C. Curwood
The so-called New Negroes of the period between World Wars I and II embodied a new sense of racial pride and upward mobility for the race. Many of them thought that relationships between spouses could be a crucial factor in realizing this dream. But there was little agreement about how spousal relationships should actually function in an ideal New Negro marriage. Shedding light on an often-overlooked aspect of African American social history, Anastasia Curwood explores the public and private negotiations over gender relationships inside marriage that consumed upwardly mobile black Americans between 1918 and 1942.Curwood uses private correspondence between spouses, including her own grandparents, and public writings from leading figures of the era to investigate African Americans' deepest hopes within their private lives. She follows changes and conflicts in African American marital ideals--and demonstrates how those ideals sometimes clashed with reality. In the process, Curwood shows how New Negro marriages are an especially rich site for assessing the interactions of racial, class, and gender identities.
Daisy Turner's Kin: An African American Family Saga by Jane C. Beck
A daughter of freed African American slaves, Daisy Turner became a living repository of history. The family narrative entrusted to her--'a well-polished artifact, an heirloom that had been carefully preserved'--began among the Yoruba in West Africa and continued with her own century and more of life. In 1983, folklorist Jane Beck began a series of interviews with Turner, then one hundred years old and still relating four generations of oral history. Beck uses Turner's storytelling to build the Turner family saga, using at its foundation the oft-repeated touchstone stories at the heart of their experiences: the abduction into slavery of Turner's African ancestors; Daisy's father Alec Turner learning to read; his return as a soldier to his former plantation to kill his former overseer; and Daisy's childhood stand against racism. Other stories re-create enslavement and her father's life in Vermont--in short, the range of life events large and small, transmitted by means so alive as to include voice inflections. Beck, at the same time, weaves in historical research and offers a folklorist's perspective on oral history and the hazards--and uses--of memory. Publication of this book is supported by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the L. J. and Mary C. Skaggs Folklore Fund.
My Dear Boy: Carrie Hughes's Letters to Langston Hughes, 1926–1938 by Carmaletta M. Williams and John Edgar Tidwell
My Dear Boy brings a largely unexplored dimension of Langston Hughes to light. Carmaletta Williams and John Edgar Tidwell explain that scholars have neglected the vital role that correspondence between Carrie Hughes and her son Langston—Harlem Renaissance icon, renowned poet, playwright, fiction writer, autobiographer, and essayist—played in his work. The more than 120 heretofore unexamined letters presented here are a veritable treasure trove of insights into the relationship between mother Carrie and her renowned son Langston. Until now, a scholarly consensus had begun to emerge, accepting the idea of their lives and his art as simple and transparent. But as Williams and Tidwell argue, this correspondence is precisely where scholars should start in order to understand the underlying complexity in Carrie and Langston's relationship. By employing Family Systems Theory for the first time in Hughes scholarship, they demonstrate that it is an essential heuristic for analyzing the Hughes family and its influence on his work. The study takes the critical truism about Langston's reticence to reveal his inner self and shows how his responses to Carrie were usually not in return letters but, instead, in his created art. Thus My Dear Boy reveals the difficult negotiations between family and art that Langston engaged in as he attempted to sustain an elusive but enduring artistic reputation.
A New Look at Black Families by Charles V. Willie and Richard J. Reddick
Charles Willie and Richard Reddick's A New Look at Black Families has introduced thousands of students to the intricacies of the Black family in American society since its publication in 1976. Using a case study approach, Willie and Reddick show the varieties of the Black family experience and how those experiences vary by socioeconomic status. In addition to examining families of low-income, working, and middle classes, the authors also look to the family experiences of highly successful African Americans to try to identify the elements of the family environment leading to success. The authors puncture the myth of the Black matriarchy prevalent in the popular imagination; and they explore a variety of family configurations, including a family with same-gender parents. The sixth edition has been reorganized and updated throughout. The new Part III—Cases Against and for Black Men and Women—unites two chapters from previous editions into a cohesive discussion of stereotypes and misunderstandings from both scholars and the mass media. Also, a new chapter on the Obama family offers support for cross-gender and cross-racial mentoring, and it demonstrates the value of extended family relations.
Streaming Media
The Last Black Man in San Francisco
Jimmie Fails dreams of reclaiming the Victorian home his grandfather built in the heart of San Francisco. Joined on his quest by his best friend Mont, Jimmie searches for belonging in a rapidly changing city that seems to have left them behind. As he struggles to reconnect with his family and reconstruct the community he longs for, his hopes blind him to the reality of his situation. A wistful odyssey populated by skaters, squatters, street preachers, playwrights, and the other locals on the margins, The Last Black Man in San Francisco is a poignant and sweeping story of friendship, community, and the true meaning of home. Joe Talbot's directorial debut is a deep and resonant meditation on the stories we tell ourselves to find our place in the world.
Quest: A Portrait of an American Family
This New York Times Critics' Pick, filmed with verite intimacy for nearly a decade, is a moving portrait of the Rainey family living in North Philadelphia. Beginning at the dawn of the Obama presidency, Christopher "Quest" Rainey, and his wife, Christine'a "Ma Quest" raise a family while nurturing a community of hip hop artists in their home music studio. It's a safe space where all are welcome, but this creative sanctuary can't always shield them from the strife that grips their neighborhood. Epic in scope, QUEST, is a vivid illumination of race and class in America, and a testament to love, healing and hope.
Check It
This film festival favorite follows a group of African-American gay and transgender youth in one of Washington D.C.'s most violent neighborhoods. After being subjected to constant torment and assault, the group formed their own gang for camaraderie and protection.
Daughters of the Dust
At the dawn of the 20th century, a multi-generational family in the Gullah community on the Sea Islands off of South Carolina - former West African slaves who adopted many of their ancestors' Yoruba traditions - struggle to maintain their cultural heritage and folklore while contemplating a migration to the mainland, even further from their roots. The first wide release by a black female filmmaker, DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST was met with wild critical acclaim and rapturous audience response when it initially opened in 1991. Casting a long legacy, DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST still resonates today, most recently as a major in influence on Beyonce's video album Lemonade.
Big Mama
BIG MAMA follows 18 months in the lives of Viola Dees, an African American grandmother, and Walter, her grandson, as she tries to raise him alone in South Central Los Angeles. Dees has taken care of Walter since the age of four, when his father (Viola's son) died. Walter appears in the documentary as bright and sweetly loving to his grandmother, but also profoundly troubled, affected by his mother's prenatal drug intake. In the documentary, Walter is nine, and Dees is turning 90. The film focuses on the continuous battle against age discrimination faced by Dees and many like her. While contending with her own declining health and a bureaucratic and legal system that continually threatens to force them apart, Dees fights the misconception that age supersedes one's ability to love and care for a child.
A Raisin in the Sun
Based on Lorraine Hansberry’s play. A black family living in a cramped tenement in 1940s Chicago have a chance to improve their lives via an insurance-policy check, but are in disagreement as to how best to spend the windfall.
If Beale Street Could Talk
A young black couple in Harlem is ripped apart by the scheme of a racist cop. The sweethearts must rely on the strength of their community while seeking justice.
Harriet
The incredible true story of Harriet Tubman, and her quest to lead hundreds of slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad.