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Love for Liberation

African Independence, Black Power, and a Diaspora Underground

By Robin J. Hayes

During the height of the Cold War, passionate idealists across the US and Africa came together to fight for Black self-determination and the antiracist remaking of society. Beginning with the 1957 Ghanaian independence celebration, the...

Mapping Water in Dominica

Enslavement and Environment under Colonialism

By Mark W. Hauser

Open access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295748733

Dominica, a place once described as “Nature’s Island,” was rich in biodiversity and seemingly abundant water, but in the eighteenth century a brief, failed attempt by colonial administrators to replace cultivation...

Protecting Whiteness

Whitelash and the Rejection of Racial Equality

By Cameron D. Lippard, J. Scott Carter, David G. Embrick, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

The standoff at Cliven Bundy’s ranch, the rise of white identity activists on college campuses, and the viral growth of white nationalist videos on YouTube vividly illustrate the resurgence of white supremacy and overt racism...

Emerald Street

A History of Hip Hop in Seattle

By Daudi Abe. Foreword by Sir Mix-A-Lot

From the first rap battles in Seattle’s Central District to the Grammy stage, hip hop has shaped urban life and the music scene of the Pacific Northwest for more than four decades. In the early...

Slavery and the Post-Black Imagination

By Bertram D. Ashe, Ilka Saal

From Kara Walker’s hellscape antebellum silhouettes to Paul Beatty’s bizarre twist on slavery in The Sellout and from Colson Whitehead’s literal Underground Railroad to Jordan Peele’s body-snatching Get Out, this volume offers commentary on contemporary...

Outriders

Rodeo at the Fringes of the American West

By Rebecca Scofield

Rodeo is a dangerous and painful performance in which only the strongest and most skilled riders succeed. In the popular imagination, the western rodeo hero is often a stoic white man who embodies the toughness...

Knowledge for Justice

An Ethnic Studies Reader

By David K. Yoo, Pamela Grieman, Charlene Villaseñor Black, Danielle Dupuy, Arnold Ling-Chuang Pan

Knowledge for Justice is a joint publication of UCLA’s four ethnic studies research centers: American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, Chicana/o Studies, and African American Studies. The book addresses the intersectional intellectual, social, and political...

Woke Gaming

Digital Challenges to Oppression and Social Injustice

By Kishonna L. Gray, David J. Leonard

From #Gamergate to the 2016 election, to the daily experiences of marginalized perspectives, gaming is entangled with mainstream cultures of systematic exploitation and oppression. Whether visible in the persistent color line that shapes the production,...

Environmental Justice in Postwar America

A Documentary Reader

By Christopher W. Wells, Paul S. Sutter

In the decades after World War II, the American economy entered a period of prolonged growth that created unprecedented affluence—but these developments came at the cost of a host of new environmental problems. Unsurprisingly, a...

Stars for Freedom

Hollywood, Black Celebrities, and the Civil Rights Movement

By Emilie Raymond

From Oprah Winfrey to Angelina Jolie, George Clooney to Leonardo DiCaprio, Americans have come to expect that Hollywood celebrities will be outspoken advocates for social and political causes. However, that wasn’t always the case. As...

The Portland Black Panthers

Empowering Albina and Remaking a City

By Lucas N. N. Burke and Judson L. Jeffries

Portland, Oregon, though widely regarded as a liberal bastion, also has struggled historically with ethnic diversity; indeed, the 2010 census found it to be “America’s whitest major city.” In early recognition of such disparate realities,...

Playing While White

Privilege and Power on and off the Field

By David J. Leonard

Playing While White argues that whiteness matters in sports culture, both on and off the field. Offering critical analysis of athletic stars such as Johnny Manziel, Marshall Henderson, Jordan Spieth, Lance Armstrong, Josh Hamilton, as...

Migrating the Black Body

The African Diaspora and Visual Culture

By Leigh Raiford, Heike Raphael-Hernandez

Migrating the Black Body explores how visual media—from painting to photography, from global independent cinema to Hollywood movies, from posters and broadsides to digital media, from public art to graphic novels—has shaped diasporic imaginings of...

Black Women in Sequence

Re-inking Comics, Graphic Novels, and Anime

By Deborah Elizabeth Whaley

Black Women in Sequence takes readers on a search for women of African descent in comics subculture. From the 1971 appearance of the Skywald Publications character “the Butterfly” - the first Black female superheroine in...

The Rising Tide of Color

Race, State Violence, and Radical Movements across the Pacific

By Moon-Ho Jung

The Rising Tide of Color challenges familiar narratives of race in American history that all too often present the U.S. state as a benevolent force in struggles against white supremacy, especially in the South. Featuring...

Carl Maxey

A Fighting Life

By Jim Kershner

Carl Maxey was, in his own words, “a guy who started from scratch - black scratch.” He was sent, at age five, to the scandal-ridden Spokane Children's Home and then kicked out at age eleven...

Seeking El Dorado

African Americans in California

By Lawrence B. de Graaf, Kevin Mulroy, Quintard Taylor

From the 18th century, African Americans, like many others, have migrated to California to seek fortunes or, often, the more modest goals of being able to find work, own a home, and raise a family...

On American Soil

How Justice Became a Casualty of World War II

By Jack Hamann

During the night of August 14, 1944, an Italian prisoner of war was lynched on the Fort Lawton army base in Seattle--a murder that shocked the nation and the international community. It was a time...

Seattle in Black and White

The Congress of Racial Equality and the Fight for Equal Opportunity

By Joan Singler, Jean C. Durning, Bettylou Valentine, and Martha (Maid) J. Adams

Seattle was a very different city in 1960 than it is today. There were no black bus drivers, sales clerks, or bank tellers. Black children rarely attended the same schools as white children. And few...

Free Boy

A True Story of Slave and Master

By Lorraine McConaghy and Judy Bentley

Free Boy is the story of a 13-year-old slave who escaped from Washington Territory to freedom in Canada on the West's underground railroad.

When James Tilton came to Washington Territory as surveyor-general in the 1850s he...