America's First Freedom Rider: Elizabeth Jennings, Chester A. Arthur, and the Early Fight for Civil Rights
by Jerry Mikorenda
In 1854, traveling was full of danger. Omnibus accidents were commonplace. Pedestrians were regularly attacked by the Five Points’ gangs. Rival police forces watched and argued over who should help. Pickpockets, drunks and kidnappers were all part of the daily street scene in old New York. Yet somehow, they endured and transformed a trading post into the Empire City.
None of this was on Elizabeth Jennings’s mind as she climbed the platform onto the Chatham Street horsecar. But her destination and that of the country took a sudden turn when the conductor told her to wait for the next car because it had “her people” in it. When she refused to step off the bus, she was assaulted by the conductor who was aided by a NY police officer. On February 22, 1855, Elizabeth Jennings v. Third Avenue Rail Road case was settled. Seeking $500 in damages, the jury stunned the courtroom with a $250 verdict in Lizzie’s favor. Future US president Chester A. Arthur was Jennings attorney and their lives would be forever onward intertwined.
This is the story of what happened that day. It’s also the story of Jennings and Arthur’s families, the struggle for equality, and race relations. It’s the history of America at its most despicable and most exhilarating. Yet few historians know of Elizabeth Jennings or the impact she had on desegregating public transit.
"Here's a story every American should know. Cleanly and smartly, Jerry Mikorenda brings burgeoning 19th-century New York alive, laying bare the connections between his heroine's courageous stand and the long struggle for civil rights. America's First Freedom Rider is an impressive and inspiring weaving of our history and a timely reminder that one person can change the world." --Stewart O'Nan, author of The Circus Fire and Everyday People "Jerry Mikorenda brings to light the little-known story of civil rights champion Elizabeth Jennings, who broke racial barriers by integrating New York's transit system a century before Rosa Parks. This is an important addition to the city's complex history and one that should not be missed." --Lisa Keller, Professor of History, Purchase College SUNY & Executive Editor of the Encyclopedia of New York City (2nd Ed.)
Jerry Mikorenda’s articles and op-eds have appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, The Boston Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, and Wall Street Journal as well as various other magazines. He is also a graduate of the prestigious Master’s Program at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School.
978-1493041343
Kwame Dawes is not a native Nebraskan. Born in Ghana, he later moved to Jamaica where he spent most of his childhood and early adulthood. In 1992, he relocated to the United States and eventually found himself an American living in Lincoln, Nebraska.
This beautiful and evocative collection of poems, Nebraska, explores a constant theme in Dawes's work-the intersection of memory, home, and artistic invention. The poems, set against the backdrop of Nebraska's discrete cycle of seasons, are meditative even as they search for a sense of place in a new landscape. While he shovels snow or walks in the bitter cold to his car, he is engulfed with memories of Kingston, and yet when he travels, he finds himself longing for the open space of the plains and the first snowfall. With a strong sense of place and haunting memories, Dawes grapples with life in Nebraska as a transplant.
Kwame Dawes is Chancellor's Professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. He is the author of twenty-one books of poetry and author or editor of numerous other books of poetry, fiction, criticism, and essays. Dawes's most recent books include the poetry collections City of Bones: A Testament and Punta de Burro and the novel Bivouac. He is director of the African Poetry Book Fund, editor of the award-winning African Poetry Book series, and artistic director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. The winner of numerous awards for his writing and service to the literary community, Dawes was elected a Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets, named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2,018, and won the prestigious Windham/Campbell Award for Poetry in 2019.
Nebraska: Poems by Kwame Dawes
University of Nebraska Press
ISBN 978-1-4962-2123-0 US $19.95
nebraskapress.unl.edu
This volume brings together respected scholars to examine the intersections of race, justice, and activism in direct relation to the teaching and learning of critical literacy. The authors focus on literacy praxis that reflect how students-with the loving, critical support of teachers and teacher educators engage in resistance work and collaborate for social change. Each chapter theorizes how students and adults initiate and/or participate in important justice work, how their engagements are situated within a critical literacy lens, and what their engagements look like in schools and communities. The authors also explore the importance of this work in the context of current sociopolitical developments, including police shootings, deportations, and persistent educational inequities.
Contributors include Maneka D. Brooks, Tamara Butler, Gerald Campano, Limarys Caraballo, Jamila Lyiscott, Danny C. Martinez, Leigh Patel, Grace Player, Detra Price-Dennis, Elaine Richardson, Donja Thomas, Vaughn W. M. Watson.
Valerie Kinloch is the Renee and Richard Goldman Dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Education. Her books include Crossing Boundaries Teaching and Learning with Urban Youth; Urban Literacies: Critical Perspectives on Language, Learning, and Community; and Harlem on Our Minds: Place, Race, and the Literacies of Urban Youth.
Tanja Burkhard is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pittsburgh School of Education. Carlotta Penn is director of community partnerships at The Ohio State University College of Education and Human Ecology.
"This volume poweifully and convincingly centers arguments on the significance of antiracist teacher preparation, culturally responsive pedagogy, the power of engaging youth in their own learning, and the necessity of community activism."
-From the Foreword by Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Teachers College, Columbia University
"Race, Justice, and Activism in Literacy Instruction provides needed sustenance for literacy educators committed to joining communities toward racial justice."
-Django Paris, James A. & Cherry A. Banks Professor of Multicultural Education, University of Washington
Race, Justice, and Activism in Literacy Instruction
edited by Valerie Kinlock, Tanja Burkhard, and Carlotta Penn
Teachers College Press
ISBN: 978-0-8077-6321-6
During the Cold War, national discourse strove for unity through patriotism and political moderation to face a common enemy. Some authors and intellectuals supported that narrative by casting America's complicated history with race and poverty as moral rather than merely political problems. Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America examines southern literature and the culture within the United States from the period just before the Cold War through the civil rights movement to show how this literature won a significant place in Cold War culture and shaped the nation through the time of Hillbilly Elegy.
Tackling cultural issues in the country through subtext and metaphor, the works of authors like William Faulkner, Lillian Smith, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, and Walker Percy redefined "South" as much more than a geographical identity within an empire. The "South" has become a racially coded sociopolitical and cultural identity associated with white populist conservatism that breaks geographical boundaries and, as it has in the past, continues to have a disproportionate influence on the nation's future and values.
"Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America is an important book that adds a layer of texture and nuance to our understanding of twentieth-century southern literature. By placing key southern writers in dialogue with each other and in context with major national and international sociopolitical currents, Jordan Dominy demonstrates that southern writing resonates far beyond the region. In fact, the South functioned as a vital center, to use a key phrase from the book, that defined American political culture and continues to have a disproportionate influence today."
-David A. Davis, author of World War I and Southern Modernism
Jordan J. Dominy is assistant professor of English at Savannah State University. He teaches and studies American and US southern literature and popular culture.
Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America
by Jordan J. Dominy
University Press of Mississippi
www.upnss.state.ms.us
ISBN: 978-1-4968-2641-1
Born on the tiny island of Grenada, he set sail for Harlem during the Renaissance, then to Europe in the aftermath of World War I, where he was among the first pioneers to introduce jazz music to the world. During the legendary Jazz Age in Paris, Briggs's trumpet provided the soundtrack while Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and the rest of the Lost Generation got drunk. By the 1930s, Briggs was considered "the Louis Armstrong of Paris," and was the peer of the greatest names of his time, from Josephine Baker to Django Reinhardt. Even during the Great Depression, he was secure as "the greatest trumpeter in Europe." He did not, however, heed warnings to leave Paris before it fell to the Nazis, and in 1940, he was arrested and sent to the prison camp at Saint Denis. What happened at that camp, and the role Briggs played in it, is truly unforgettable.
Better Days Will Come Again, based on groundbreaking research and including unprecedented access to Briggs's oral memoir, is a crucial document of jazz history, a fast-paced epic, and an entirely original tale of survival.
Travis Atria is the author, with Todd Mayfield, Of Traveling Soul: The Life of Curtis Mayfield. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Billboard, Wax Poetics, and other publications. He lives in Gainesville, Florida.
Better Days Will Come Again: The Life of Arthur Briggs, Jazz Genius of Harlem, Paris, and a Nazi Prison Camp
by Travis Atria
Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 978-0-914090-10-6
Offering a compelling history of the evolution, impact, and ultimate demise of a New-Deal-era hidden "cabinet" to Franklin Delano Roosevelt on racial affairs, historian Jill Watts' THE BLACK CABINET: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt (Grove Press; May 12,2020; ISBN: 978-0-8021-2910-9) illuminates the progress of black citizenship between Reconstruction and the modem Civil Rights movement.
In 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the presidency with the help of key African American defectors from the Republican Party. At the time, most African Americans lived in poverty, denied citizenship rights and terrorized by white violence. As the New Deal began, a black Brain Trust joined the administration and began documenting and addressing the economic hardship and systemic inequalities African Americans faced. They became known as the Black Cabinet, but the environment they faced was reluctant, often hostile, to change.
"Will the New Deal be a square deal for the Negro?" The black press wondered The Black Cabinet set out to devise solutions to the widespread exclusion of black people from its programs, whether by inventing tools to measure discrimination or by calling attention to the administration's failures. Led by Mary McLeod Bethune, an educator and friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, they were instrumental to Roosevelt's continued success with black voters. Operating mostly behind the scenes, they helped push Roosevelt to sign an executive order that outlawed discrimination in the defense industry. They saw victories—jobs and collective agriculture programs that lifted many from poverty—and defeats—the bulldozing of black neighborhoods to build public housing reserved only for whites; Roosevelt's refusal to get behind federal anti-lynching legislation. The Black Cabinet never won official recognition from the president, and with his death, it disappeared from view. But it had changed history. Eventually, one of its members would go on to be the first African American cabinet secretary; another, the first African American federal judge and mentor to Thurgood Marshall.
Masterfully researched and dramatically told, THE BLACK CABINET brings to life a forgotten generation of leaders who fought post-Reconstruction racial apartheid and whose work served as a bridge that Civil Rights activists traveled to achieve the victories of the 1950s and '60s.
Jill Watts is the author of Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood, Mae West: An Icon in Black and White, and God, Harlem USA: The Father Divine Story. She teaches in the History department at California State University San Marcos.
"A well-researched, urgent, and necessary history of black folks during the New Deal that excavates the too often ignored history of black female genius behind racial progress."
- Michael Eric Dyson, York Times bestselling author
THE BLACK CABINET: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt
by Jill Watts
Grove Press
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2910-9
New York Times bestselling author Erik Larson is known for expertly transporting readers to past worlds; even stories we think we know come to life in a different way in his hands. With his remarkable new work of nonfiction, The Splendid and the Vile, Larson once again turns history into a thriller, taking us into the heart of war-torn England for the period of May 10, 1940, through May 10, 1941 — Winston Churchill's first year as prime minister.
The inspiration for The Splendid and the Vile came when Larson moved to Manhattan a few years ago. "It was only then that I came to understand, with sudden clarity, how different the experience of September 11, 2001, was for New Yorkers, since it was their city that was under attack," says Larson. Almost immediately, he wondered how Londoners could have endured Germany's aerial assault of 1940-41: fifty-seven consecutive nights of bombing, followed by an intensifying series of night time raids over the next six months. "In particular, I thought about Winston Churchill, who had to lead his country through such horror while aware that it was likely only a preamble to worse," Larson says. "I decided to look into how he, his family and advisors withstood it," Larson says.
The Splendid and the Vile is not meant to be a definitive account of Churchill, as that has been done. What it is instead is an intimate account of how Churchill and his inner circle went about surviving on a daily basis during the year when Churchill became Churchill, the cigar-smoking bulldog we all think we know. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London's darkest year through the day-to-day experiences of Churchill; his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents' wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; her illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the cadre of close advisors who comprised Churchill's "Secret Circle," including his love-struck private secretary, John Colville; newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook; and the Rasputin-like Frederick Lindemann.
Like his monumental In the Garden of Beasts and Dead Wake, the result is a captivating book that is rich in atmosphere and personal stories. Thrillingly told and full of vivid character portraits, The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today's political dysfunction and back to a time when words mattered, courage prevailed, and everything was at stake.
About the Author
ERIK LARSON is the author of five national bestsellers; Dead Wake, In the Garden of Beasts, Thunderstruck, The Devil in the White City, and Isaac's Storm, which have collectively sold more than nine million copies. His books have been published in nearly twenty countries.
THE SPLENDID AND THE VILE:
A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson Crown
ISBN: 978-0-385-34871-3
eriklarsonbooks.com
A conversation with Erik Larson, author of THE SPLENDID AND THE VILE
Q: You often write about fascinating events in history that most of us have never before heard of, but much is already known about Winston Churchill. What made you decide to write about his first year—May 10,1940-May 10,1941—as prime minister?
A: It wasn't so much the first year that drew me, but rather that the year coincided with Germany's bombing campaign against London. The city experienced in effect a succession of 9/11's—fifty-seven consecutive nights of bombing, followed by an intensifying series of nighttime raids over the next six months. I wanted to know how anyone could have endured that kind of ordeal, and decided the best way to tell it was through the daily experience of Churchill, his family, and his inner circle. By looking at the period through this window, I found all kinds of things that scholars writing more traditional histories and biographies tend to ignore.
Q: What was the inspiration for the book's title?
A: It was inspired by a diary entry made by one of my key characters, John Colville, a member of Churchill's cadre of private secretaries. Against all national-security regulations, Colville kept a detailed—and accurate—daily record of his time with Churchill, in which he proved himself to be both an astute observer of events and a writer of grace and wit. In one passage he described an intense air raid, which he watched from a bedroom window. It conjured in him a sense of awe. "Never." he wrote, "was there such a contrast of natural splendor and human vileness."
Q: Reading the book, it's difficult not to compare the political climate of that time with our current political moment. What do you see as the primary differences?
A: Well, the primary difference is that Churchill was a brilliant man who understood the necessity of bringing his country together in the face of an existential threat. He used his incredible oratorical skills not to divide, but rather to teach the British public the art of being fearless. Needless to say, we see something rather different at play now in Britain and in America.
Q: Did spending so much time with Churchill—reading his words, examining his actions— make you think differently about leadership? What were Churchill's strengths and flaws as a leader?
A: What struck me about Churchill was his gift for making Britons feel stronger and better about themselves. His best speeches combined sober assessment with an unshakeable confidence that Britain would not merely endure, but prevail. He had a rich knowledge of history, and this gave him perspective. He never underestimated the danger Britain faced, but likewise never lost sight of its strength. He also led by example—climbing to the rooftops to watch air-raids unfold; visiting bombed districts, despite the likelihood of fresh attacks; and ordering acts of defiance that persuaded allies, especially the United States, that Britain intended to fight to the end. He was not, however, a particularly good military strategist or tactician. And he was, apparently, a pain to work for: Impulsive, demanding, and inconsiderate—but his staff and ministers loved him all the same.
Q: You bring key members of Churchill's inner circle to life, among them his seventeen-year old daughter, Mary Churchill, and his private secretary, John Colville. What resources did you call on to do that, and why did you see them as important to the story?
A: To me, context is everything. Among the most powerful tools for capturing it are diaries, like those left by Mary Churchill and Colville and many others, which help place Churchill in a living landscape. I love, for example, that both Mary and her mother, Clementine, felt great anxiety about Churchill repeatedly flying to France in the spring of 1940 to meet with French leaders. Such anxiety about flying is something you don't find expressed very often in historical sources and yet it's something a lot of us routinely experience, me included. You would not have caught me flying to France in a twin-engine Flamingo aircraft, with the skies full of German fighters and cities along the French coast visibly burning, but Churchill did it—and, what's more, loved it.
Q: This is your eighth book. Has your research and writing process changed over the years?
A: As always I relied heavily on archival materials. That's the fun of it. I traveled to various far-flung locales, including archives in London, Cambridge and Oxford, where I spent many happy hours looking through old letters and records. This may sound odd, but I never really know what I'm looking for—until I find it. For example, I spent a good deal of time looking into the records on Churchill's prime ministerial country home. Chequers, which became for him a kind of secret weapon, and for me, almost a living character. I was delighted to find that a particular section of the estate, the "Long Walk Wood," was chronically overrun with rabbits — not exactly a world-shaking fact, but, nonetheless it's in the book. More often, however, my archival spelunking turned up tragic details and episodes, like the three-month investigation by Scotland Yard into the disappearance of an employee of a London architectural firm who, as it turned out, had been "blown to bits" by a German bomb. This, alas, did not make it into the book, but it was important to know it all the same.
Q: What did you learn about Churchill that most surprised you?
A: What most surprised me was Churchill's sense of fun. He would dance, solo, to martial tunes played on the gramophone at Chequers, and at least once engaged in a series of bayonet drills as he marched, while his dinner guests looked on. He loved listening to his favorite songs, among them "Run Rabbit Run" and tunes by Gilbert and Sullivan, and he adored movies, which he watched nightly in the home cinema at Ditchley, another country estate, where he stayed on weekends when the moon was full and air-raids thus more likely to occur. No matter how grave the events of the war, he was always able to compartmentalize his gloom and make room for laughter.
Q: The Splendid and the Vile is full of fascinating characters. Do you have a favorite among them?
A: My favorite, hands down, is Mary Churchill, who when the action in the book begins is 17 years old. I was delighted to receive permission from her daughter, Emma Soames, to read and excerpt her diary, which is held by the Churchill Archives Center in Cambridge, England. Mary was a smart, charming raconteur, and her observations about her friends, her joyous life, and her frustration at not being able to take a more direct part in defending England, provide a rich and humane thread throughout the narrative—right down to episodes of "snogging" in haylofts and moments when young RAF pilots would buzz her and her friends at treetop altitude, thrilling them no end.
Q: You sometimes included the German perspective in the book, most often Goring's, who was commander of the German air force (Luftwaffe), Why?
A: I felt it was very important to convey how Germany's bombing campaign got started, and how it evolved in response to Churchill's open defiance. Also, Goring and Goebbels, like most Nazis, are spine-chilling characters. It was horrifying and illuminating to read Goebbels' diary entry that expressed his delight in his family and Christmas, while also reveling in the latest Nazi offenses against Jews. The Gennan narrative also helps ramp up the overall sense of foreboding and suspense as Goring plans each new aerial atrocity. I include the German fighter ace Adolf Galland mainly as a vehicle to describe the creation and evolution of the Luftwaffe and to present a nuanced, human element to the German side of the action. Galland loved the test of combat, but proved in the end to be a decent guy who won the respect of his opponents in the RAF. He also played an interesting role in one of the final events in the book, which I won't reveal here.
Q: With so much written about Churchill, how did you manage to avoid drowning in so vast a sea of books and articles? And did you find it at all discouraging?
A: My interest was very focused: How did Churchill and his circle endure Hitler's bombing campaign—how really? That was my lens, and it let me search in a more targeted way for anything that would help me tell the story. And, as I've found before, when you look at history through a new lens, you see things in a new way. Above all I wanted to present as rich a sense as possible of that awful time, so that readers could sink into the story and live it alongside the various characters. I did of course have to do a lot of advance reading to make sure I knew the fundamental history, but I resolved early on that I would not try to read everything. That's a fool's errand. As soon as I could, I began my archival research in hopes that my own personal Churchill would rise from the dust. I also made it a point to avoid watching all TV and movie portrayals of him, no matter how good they were said to be. I did not want someone else's vision clouding my own.
Q: Suppose you had a time machine: In the course of your research, did you come across any particular moment that you would love to visit in real time?
A: Many! I'd love to have been present for Hitler's July 19, 1940, "peace offering" speech in Berlin, just to see what it was like to be in that audience, and to sense the mad enthusiasm of those around me. I'd like to experience one of the major air-raids on London—provided my safe escape was part of the arrangement. But above all I'd love to be able to Join Churchill and company for one of those amazing dinners at Chequers or Ditchley, and savor the dazzling conversation, and maybe get a glimpse of Churchill in his gold-dragon dressing gown or his pale blue siren suit, as he danced to the strains of a Gilbert & Sullivan opera or to the score of the Wizard of Oz, another favorite.
