Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: Religion and the Politics of Race in the Civil War Era and Beyond - REVIEW

by Steven L. Dundas

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory is a hard-hitting history of the impact of racism and religion on the political, social, and economic development of the American nation from Jamestown to today, in particular the nefarious effects of slavery on U.S. society and history. Going back to England’s rise as a colonial power and its use of slavery in its American colonies, Steven L. Dundas examines how racism and the institution of slavery influenced the political and social structure of the United States, beginning with the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Dundas tackles the debates over the Constitution’s three-fifths solution on how to count Black Americans as both property and people, the expansion of the republic and slavery, and the legislation enacted to preserve the Union, including the Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act—as well as their disastrous consequences.

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory squarely faces how racism and religion influenced individual and societal debates over slavery, Manifest Destiny, secession, and civil war. Dundas deals with the struggle for abolition, emancipation, citizenship, and electoral franchise for Black Americans, and the fierce and often violent rollback following Reconstruction’s end, the civil rights movement, and the social and political implications today.

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory is the story of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders; slaves and slaveholders; preachers, politicians, and propagandists; fire-eaters and firebrands; civil rights leaders and champions of white supremacy; and the ordinary people in the South and the North whose lives were impacted by it all.

Potomac Books
ISBN-13 978-1640124882

The Abolitionist’s Journal: Memories of an American Antislavery Family - REVIEW

by James D. Richardson

Over the course of more than twenty years, James D. Richardson and his wife, Lori, retraced the steps of his ancestor, George Richardson (1824-1911), across nine states, uncovering letters, diaries, and more memoirs hidden away. Their journey brought them to the brink of the racial divide in America, revealing how his great-great-grandfather Richardson played a role in the Underground Railroad, served as a chaplain to a Black Union regiment in the Civil War, and founded a college in Texas for the formerly enslaved.

In narrating this compelling life, The Abolitionist's Journal explores the weight of the past as well as the pull of one's ancestral history. The author raises questions about why this fervent commitment to the emancipation of African Americans was nearly forgotten by his family, exploring the racial attitudes in the author's upbringing and the ingrained racism that still plagues our nation today.

As America confronts a generational reckoning on race, these important perspectives add a layer to our larger national story.

High Road Books
ISBN-13‏‎ 978-0826364036

First Among Men: George Washington and the Myth of American Masculinity - REVIEW

by Maurizio Valsania

Dispelling common myths about the first US president and revealing the real George Washington.

George Washington―hero of the French and Indian War, commander in chief of the Continental Army, and first president of the United States―died on December 14, 1799. The myth-making began immediately thereafter, and the Washington mythos crafted after his death remains largely intact. But what do we really know about Washington as an upper-class man?

Washington is frequently portrayed by his biographers as America at its unflinching best: tall, shrewd, determined, resilient, stalwart, and tremendously effective in action. But this aggressive and muscular version of Washington is largely a creation of the nineteenth century. Eighteenth-century ideals of upper-class masculinity would have preferred a man with refined aesthetic tastes, graceful and elegant movements, and the ability and willingness to clearly articulate his emotions. At the same time, these eighteenth-century men subjected themselves to intense hardship and inflicted incredible amounts of violence on each other, their families, their neighbors, and the people they enslaved. In First Among Men: George Washington and the Myth of American Masculinity, Valsania considers Washington's complexity and apparent contradictions in three main areas: his physical life (often bloody, cold, injured, muddy, or otherwise unpleasant), his emotional world (sentimental, loving, and affectionate), and his social persona (carefully constructed and maintained). In each, he notes, the reality diverges from the legend quite drastically. Ultimately, Valsania challenges readers to reconsider what they think they know about Washington.

Aided by new research, documents, and objects that have only recently come to light, First Among Men tells the fascinating story of a living and breathing person who loved, suffered, moved, gestured, dressed, ate, drank, and had sex in ways that may be surprising to many Americans. In this accessible, detailed narrative, Valsania presents a full, complete portrait of Washington as readers have rarely seen him before: as a man, a son, a father, and a friend.

Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN-13‎ 978-1421444475

You Mean It or You Don't: James Baldwin's Radical Challenge - REVIEW

by Jamie McGhee and Adam Hollowell

After a speech at UMass Amherst on February 28, 1984, James Baldwin was asked by a student: "You said that the liberal façade and being a liberal is not enough. Well, what is? What is necessary?" Baldwin responded, "Commitment. That is what is necessary. You mean it or you don't."

Taking up that challenge and drawing from Baldwin's fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and interviews, You Mean It or You Don't will spur today's progressives from conviction to action. It is not enough, authors Hollowell and McGhee urge us, to hold progressive views on racial justice, LGBTQ+ identity, and economic inequality. True and lasting change demands a response to Baldwin's radical challenge for moral commitment. Called to move from dreams of justice to living it out in communities, churches, and neighborhoods, we can show that we truly mean it.

Welcome to life with James Baldwin. It is raw and challenging, inspired and embodied, passionate and fully awake.

"You Mean It or You Don't is an extremely timely, transformative piece. It reminds readers of the intensity of James Baldwin's moral demand for social transformation and intersectional equity. It's not just a book--it's a much-needed blueprint." --Valencia Clement, thought leader, artist, and scholar

"Both reflective and redemptive, Hollowell and McGhee's close reading of Baldwin's works and his deeply personal impact on their thinking and activism proves that philosophy can propel us to act, with clarity, in the cause of social justice." --William A. Darity Jr., Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics, and the director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University

"Hollowell and McGhee do something really remarkable here by giving us Baldwin's life story (but not just his biography), his works (and not just a lit review), and his activism (not just a how-to manual). I love encountering Baldwin in this way--it's fresh and hopeful, and it will be meaningful to those who want to live out Baldwin's vision." --Mihee Kim-Kort, author of Outside the Lines: How Embracing Queerness Will Transform Your Faith

"As superb an invitation as one will find to Baldwin that simultaneously breathes the necessary urgency for these times into both those familiar with the artist and newcomers. As a reader you will walk away reluctantly grateful to have been shaken from the façade of safety." --Solomon Hughes, actor and visiting faculty at Duke University

"In You Mean It or You Don't McGhee and Hollowell bring the much-needed prophetic voice of James Baldwin into conversation with our current moment. Equal parts practical and poetic, You Mean It or You Don't inspires readers to dream of a liberated future, hands us the tools, and then dares us to build it together." --Elle Dowd, pastor and author of Baptized in Tear Gas: From White Moderate to Abolitionist

"Few books help us focus on Baldwin's power to help us create and understand our relevance to each other as well as You Mean It or You Don't. Pick it up. Read it to yourself; read it to each other. That's what this is all about: we either mean it or we don't." --Ed Pavlic, author of Who Can Afford to Improvise?: James Baldwin and Black Music, the Lyric and the Listeners

About the Author

Jamie McGhee is a novelist, playwright, and essayist. For her fiction, she was named a James Baldwin Fellow in Saint-Paul de Vence, France, and a Sacatar Fellow in Itaparica, Brazil. She has also been awarded artist residencies at Blue Mountain Center in New York, Zentrum für Kunst Urbanistik in Germany, and Sa Taronja Associació Cultural in Spain. With ties to the eastern US, she is now based in Berlin, Germany.

Adam Hollowell teaches ethics and inequality studies at Duke University, where he directs the Global Inequality Research Initiative at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Broadleaf Books
ISBN-13 978-1506478944