STEPPING STONES 04/03/16 By CLAUDINE'S Jazz & Fine Cuisine
Volume 2, Issue 13, April 3, 2016
In this issue...
Public Service Announcements
Quote Of The Week: Dr. John Henrik Clarke
Book Of The Month: "Blueprint for Black Power: A Moral, Political, And Economic Imperative for the Twenty First Century”
By Dr. Amos N. Wilson
It’s YOUR Health: Antisocial Personality Disorder
Historical Fact Of The Week: African Americans: Part XXIV
Editorial Commentary: Coming!
Public Service Announcements
- The rechartering for The Head Cornerstone Corporation in the State Of Delaware as well as all updated business licenses and associated issues are forth coming pending litigation. Thank you.
- Visit WWW.Ready.gov at your earliest convenience so that you may be informed of basic protective measures before, during, and after disasters/emergencies, learn disaster prepared activities, training, plans, and what shelters are in or near your community, develop an emergency plan for yourself and your family in the event of an actual disaster/emergency, build an disaster/emergency supply kit including a basic emergency medical/trauma bag in case of an event, and GET INVOLVED!
- Get your CPR (Cardio-Pulomonary Resuscitation) and Basic First Aid/First Responder/Basic Life Support including child birth and Emergency Pediatric Care training today. Check with the American Heart Association at WWW.Heart.org for locations. It may just save a life.
- It’s a lot of fun and excitement, it’s healthy, it’s a great family activity, and it’s very practical. Find a course in self defense for you and your loved ones and learn to protect yourselves. You just never know.
- We have the constitutional right to BEAR ARMS and many states have the CCW (Conceal Carry Weapon) License for when you and your loved ones are outside of your home environment. Search the web for free information concerning the Conceal Carry Laws as well as other valuable information. Get the CCW License today (where applicable) for you and your family members of age and LEARN HOW TO SHOOT. You’ll feel better that you did.
- WATER; it’s very essential for normal body functions and not only carries nutrients to your cells, but flushes out the toxins in are bodies that lead to diseases such as cancers, diabetes, and heart diseases. According to the Mayo Clinic and the Institute of Health, water consumption varies for each person depending on many factors associated with life styles, such as current health, activities, and where you live. Be informed about what your daily intake should be and “drink up”. It will make YOUR world a better place.
Public Service Announcements
are brought to you by
COMMUNITY INTERNATIONAL
“SOUTHERN FUNK”: A new music genre sub-group consisting of very well blended and varying combinations of Classical, Traditional, Contemporary, and Acid Jazz, Memphis and Deep Soul, Southern Gospel/Spiritual, Acoustic, House, Ambient, Delta Blues, and Funk with the distinctive bass on the 3rd chord. Created during the early 2000’s at Muddy Waters studio in Memphis, Tenn. by George. Have a taste at
Reverbnation.com/Georgethesmoothandsexycrooner
and pick up the debut single,
“I Want To Know”
from
“Volume I George”
when it drops!
“Taste my funk (smile).”
George
Follow George on Twitter:
George
@George_StoneRec
"Strictly business for serious business minds…".
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“History is not everything but it is a starting point. History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is also a compass that people use to find themselves on the map of human geography. History tells a people where they have been and what they have been, where they are and what they are. Most important, history tells a people where they still must go, what they still must be. The relationship of history to the people is the same as the relationship of a mother to her child.”
Dr. John Henrik Clarke
January 1, 1915 — July 16, 1998
Born John Henry Clark, Dr. Clarke was an African American Pan-Africanist, writer, historian, professor, and a pioneer in the creation of Africana studies and professional institutions in academia starting in the late 1960s.
He was Professor of African World History and in 1969 founding chairman of the Department of Black and Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College of the City University of New York. He also was the Carter G. Woodson Distinguished Visiting Professor of African History at Cornell University’s Africana Studies and Research Center. In 1968 along with the Black Caucus of the African Studies Association, Clarke founded the African Heritage Studies Association.
An autodidact, Clarke documented the histories and contributions of African peoples in Africa and the diaspora using an Afrocentric perspective.
Born as the eldest child to a sharecropper, John (Doctor) and Willie Ella (Mays) Clark, a washerwoman who did laundry for $3 a week. He renamed himself John Henrik (after rebel playwright Henrik Ibsen) and adding an "e" to his surname Clarke, as a symbol. As a youngster Clark caddied for Dwight Eisenhower and Omar Bradley "long before they became Generals or President," Clarke recalls in describing his upbringing in rural Alabama. Clarke was inspired by his third grade teacher, Ms. Harris, who "convinced me that one day I would be a writer." But before he became a writer he became a voracious reader. Inspired by Richard Wright's Black Boy, Clarke went to New York via Chicago. Counter to his father's wishes for him to be a farmer, Clarke left Alabama in 1933 by freight train and went to Harlem, New York, where he pursued scholarship and activism. He enlisted in the army and earned the rank of Master Sergeant. After mustering out, Clarke moved to Harlem and committed himself to a lifelong pursuit of factual knowledge about the history of his people and creative application of that knowledge.
In 1933 Harlem had drawn, through the Great Migration, a concentration of African Americans, many of whom figured in the Harlem Renaissance. Clarke developed as a writer and lecturer during the Great Depression years. He joined study circles like the Harlem History Club and the Harlem Writers' Workshop. He studied history and world literature at New York University, at Columbia University and at the League for Professional Writers. He was an autodidact and during his early years in Harlem, Clarke made the most of the rare opportunities to be mentored by many of the great 20th century African American historians and bibliophile. Clarke studied under and learned from men such as Arthur Schomburg, William Leo Hansberry, John G. Jackson, Paul Robeson, Willis Huggins and Charles Seiffert, all of whom, sometimes quietly behind the scenes and other times publicly in the national and international spotlight, were significant movers and shakers, theoreticians and shapers of African American intellectual and social life in the 20th century.
From the sixties on, John Henrik Clarke stepped up and delivered the full weight of his own intellectual brilliance and social commitment to the ongoing struggle for African American liberation and development.
Besides teaching at Hunter College and Cornell University, Clarke was active in creating professional associations to support the study of African American culture. He was a founder and first president of the African Heritage Studies Association, which supported scholars in areas of history, culture, literature and the arts. He was a founding member of other organizations to recognize and support work in African American culture: the Black Academy of Arts and Letters and the African-American Scholars' Council. Clarke became a stalwart member and hard worker in (and sometimes co-founder of) others organizations as well such as The Harlem Writers Guild, Presence Africaine, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, the National Council of Black Studies and the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations.
Prominent during the Black Power movement, Clarke advocated for studies on the African American experience and the place of Africans in world history. He challenged academic historians and helped shift the way African history was studied and taught. Clarke was "a scholar devoted to redressing what he saw as a systematic and racist suppression and distortion of African history by traditional scholars." When some of the scholarship he championed was dismissed by many historians, Clarke imparted to them the biases of Eurocentric views.
Over the years, Clarke became both a major historian and a man of letters. Although he is probably better known as a historian, his literary accomplishments were also significant. He wrote over two hundred short stories. "The Boy Who Painted Christ Black" is his best known short story.
He was co-founder of the Harlem Quarterly (1949–51), book review editor of the Negro History Bulletin (1948–52), associate editor of the magazine Freedomways, and a feature writer for the Pittsburgh Courier and the Ghana Evening News.
His writing included six scholarly books and many scholarly articles. He edited anthologies of African American writing, as well as his own short stories, and more general interest articles.
Clarke edited numerous literary and historical anthologies including American Negro Short Stories (1966), an anthology which included nineteenth century writing from writers such as Paul Laurence Dunbar and Charles Waddell Chestnut, and continued up through the early sixties with writers such as LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) and William Melvin Kelley. This is one of the classic collections of African American fiction.
Reflective of his commitment to his adopted home, Clarke also edited Harlem, A Community in Transition and Harlem, U.S.A. Never one to shy away from the difficult or the controversial, Clarke edited anthologies on Malcolm X and a major collection of essays decrying William Styron's "portrait" of Nat Turner as a conflicted individual who had a love/hate platonic and sexually-fantasized relationship with Caucasian Americans. In both cases, Clarke's work was in defense of the dignity and pride of his beloved African American community rather than an attack on Caucasian Americans. What is significant is that Clarke did the necessary and tedious organizing work to bring these volumes into existence and thereby offer an alternative outlook from the dominant mainstream views on Malcolm X and Nat Turner, both of whom were often characterized as militant hate mongers. Clarke understood the necessity for us to affirm our belief in and respect for radical leaders such as Malcolm X and Nat Turner. It is interesting to note that Clarke's work was never simply focused on investigating history as the past, he also was proactively involved with history in the making.
As a historian Clarke also edited a book on Marcus Garvey and edited Africa, Lost and Found (with Richard Moore and Keith Baird) and African People at the Crossroads, two seminal historical works widely used in History and African American Studies disciplines on college and university campuses. Through the United Nations he published monographs on Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois. As an activist-historian he produced the monograph Christopher Columbus and the African Holocaust. His most recently published book was Who Betrayed the African Revolution?
In the form of edited books, monographs, major essays and book introductions, John Henrik Clarke produced well over forty major historical and literary documents. Rarely, if ever, has one man delivered so much quality and inspiring literature. Moreover, John Henrik Clarke was also an inquisitive student who became a master teacher.
Formally, Clarke lectured and held professorships at universities worldwide. His longer and most influential tenures were at the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell in Ithaca, New York, and in African and Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College in New York City. He received honorary degrees from numerous institutions and served as consultant and advisor to African and Caribbean heads of state. In 1997 he was the subject of a major documentary directed by the noted filmmaker Saint Claire Bourne and underwritten by the Hollywood star Westley Snipes.
At the age of 78 Clarke obtained a doctorate from the then non-accredited Pacific Western University (now California Miramar University) in Los Angeles. The New York Times noted that Clarke's ascension to professor emeritus at Hunters College was "unusual...without benefit of a high school diploma." The Times also acknowledged that "nobody said Professor Clarke wasn't an academic original", but nonetheless referred to him using the honorific prefix "Mr." rather than "Dr.".
Clarke had three children with his first wife, Eugenia Evans Clarke. At his death he was survived by his second wife, Sybille Williams Clarke, and his two children Nzingha Marie and Sonni Kojo. A third child (Lillie) preceded him in death. He is buried in Green Acres Cemetery, Columbus, Georgia.
Legacy and honors
Legacy and honors
- 1985 – Faculty of the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University named the John Henrik Clarke Library after him.
- 1995 – Carter G. Woodson Medallion, Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History
- 2002 – Molefi Kete Asante listed Dr. John Henrik Clarke on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
- 2011 – Immortal Technique includes a short speech by Dr. Clarke on his LP, The Martyr. It is Track 13, entitled "The Conquerors".
Published Books
- Malcolm X Man and His Times [Paperback]
Citations
- a b c "John Henrik Clarke", Legacy Exhibit online, New York Public Library Schomburg Center for the Study of Black Culture, accessed 20 Jan 2009
- Jacob H. Carruthers, "John Henrik Clarke: the Harlem connection to the founding of Africana Studies", in Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, Afro-American Historical Association of the Niagara Frontier, Inc., 2006, accessed 25 May 2009
- a b Thomas, Jr., Robert McG. (July 20, 1998). "John Henrik Clarke, Black Studies Advocate, Dies at 83". New York Times. https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01E6DA1030F933A15754C0A96E958260. Retrieved January 21, 2009.
- Robert L. Harris, Jr., "IN MEMORIAM DR. JOHN HENRIK CLARKE, 1915-1998"], The Journal of Negro History, September, 1998, accessed 25 May 2009
- Eric Kofi Acree, "John Henrik Clarke: Historian, Scholar, and Teacher", John Henrik Clarke Africana Library, Cornell University, accessed 25 May 2009
- The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, p. 122, Simon and Schuster, 1998
- "History of the John Henrik Clarke Africana Library", reprinted from: Black Caucus of the ALA Newsletter, vol. XXIV, No. 5 (April, 1996), p. 11; Cornell University Library, accessed 20 Jan 2009
- Molefi Kete Asante (2002). 100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Amherst, New York. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1-57392-963-8.
John Henrik Clarke is in so many ways was exemplary of the American ethos of the self-made man. Indicative of this characteristic is the fact that Clarke changed his given name of John Henry Clark to reflect his aspirations. In an obituary he penned for himself shortly before his death, John Henrik Clarke noted "little black Alabama boys were not fully licensed to imagine themselves as conduits of social and political change. ...they called me 'bubba' and because I had the mind to do so, I decided to add the 'e' to the family name 'Clark' and change the spelling of 'Henry' to 'Henrik,' after the Scandinavian rebel playwright, Henrik Ibsen. I like his spunk and the social issues he addressed in 'A Doll's House.' ...My daddy wanted me to be a farmer; feel the smoothness of Alabama clay and become one of the first African Americans in my town to own land. But, I was worried about my history being caked with that southern clay and I subscribed to a different kind of teaching and learning in my bones and in my spirit."
He was memorialized for devoting "himself to placing people of African ancestry 'on the map of human geography'." Clarke said
"History is not everything, but it is a starting point. History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is a compass they use to find themselves on the map of human geography. It tells them where they are…but more importantly, what they must be."
Body and soul, John Henrik Clarke was a true champion of African American people. He bequeathed us a magnificent legacy of accomplishment and inspiration borne out of the earnest commitment of one irrepressible young man to make a difference in the daily and historical lives of his people. Viva, John Henrik Clarke!
BOOK Of THE MONTH
“Blueprint for Black Power; A Moral, Political and Economic Imperative for the Twenty-First Century”
By Dr. Amos N. Wilson
ISBN-13: 978-1879164062
ISBN-10: 187916406X
IT’S YOUR HEALTH
Antisocial Personality Disorder
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with Asociality, Antisocial behavior, Avoidant personality disorder, or Schizoid personality disorder.
Antisocial personality disorder (also known as dissocial personality disorder, psychopathy, and sociopathy) is characterized by a pervasive pattern of disregard for, or violation of, the rights of others. An impoverished moral sense or conscience is often apparent, as well as a history of crime, legal problems, and/or impulsive and aggressive behavior.
Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) is the name of the disorder as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). Dissocial personality disorder is the name of a similar or equivalent concept defined in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), where it states that the diagnosis includes antisocial personality disorder. Both manuals have similar but not identical criteria. Both have also stated that their diagnoses have been referred to, or include what is referred to, as psychopathy or sociopathy, though distinctions are sometimes made.
Contents
1 Diagnosis
1.1 DSM IV-TR
1.2 ICD-10
2 Further considerations
2.1 Psychopathy
2.2 Theodore Millon's subtypes
2.3 Comorbidity
3 Causes and pathophysiology
3.1 Hormones and neurotransmitters
3.2 Limbic neural maldevelopment
3.3 Cultural influences
3.4 Environment
3.5 Head injuries
4 Treatment
5 Prognosis
6 Epidemiology
7 History
8 See also
Diagnosis: DSM IV-TR
The APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition, text revision (DSM IV-TR), defines antisocial personality disorder (Cluster B):
- A) A pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others, occurring since age 15 years, as indicated by three or more of the following:
- failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;
- deception, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;
- impulsivity or failure to plan ahead;
- irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;
- reckless disregard for safety of self or others;
- consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;
- lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.
- B) The individual is at least age 18 years.
- C) There is evidence of conduct disorder with onset before age 15 years.
- D) The occurrence of antisocial behavior is not exclusively during the course of schizophrenia or a manic episode.
Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) falls under the dramatic/erratic cluster of personality disorders, the so-called "Cluster B."
ICD-10
The WHO's International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, tenth edition (ICD-10), has a diagnosis called dissocial personality disorder (F60.2):
It is characterized by at least 3 of the following:
- Callous unconcern for the feelings of others;
- Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for social norms, rules, and obligations;
- Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, though having no difficulty in establishing them;
- Very low tolerance to frustration and a low threshold for discharge of aggression, including violence;
- Incapacity to experience guilt or to profit from experience, particularly punishment;
- Marked readiness to blame others or to offer plausible rationalizations for the behavior that has brought the person into conflict with society.
The ICD states that this diagnosis includes "amoral, antisocial, asocial, psychopathic, and sociopathic personality". Although the disorder is not synonymous with conduct disorder, presence of conduct disorder during childhood or adolescence may further support the diagnosis of dissocial personality disorder. There may also be persistent irritability as an associated feature.
It is a requirement of the ICD-10 that a diagnosis of any specific personality disorder also satisfies a set of general personality disorder criteria.
Further considerations: Psychopathy
Psychopathy is commonly defined as a personality disorder characterized partly by antisocial behavior, a diminished capacity for remorse, and poor behavioral controls. Psychopathic traits are assessed using various measurement tools, including Canadian researcher Robert D. Hare's Psychopathy Checklist, Revised (PCL-R). "Psychopathy" is not the official title of any diagnosis in the DSM or ICD.
American psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley's work on psychopathy formed the basis of the diagnostic criteria for ASPD, and the DSM has stated that ASPD has also been referred to as psychopathy. However, critics have argued that ASPD is not synonymous with psychopathy as the diagnostic criteria are not exactly the same, since criteria relating to personality traits are emphasized relatively less in the former. These differences exist in part because it was believed that such traits were difficult to measure reliably and it was "easier to agree on the behaviors that typify a disorder than on the reasons why they occur".
Although the diagnosis of ASPD covers two to three times as many prisoners as are rated as psychopaths, Robert Hare believes that the PCL-R is better able to predict future criminality, violence, and recidivism than a diagnosis of ASPD. He suggests that there are differences between PCL-R-diagnosed psychopaths and non-psychopaths on "processing and use of linguistic and emotional information", while such differences are potentially smaller between those diagnosed with ASPD and without. Additionally, Hare argued that confusion regarding how to diagnose ASPD, confusion regarding the difference between ASPD and psychopathy, as well as the differing future prognoses regarding recidivism and treatability, may have serious consequences in settings such as court cases where psychopathy is often seen as aggravating the crime.
Nonetheless, psychopathy has been proposed as a specifier under an alternative model for ASPD. In the DSM-5, under "Alternative DSM-5 Model for Personality Disorders", ASPD with psychopathic features is described as characterized by "a lack of anxiety or fear and by a bold interpersonal style that may mask maladaptive behaviors (e.g., fraudulence)." Low levels of withdrawal and high levels of attention-seeking combined with low anxiety are associated with "social potency" and "stress immunity" in psychopathy. Under the specifier, affective and interpersonal characteristics are comparatively emphasized over behavioral components.
Theodore Millon's subtypes
Theodore Millon suggested 7 subtypes of ASPD:
Subtype Features Description
Nomadic (including schizoid and avoidant features)
Feels jinxed, ill-fated, doomed, and cast aside; peripheral, drifters; gypsy-like roamers, vagrants; dropouts and misfits; itinerant vagabonds, tramps, wanderers; impulsively not benign. These individuals distance themselves from people and society. They are caught up in self-pity as well as being vacant and disconnected from self. They may seem harmless, but these individuals are impulsively violent and brutal towards victims who are weaker than them.
Malevolent (including sadistic and paranoid features)
Belligerent, mordant, rancorous, vicious, malignant, brutal, resentful; anticipates betrayal and punishment; desires revenge; truculent, callous, fearless; guiltless. These individuals have had extremely terrible pasts, and are resentful. They want revenge and will ruthlessly secure their personal boundaries in cold blood. These are brutal and callous individuals who are extremely fearless.
Covetous (variant of "pure" pattern)
Feels intentionally denied and deprived; rapacious, begrudging, discontentedly yearning; envious, seeks retribution, and avariciously greedy; pleasure more in taking than in having. These individuals feel they haven't got their due and that society owes them something. They are deeply insecure about their status and power and could be petty thieves or business people. These individuals are very exploitative and greedy, and they belittle people who are vulnerable to manipulation. They also show off their money, valuables and assets.
Risk-taking (including histrionic features)
Dauntless, venturesome, intrepid, bold, audacious, daring; reckless, foolhardy, impulsive, heedless; unbalanced by hazard; pursues perilous ventures. These individuals are easily bored and seek activities that will excite them. These could be brutal assaults, murders, sky diving, pranks, doing dares and putting one's life at risk. The violent activities, such as murder and assault, are not necessarily sadistic in nature but more of a rush or thrill for the perpetrator. These are reckless and bold individuals who have no regard for their own safety or the safety of others.
Reputation-defending (including narcissistic features)
Needs to be thought of as infallible, unbreakable, invincible, indomitable, formidable, inviolable; intransigent when status is questioned; overreactive to slights. These individuals want to be portrayed as tough and fearless. If his or her reputation is questioned the individual becomes furious and explosive, leading to murders or brutal attacks on people.
Unprincipled (including narcissistic features)
Deficient conscience; unscrupulous, amoral, disloyal, fraudulent, deceptive, arrogant, exploitative; a conman and charlatan; dominating, contemptuous, vindictive.
Tyrannical (including negativistic and sadistic features)
Relishes menacing and brutalising others, forcing them to cower and submit; verbally cutting and scratching, accusatory and destructive; intentionally surly, abusive, inhumane, unmerciful.
Elsewhere, Millon differentiates ten subtypes (partially overlapping with the above) – covetous, risk-taking, malevolent, tyrannical, malignant, disingenuous, explosive, and abrasive – but specifically stresses that
"the number 10 is by no means special ... Taxonomies may be put forward at levels that are more coarse or more fine-grained."
(Continued)
HISTORICAL FACT OF THE WEEK
AFRICAN AMERICANS
“A People Of The Many Descendents Of Afrika”
Part XXIV
Post Civil Rights Era III
The history of slavery has always been a major research topic for Caucasian American scholars, but until the 1950s they generally focused on the political and constitutional themes as debated by Caucasian American politicians; they did not study the lives of the African American slaves. During Reconstruction and the late 19th century, African Americans became major contributors in the South. The Dunning School of Caucasian American scholars generally cast the African Americans as pawns of Caucasian American Carpetbaggers during this period, but W. E. B. Du Bois, an African American historian, and Ulrich B. Phillips, a Caucasian American historian, studied the African American experience in depth. Du Bois' study of Reconstruction provided a more objective context for evaluating its achievements and weaknesses; in addition, he did studies of contemporary African American life. Phillips set the main topics of inquiry that still guide the analysis of slave economics.
During the first half of the 20th century, Carter G. Woodson was the major African American scholar studying and promoting the African American historical experience. Woodson insisted that the study of African descendants be scholarly sound, creative, restorative, and, most important, directly relevant to the African American community. He popularized African American history with a variety of innovative strategies, including Association for the Study of Negro Life outreach activities, Negro History Month (now Black History Month, in February), and a popular African American history magazine. Woodson democratized, legitimized, and popularized African American history.
Benjamin Quarles had a significant impact on the teaching of African American history. Quarles and John Hope Franklin provided a bridge between the work of historians in historically African American colleges, such as Woodson, and the African American history that is now well established in mainline universities. Quarles grew up in Boston, attended Shaw University as an undergraduate, and received a graduate degree at the University of Wisconsin. He began in 1953 teaching at Morgan State College in Baltimore, where he stayed, despite a lucrative offer from Johns Hopkins University. Quarles' books included The Negro in the American Revolution (1961), Black Abolitionists (1969), The Negro in the Civil War (1953), and Lincoln and the Negro (1962), which were narrative accounts of critical wartime episodes that focused on how African Americans interacted with their Caucasian American allies.
The teaching of African American history attempted to reverse centuries of purposefully orchestrated ignorance. While African American historians were not alone in advocating a new examination of slavery and racism in the United States, the study of African American history has often been a political and scholarly struggle to change assumptions. One of the foremost assumptions was that slaves were passive and did not rebel. A series of historians transformed the image of African Americans, revealing a much richer and complex experience. Historians such as Leon F. Litwack showed how former slaves fought to keep their families together and struggled against tremendous odds to define themselves as free people. Others wrote of rebellions small and large.
In the 21st century, African American history is regarded as mainstream. Since proclamation by President Jimmy Carter, it is celebrated every February in the United States during "Black History Month." Proponents of African American history believe that it promotes diversity, reveals cultural enrichment, develops self-esteem, self-worth, as well as critical group identity, and corrects the enormous amount of misinformation, myths and stereotypes that lead to the fears and separation that we experience in multicultural societies today. Opponents blindly argue such curricula are dishonest, divisive, and lack academic credibility and rigor.
Surveys of 11th and 12th-grade students and adults in 2005 show that American schools have given students of all ethnic groups a very minimal and in any cases, very negative, stereotypical, and even severely altered versions an awareness of just a very few famous figures in African American history. Both groups were asked to name ten famous Americans, excluding presidents. Of those named, the three most mentioned were African American: 67% named Martin Luther King, 60% Rosa Parks, and 44% Harriet Tubman. Among adults, King was 2nd (at 36%) and Parks was tied for 4th with 30%, while Tubman tied for 10th place with Henry Ford, at 16%. When distinguished historians were asked in 2006 to name the most prominent Americans, Parks and Tubman did not make the top 100.
Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
Ulrich Bonnell Phillips (November 4, 1877 – January 21, 1934) was an Caucasian American historian who studied the American antebellum South and slavery. Phillips concentrated on the large plantations that dominated the Southern economy, and he did not investigate the numerous small farmers who held few slaves. He concluded that plantation slavery produced great wealth, but was a dead end, economically, that left the South bypassed by the industrial revolution underway in the North.
On the whole his assessment was that plantation slavery was not very profitable, had about reached its limits in 1860, and would probably have faded away without the American Civil War, which he considered needless conflict. He praised the entrepreneurship of plantation owners and denied they were brutal. Phillips argued that they provided adequate food, clothing, housing, medical care and training in modern technology—that they formed a "school" which helped "civilize" the slaves. He admitted the failure was that no one graduated from this school.
Phillips systematically hunted down and revealed plantation records and unused manuscript sources. An example of pioneering comparative work was "A Jamaica Slave Plantation" (1914). His methods and use of sources shaped the research agenda of most succeeding scholars, even those who disagreed with his favorable treatment of the masters. After the Civil Rights Revolution of the 1960s historians turned their focus away from his emphasis on the material well-being of the slaves to the slaves' own cultural constructs and efforts to achieve freedom.
By turning away from the political debates about slavery that divided North and South, Phillips made the economics and social structure of slavery the main theme in 20th century scholarship. Together with his highly eloquent writing style, his new approach made him the most influential historian of the ante-bellum south. His interpretation of white supremacy as the "central theme of southern history" remains one of the main interpretations of Southern history.
Born Ulysses Bonnell Phillips, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Georgia (UGA) in 1897. He obtained his Master of Arts degree from UGA as well in 1899 and his Ph.D. in 1902 from Columbia University where he studied under William Dunning founder of the Dunning School of historiography. His dissertation, Georgia and State Rights won the Justin Winsor Prize and was published by the American Historical Association.
Phillips studied with Frederick Jackson Turner who invited Phillips to the University of Wisconsin where Phillips taught from 1902 to 1908 when he left to teach for three years at Tulane University. In 1911, Phillips left Tulane for the University of Michigan where he taught until 1929 when he left to teach at Yale until his death in 1934.
Phillips's views were rejected shortly after World War II. But they were revived again in the 1960s, and as Harvard Sitkoff wrote in 1986, "[I]n the mid-1960s Eugene D. Genovese launched a rehabilitation of Phillips that still continues. Today, as in Phillips's lifetime, scholars again commonly acknowledge the value of many of his insights into the nature of the southern class structure and master-slave relationships." The Phillips school asked, what did slavery do for the slaves? As the historian Herbert Gutman noted, the Phillipsian answer was that slavery lifted the slaves out of the barbarism of Africa, Christianized them, protected them, and generally benefited them. Scholarship in the 1950s then moved to the question, what did slavery do to the slaves, and concluded it was a harsh and profitable system. More recently, scholars such as Genovese and Gutman asked, "What did slaves do for themselves?" They concluded "In the slave quarters, through family, community and religion, slaves struggled for a measure of independence and dignity.
Phillips argued that large-scale plantation slavery was inefficient and not progressive. It had reached its geographical limits by 1860 or so, and eventually had to fade away (as happened in Brazil). In 1910, he argued in "The Decadence of the Plantation System" that slavery was an unprofitable relic that persisted because it produced social status, honor, and political power, that is, Slave Power.
Phillips' economic conclusions about the inefficiency of slavery were challenged by Robert Fogel in the 1960s, who argued that slavery was both efficient and profitable as long as the price of cotton was high enough. In turn Fogel came under sharp attack by other scholars.
An essay by the historians George Fredrickson and Christopher Lasch (1967) analyzed limitations of both Phillips and his critics. They argued that far too much attention was given to slave "treatment" in examining the social and psychological effects of slavery on African Americans. They said Phillips had defined the treatment issue and his most severe critics had failed to redefine it:
"By compiling instances of the kindness and benevolence of masters, Phillips proved to his satisfaction that slavery was a mild and permissive institution, the primary function of which was not so much to produce a marketable surplus as to ease the accommodation of the lower race into the culture of the higher. The critics of Phillips have tried to meet him on his own ground. Where he compiled lists of indulgences and benefactions, they have assembled lists of atrocities. Both methods suffer from the same defect: they attempt to solve a conceptual problem—what did slavery do to the slave?—by accumulating quantitative evidence.... The only conclusion that one can legitimately draw from this debate is that great variations in treatment existed from plantation to plantation."
John David Smith of North Carolina State University argues:
"[He was] a conservative, proslavery interpreter of slavery and the slaves.... In Life and Labor in the Old South Phillips failed to revise his interpretation of slavery significantly. His basic arguments—the duality of slavery as an economic cancer but a vital mode of racial control—can be traced back to his earliest writings. Less detailed but more elegantly written than American Negro Slavery, Phillips's Life and Labor was a general synthesis rather than a monograph. His racism appeared less pronounced in Life and Labor because of its broad scope. Fewer racial slurs appeared in 1929 than in 1918, but Phillips's bigotry remained. The success of Life and Labor earned Phillips the year-long Albert Kahn Foundation Fellowship in 1929-30 to observe African Americans and other laborers worldwide. In 1929 Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, appointed Phillips professor of history."
Phillips contended that masters treated slaves relatively well. His views were rejected most sharply by Kenneth M. Stampp in the 1950s. However, to a large degree Phillips' interpretive model of the dynamic between master and slave was revived by Eugene Genovese, who wrote that Phillips's "work, taken as a whole, remains the best and most subtle introduction to antebellum Southern history and especially to the problems posed by race and class." In 1963, C. Vann Woodward wrote: "Much of what Phillips wrote has not been superseded or seriously challenged and remains indispensable."
Phillips denied he was proslavery. He was an intellectual leader of the Progressive Movement and slavery, in his interpretation, was inefficient and antithetical to the principles of progressivism. Phillips (1910) explained in detail why slavery was a failed system. It is Smith's opinion that:
"Phillips's contributions to the study of slavery clearly outweigh his deficiencies. Neither saint nor sinner, he was subject to the same forces-- bias, selectivity of evidence, inaccuracy--that plague us all. Descended from slave owners and reared in the rural South, he dominated slave historiography in an era when Progressivism was literally for whites only. Of all scholars, historians can ill afford to be anachronistic. Phillips was no more a believer in white supremacy than other leading contemporary white scholars."
Race as "central theme" of southern U.S. history
In "The Central Theme of Southern History" (1928), Phillips maintained that the desire to keep their region "a white man's country" united the white southerners for centuries. Phillips' emphasis on race was overshadowed in the late 1920s and 1930s by the Beardian interpretation of Charles A. Beard and Mary Ritter Beard, who in their enormously successful The Rise of American Civilization (1927) emphasized class conflict and downplayed slavery and race relations as a cause of the American Civil War. By the 1950s, however, the Beardian economic determinism was out of fashion, and the emphasis on race (rather than region or class) became a major topic in historiography.
By 2000, and citing Phillips, Jane Dailey, Glenda Gilmore, and Bryant Simon argue:
"The ways in which white southerners "met" the race "problem" have intrigued historians writing about post-Civil War southern politics since at least 1928, when Ulrich B. Phillips pronounced race relations the "central theme" of southern history. What contemporaries referred to as "the race question" may be phrased more bluntly today as the struggle for white domination. Establishing and maintaining this domination--creating the system of racial segregation and African American disfranchisement known as Jim Crow--has remained a preoccupation of southern historians."
In his review of Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited From Slavery By Anne Farrow, Joel Lang and Jenifer Frank, the historian Ira Berlin wrote,
"Slavery in the North, like its counterpart in the South, was a brutal, violent relationship that fostered white supremacy. Complicity’s authors shred the notion, famously advanced by the Yale historian U.B. Phillips, that the central theme of Southern history was the region's desire to remain a Caucasian American man's country. Phillips was not so much wrong about the centrality of white supremacy to the South as blind to its presence in the North."
Works
Georgia and State Rights; a Study of the Political History of Georgia from the Revolution to the Civil War, with Particular Regard to Federal Relations. American Historical Association Report for the Year 1901, Vol. 2. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1902, his dissertation, earned him the Justin Winsor Prize awarded by the American Historical Association (reprint 1983) online edition
American Negro Slavery; a Survey of the Supply, Employment, and Control of Negro Labor, as Determined by the Plantation Regime. (1918; reprint 1966)online at Project Gutenberg; google edition
A History of Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt to 1860. (1908). online edition
Life and Labor in the Old South. (1929). excerpts and text search
The Life of Robert Toombs. (1913). online edition
The Course of the South to Secession; an Interpretation. (1939).
Works edited by Phillips
The Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens, and Howell Cobb. Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1911, Vol. 2. Washington: 1913.
Florida Plantation Records from the Papers of George Noble Jones. (coedited with James D. Glunt). (1927).
Plantation and Frontier Documents, 1649–1863; Illustrative of Industrial History in the Colonial and Antebellum South: Collected from MSS. and Other Rare Sources. 2 Volumes. (1909). online edition
Major articles by Ulrich B. Phillips
Phillips, Ulrich B. (1905). "Transportation in the Antebellum South: An Economic Analysis". Quarterly Journal of Economics 19 (3): 434–451. doi:10.2307/1882660. JSTOR 1882660.
Phillips, Ulrich B. (1905). "The Economic Cost of Slaveholding in the Cotton Belt". Political Science Quarterly 20 (2): 257–275. doi:10.2307/2140400. JSTOR 2140400.
Phillips, Ulrich B. (1906). "The Origin and Growth of the Southern Black Belts". American Historical Review 11 (4): 798–816. doi:10.2307/1832229. JSTOR 1832229.
Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell (1907). "The Slave Labor Problem in the Charleston District". Political Science Quarterly 22 (3): 416–439. doi:10.2307/2141056. JSTOR 2141056.
Phillips, Ulrich B. (1909). "The South Carolina Federalists, I". American Historical Review 14 (3): 529–543. doi:10.2307/1836445. JSTOR 1836445.
Phillips, Ulrich B. (1909). "The South Carolina Federalists, II". American Historical Review 14 (4): 731–743. doi:10.2307/1837058. JSTOR 1837058.
Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell (1910). "The Southern Whigs, 1834-1854". Essays in American History Dedicated to Frederick Jackson Turner. H. Holt. pp. 203–229.
Phillips, Ulrich B (1910). "The Decadence of the Plantation System". Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 35 (1): 37–41. doi:10.1177/000271621003500105. JSTOR 1011487.
Phillips, Ulrich B. (1914). "A Jamaica Slave Plantation". American Historical Review 19 (3): 543–548. doi:10.2307/1835078. JSTOR 1835078.
Phillips, Ulrich B. (1915). "Slave Crime in Virginia". American Historical Review 20 (2): 336–340. doi:10.2307/1835473. JSTOR 1835473.
Wikisource-logo.svg Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell (1922). "Michigan". Encyclop?dia Britannica (12th ed.).
Phillips, Ulrich B. (1925). "Plantations with Slave Labor and Free". American Historical Review 30 (4): 738–753. doi:10.2307/1835667. JSTOR 1835667.
Phillips, Ulrich B. (1928). "The Central Theme of Southern History". American Historical Review 34 (1): 30–43. doi:10.2307/1836477. JSTOR 1836477.
Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell (1945). "The Traits and Contributions of Frederick Jackson Turner". Agricultural History 19 (1): 21–23. JSTOR 3739695.
Slave Economy of the Old South: Selected Essays in Economic and Social History. Louisiana State U.P. 1968.
Carter G. Woodson
Carter Godwin Woodson (December 19, 1875 – April 3, 1950) was an African American historian, author, journalist and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Woodson was one of the first scholars to study African American history. A founder of Journal of Negro History, Woodson has been cited as the father of African American History.
Carter G. Woodson was born December 19, 1875, the son of former enslaved Africans, James and Eliza Riddle Woodson. His father helped Union soldiers during the Civil War, and he moved his family to West Virginia when he heard that Huntington was building a high school for African Americans. Coming from a large, poor family, Carter Woodson could not regularly attend school. Through self-instruction, Woodson mastered the fundamentals of common school subjects by age 17.
Wanting more education, Carter went to Fayette County to earn a living as a miner in the coal fields. He was able to devote only a few months each year to his schooling. In 1895, at the age of 20, Woodson entered Douglass High School, where he received his diploma in less than two years. From 1897 to 1900, Woodson taught at Winona in Fayette County. In 1900 he was selected as the principal of Douglass High School. He earned his Bachelor of Literature degree from Berea College in Kentucky in 1903 by taking classes part-time between 1901 and 1903.
From 1903 to 1907, Woodson was a school supervisor in the Philippines. Later, he attended the University of Chicago, where he was awarded an A.B. and A.M. in 1908. He was a member of the first African American fraternity Sigma Pi Phi and a member of Omega Psi Phi. He completed his PhD in history at Harvard University in 1912, where he was the second African American (after W.E.B. DuBois) to earn a doctorate. His doctoral dissertation, The Disruption of Virginia, was based on research he did at the Library of Congress while teaching high school in Washington, D.C. After earning the doctoral degree, he continued teaching in the public schools, later joining the faculty at Howard University as a professor, where he served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
Convinced that the role of his own people in American history and in the history of other cultures was being ignored or misrepresented among scholars, Woodson realized the need for research into the neglected past of African Americans. Along with Alexander L. Jackson, Woodson in 1915 published The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861. His other books followed: A Century of Negro Migration continues to be published by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH).
Also in 1915 Woodson began the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History), which ran conferences, published The Journal of Negro History, and "particularly targeted those responsible for the education of black children".
His final professional appointment in West Virginia was as the Dean of the West Virginia Collegiate Institute, now West Virginia State University, from 1920 to 1922.
He studied many aspects of African American history. For instance, in 1924, he published the first survey of free African American slaveowners in the United States in 1930. He once wrote:
“If you can control a man’s thinking, you don’t have to worry about his actions. If you can determine what a man thinks you do not have to worry about what he will do. If you can make a man believe that he is inferior, you don’t have to compel him to seek an inferior status, he will do so without being told and if you can make a man believe that he is justly an outcast, you don’t have to order him to the back door, he will go to the back door on his own and if there is no back door, the very nature of the man will demand that you build one.”
(Continued)
Part XXV in the next “STEPPING STONES”
“...the truth shall set you free”
(Email [email protected] to get “plugged in”!)
COMMENTARY
Coming!
BY
THE HEAD CORNERSTONE CORP.
(A Delaware Corporation)
Now recruiting for ALL POSITIONS.
We are looking for;
Very talented
Very serious
Career oriented
Self-motivated
Self-assured
Professional
College graduates and/or currently active students
Progressive minded
And Personable People
Whom;
Are enthusiastic
Enjoy challenges
Possess an aptitude for business
Work best under pressure
Can travel extensively (required for some positions)
Are very organized and detail oriented
And have excellent communication skills (oral and literal)
For a very fast paced,
very mature,
and very exciting environment and a very rewarding experience.
Compensation will include;
Industry competitive salaries
Four (4) weeks paid vacation
Health (medical, dental, and vision), life, disability Insurance
Aggressive training programs
401 K participation
Progressive Retirement Plans
Quota based profit sharing
Tuition reimbursement
Childcare/Elderly Care assistance
As well as many others
All interested persons, please, forward cover letters and resumes, to include salary requirements and 8 x 10 glossy, to [email protected].
Thank you.
Akil A. Bomani
President, CEO
The Head Cornerstone Corp.
(A Delaware Corporation)
Coming soon!!
URBAN COMMUNITY ECONOMIC RECOVERY, REDEVELOPMENT, & MANAGEMENT TRAINING PROGRAM
Complete with lectures, workshops, Power Point Presentations, resource acquisition and allocation management, progressive community activism training, progressive youth developmental programs, progressive business plan development programs, crime suppression program development, administration management, and lots of other “goodies for you…
…find your community leader and let them know to “get on board this train”.
Brought to you By
“Get Your Mind Right” Productions
A Company of
Orji
“Marketing from the roots…”
Please, email [email protected] for all inquiries
"Strictly business for serious business minds…"
It Is On!!!
Email George at [email protected] and get
“PLUGGED IN”
To the “Quote of the Week”,
Relevant and insightful commentaries of today’s “real world” issues,
Upcoming performances and releases by Stone Records’ artist(s), the latest news and events…
Join the fan list at Reverbnation.com/georgethesmoothandsexycrooner
Where you may also
PICKUP THE COMING HOT NEW SINGLE,
“I Want To Know”
As well as “To Love And Be Loved”, “Let’s Take Our Time”, “A Friend In You”, “Believe in You” as well as several others on the release of the long anticipated debut album,
“Volume I George”
By the soulfully sultry and smooth balladeer,
George
2016!!
“The Memphis Step”
the debut single from the album,
“Summertime”
Also, “Summertime”, “Early Morning”, “Love In Thunder”, “Monday Hustle”, and others
by Stone Records acid/contemporary jazz group,
Ade
plus several contemporary soul gospel, hip hop, and urban projects beginning in 2016!! Stone Records is “…music for the soul” and we have come to get it on, baby!!
Join the email lists:
Facebook.com/George the balladeer
Reverbnation.com/Georgethesmoothandsexycrooner
“For we have come to get it on, baby…”