Using Savannah, Georgia, as a case study, Sacred Mission, Worldly Ambition tells the story of the rise and decline of Black Christian Nationalism. This nationalism emerged from the experiences of segregation, as an intersection between the sacred world of religion and church and the secular world of business. The premise of Black Christian Nationalism was a belief in a dual understanding of redemption, at the same time earthly and otherworldly, and the conviction that black Christians, once delivered from psychic, spiritual, and material want, would release all of America from the suffering that prevented it from achieving its noble ideals. The study's use of local sources in Savannah, especially behind-the-scenes church records, provides a rare glimpse into church life and ritual, depicting scenes never before described. Blending history, ethnography, and Geertzian dramaturgy, it traces the evolution of black southern society from a communitarian, nationalist system of hierarchy, patriarchy, and interclass fellowship to an individualistic one that accompanied the appearance of a new black civil society. Although not a study of the civil rights movement, Sacred Mission, Worldly Ambition advances a bold, revisionist interpretation of black religion at the eve of the movement. It shows that the institutional primacy of the churches had to give way to a more diversified secular sphere before an overtly politicized struggle for freedom could take place. The unambiguously political movement of the 1950s and 1960s that drew on black Christianity and radiated from many black churches was possible only when the churches came to exert less control over members' quotidian lives. A Sarah Mills Hodge Fund Publication.

This book samples the rich variety of worship practices in American history to show how worship can be a fruitful subject for historians to study and how past cases can enrich our understanding of worship today. By the Vision of Another World gathers highly regarded historians who usually are not read together because of the widely different subjects on which they typically work. Yet their essays all fit together here as they address how worship, work, and worldview converge and reinforce each other no matter what particular place, era, denomination, or ethnic/racial group is under consideration. The variety of methodologies and voices will appeal to a breadth of critical interests, while the consistently high quality of historical narrative will keep readers engaged.

This book offers a diverse approach to journalism history told from a multimedia perspective, re-examining mainstream stories and highlighting contributions that are often overlooked. Bringing together a team of prominent journalism historians, the volume centers race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, class, religion, disability, mental health and generations to tell forgotten stories of journalism’s historical influence. The book is designed to appeal to Generation Z college students, offering budding mass communicators a valuable tool that addresses gaps in historical pedagogy and fosters representation in the classroom. Each chapter contains access to video and podcast extras, chapter summaries, guides to further reading and suggested activities to bring these narratives alive and keep readers engaged. Interactive and accessible, Social Justice, Activism and Diversity in U.S. Media History is an indispensable resource for Generation Z, scholars in mass communication and American history, journalists and general readers.

Freedom is the cornerstone of his sweeping narrative that focuses not only congressional debates and political treatises since the Revolution but how the fight for freedom took place on plantation and picket lines and in parlors and bedrooms.

Treats the developments in tenant farming communities (black and white) in Missouri's "bootheel" in the 1930s.

Fighting to Preserve a Nation's Soul examines the relationship between religion, race, and the War on Poverty that President Lyndon Johnson initiated in 1964 and that continues into the present. It studies the efforts by churches, synagogues, and ecumenical religious organizations to join and fight the war on poverty as begun in 1964 by the Office of Economic Opportunity. The book also explores the evolving role of religion in relation to the power balance between church and state and how this dynamic resonates in today's political situation. Robert Bauman surveys all aspects of religion's role in this struggle and substantially discusses the Roman Catholic Church, mainline Protestant churches, Jewish groups, and ecumenical organizations such as the National Council of Churches. In addition, he pays particular attention to race, showing how activist priests and other religious leaders connected religion with the antipoverty efforts of the civil rights movement. For example, he shows how the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) exemplifies the move toward ecumenism among American religious organizations and the significance of black power to the evolving War on Poverty. Indeed, the Black Manifesto, issued by civil rights and black power activist James Forman in 1969, challenged American churches and synagogues to donate resources to the IFCO as reparations for those institutions' participation in slavery and racial segregation. Bauman, then, explores the intricate and fundamental connection between religious organizations, social movements, and community antipoverty agencies and expands the argument for a long War on Poverty.