Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252043192
- eISBN:
- 9780252052071
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252043192.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This is the first book-length study of Caribbean slavery to make disability its primary focus. The book sets out to answer the following questions: How does colonialism—specifically slavery—challenge ...
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This is the first book-length study of Caribbean slavery to make disability its primary focus. The book sets out to answer the following questions: How does colonialism—specifically slavery—challenge the way we think about histories of disability, race, and labor? In what ways might slavery and the expansion of the slave trade have transformed English understandings of supposedly defective bodies and minds in the metropole and colonies? How did disability, disfigurement, and deformity among the enslaved—whether transient, permanent, natural, or inflicted—influence English understandings of race and ability in the colonial period? How did slavery-induced disability shape the embodied reality of enslavement in the British Caribbean? The analysis of disability in the context of Atlantic world slavery is threefold. First, it explores representations of disability as they connect with enslavement and the development of an English antiblack racism from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Second, it moves between the realms of representation and reality in order to examine the embodied, physical, emotional, and psychological impairments produced by the institution of slavery and endured by the enslaved. Third, it examines slave law as an institutionally driven system of enforced disablement. This book illustrates that the histories of disability and slavery overlap in significant ways, and second, that Caribbean bondspeople form an integral part of wider disability history.Less
This is the first book-length study of Caribbean slavery to make disability its primary focus. The book sets out to answer the following questions: How does colonialism—specifically slavery—challenge the way we think about histories of disability, race, and labor? In what ways might slavery and the expansion of the slave trade have transformed English understandings of supposedly defective bodies and minds in the metropole and colonies? How did disability, disfigurement, and deformity among the enslaved—whether transient, permanent, natural, or inflicted—influence English understandings of race and ability in the colonial period? How did slavery-induced disability shape the embodied reality of enslavement in the British Caribbean? The analysis of disability in the context of Atlantic world slavery is threefold. First, it explores representations of disability as they connect with enslavement and the development of an English antiblack racism from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. Second, it moves between the realms of representation and reality in order to examine the embodied, physical, emotional, and psychological impairments produced by the institution of slavery and endured by the enslaved. Third, it examines slave law as an institutionally driven system of enforced disablement. This book illustrates that the histories of disability and slavery overlap in significant ways, and second, that Caribbean bondspeople form an integral part of wider disability history.
Banu Senay
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252043024
- eISBN:
- 9780252051883
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252043024.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
At the heart of this study is a musical practice that occupies a significant place in the contemporary public soundscape of Turkey: the art of playing the ney. Intimately connected with Sufism in ...
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At the heart of this study is a musical practice that occupies a significant place in the contemporary public soundscape of Turkey: the art of playing the ney. Intimately connected with Sufism in both the Ottoman Empire and, for better or worse, in modern secular Turkey, the ney has been a popular instrument throughout the Middle East and North Africa. After enduring a checkered social life during the Turkish Republic’s modernizing reforms, today in a more Islam-friendly socio-political environment the ney is flourishing. Based on extensive field research in Istanbul and an apprentice-style method of inquiry, the book documents the lifetime of preparation required to become an expert player of the ney (neyzen). It examines in particular the transformative power of this Islamic art pedagogy to cultivate new artistic and ethical perceptions in learners. Crafting oneself as a neyzen transcends ‘mere’ musical technique in profound ways, as it also involves developing a certain way of living. Exploring firsthand the practical process of musical teaching and learning, together with their ethical scaffolding, the book has theoretical implications for scholars studying many other forms of apprentice-style learning. It also helps redress the underdeveloped understandings and often-polemical claims made in both the media and by Islamophobic discourse concerning processes by which Muslims develop a religious and moral sense.Less
At the heart of this study is a musical practice that occupies a significant place in the contemporary public soundscape of Turkey: the art of playing the ney. Intimately connected with Sufism in both the Ottoman Empire and, for better or worse, in modern secular Turkey, the ney has been a popular instrument throughout the Middle East and North Africa. After enduring a checkered social life during the Turkish Republic’s modernizing reforms, today in a more Islam-friendly socio-political environment the ney is flourishing. Based on extensive field research in Istanbul and an apprentice-style method of inquiry, the book documents the lifetime of preparation required to become an expert player of the ney (neyzen). It examines in particular the transformative power of this Islamic art pedagogy to cultivate new artistic and ethical perceptions in learners. Crafting oneself as a neyzen transcends ‘mere’ musical technique in profound ways, as it also involves developing a certain way of living. Exploring firsthand the practical process of musical teaching and learning, together with their ethical scaffolding, the book has theoretical implications for scholars studying many other forms of apprentice-style learning. It also helps redress the underdeveloped understandings and often-polemical claims made in both the media and by Islamophobic discourse concerning processes by which Muslims develop a religious and moral sense.
Michael Hubbard MacKay
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252043017
- eISBN:
- 9780252051876
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252043017.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
This book is about how Joseph Smith established religious authority and a long-lasting, complex priesthood structure. The thesis of this book builds on three scholars’ major ideas about religious ...
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This book is about how Joseph Smith established religious authority and a long-lasting, complex priesthood structure. The thesis of this book builds on three scholars’ major ideas about religious authority and Mormonism in the antebellum United States. In an effort to move the conversation toward politics and its relationship to religion, Porterfield focused on the constraint of populism. Though it is true that Mormonism grew, as Hatch shows, from the populist appeal of a lay priesthood and communal living in early Mormonism, Flake demonstrates that the Mormon priesthood was hierarchical. Left just outside the focus of the work of Hatch, Porterfield, and Flake is the role of Joseph Smith defining Mormon authority—a role that has not been fully examined. Smith’s authority grew in opposition to the civic and political authority that evangelicals were garnering and as a countertrend to the populist religious movements of the Second Great Awakening. In fact, Smith’s prophetic voice and scripture formed a hierarchical priesthood structure that eventually empowered every male member of his church to become a prophet, priest, and king, although they answered to each leader above them within the same structure. Reinforced by that structure, Smith’s prophetic voice became the arbiter of authority. It had the ultimate power to create and guide, and it was used to form a strong lay priesthood order in a stable hierarchical democracy devoid of the kind of democratic political authority that evangelicals fostered.Less
This book is about how Joseph Smith established religious authority and a long-lasting, complex priesthood structure. The thesis of this book builds on three scholars’ major ideas about religious authority and Mormonism in the antebellum United States. In an effort to move the conversation toward politics and its relationship to religion, Porterfield focused on the constraint of populism. Though it is true that Mormonism grew, as Hatch shows, from the populist appeal of a lay priesthood and communal living in early Mormonism, Flake demonstrates that the Mormon priesthood was hierarchical. Left just outside the focus of the work of Hatch, Porterfield, and Flake is the role of Joseph Smith defining Mormon authority—a role that has not been fully examined. Smith’s authority grew in opposition to the civic and political authority that evangelicals were garnering and as a countertrend to the populist religious movements of the Second Great Awakening. In fact, Smith’s prophetic voice and scripture formed a hierarchical priesthood structure that eventually empowered every male member of his church to become a prophet, priest, and king, although they answered to each leader above them within the same structure. Reinforced by that structure, Smith’s prophetic voice became the arbiter of authority. It had the ultimate power to create and guide, and it was used to form a strong lay priesthood order in a stable hierarchical democracy devoid of the kind of democratic political authority that evangelicals fostered.
Amanda Frisken
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042980
- eISBN:
- 9780252051838
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042980.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This book explores sensationalism as it took hold of U.S. media between 1870 and 1900. During this period, print news publishers became adept at translating stories about sex, crime, and violence ...
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This book explores sensationalism as it took hold of U.S. media between 1870 and 1900. During this period, print news publishers became adept at translating stories about sex, crime, and violence into emotion-based pictures. Analysis of significant episodes in media history shows how a range of news media producers engaged with the sensational style. As they pioneered the art of visual journalism, news publishers conveyed racial, class, and gender anxieties in a complex dialogue with audiences that established precedents for modern media. Prominent cases – obscenity litigation, anti-Chinese violence, the Ghost Dance, Jim Crow-era lynching, and domestic violence – demonstrate how efforts to maximize the dramatic power of the news transformed everyday reporting and established standards for visual journalism. Commercial newspaper editors exploited sensationalism’ economic benefits, while marginalized groups and social activists experimented with its power to challenge negative stereotyping and mobilize their own constituencies. By the 1890s, a wide range of publications had come to embrace, adapt, and expand the sensational style through news illustration – albeit in different ways for different audiences. The patterns prevalent in entertainment publications infiltrated the commercial dailies, and even low-budget political news sheets: few publications could afford to resist borrowing from the sensational toolkit. As sensationalism increasingly pervaded visual journalism, the very nature of the news changed.Less
This book explores sensationalism as it took hold of U.S. media between 1870 and 1900. During this period, print news publishers became adept at translating stories about sex, crime, and violence into emotion-based pictures. Analysis of significant episodes in media history shows how a range of news media producers engaged with the sensational style. As they pioneered the art of visual journalism, news publishers conveyed racial, class, and gender anxieties in a complex dialogue with audiences that established precedents for modern media. Prominent cases – obscenity litigation, anti-Chinese violence, the Ghost Dance, Jim Crow-era lynching, and domestic violence – demonstrate how efforts to maximize the dramatic power of the news transformed everyday reporting and established standards for visual journalism. Commercial newspaper editors exploited sensationalism’ economic benefits, while marginalized groups and social activists experimented with its power to challenge negative stereotyping and mobilize their own constituencies. By the 1890s, a wide range of publications had come to embrace, adapt, and expand the sensational style through news illustration – albeit in different ways for different audiences. The patterns prevalent in entertainment publications infiltrated the commercial dailies, and even low-budget political news sheets: few publications could afford to resist borrowing from the sensational toolkit. As sensationalism increasingly pervaded visual journalism, the very nature of the news changed.
Jason G. Strange
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252043031
- eISBN:
- 9780252051890
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252043031.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Movements and Social Change
Drawing upon deep ethnographic fieldwork, and written in lively prose that weaves together story and evidence, the book explores contemporary homesteading in Appalachia as a means of resistance to ...
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Drawing upon deep ethnographic fieldwork, and written in lively prose that weaves together story and evidence, the book explores contemporary homesteading in Appalachia as a means of resistance to capitalist modernity. It is framed around two questions: Why are people still pursuing rural subsistence? And why are they often divided into two main groups, known to each other--not always kindly--as “hicks” and “hippies”? These turn out to be urgent questions, considering that the cultural divide between these two groups is one instance of the dangerous and growing schism between “liberal” and “conservative” in the contemporary United States. Because the answer turns upon the distribution of literacy and literate education, these also turn out to be profound questions that cannot be answered without exploring the inner workings of class and capitalism. Thus, the narrative begins by telling the complex and often misunderstood histories of both groups of back-to-the-landers, but turns in the middle chapters to an analysis of the ways in which working-class people are rendered educationally dispossessed through schooling and jobs, as well as discussion of the often devastating consequences of that dispossession. In the final chapter, the book returns to homesteading as a form of resistance, to address the question of whether it provides, as practitioners hope, a measure of shelter from the machine.Less
Drawing upon deep ethnographic fieldwork, and written in lively prose that weaves together story and evidence, the book explores contemporary homesteading in Appalachia as a means of resistance to capitalist modernity. It is framed around two questions: Why are people still pursuing rural subsistence? And why are they often divided into two main groups, known to each other--not always kindly--as “hicks” and “hippies”? These turn out to be urgent questions, considering that the cultural divide between these two groups is one instance of the dangerous and growing schism between “liberal” and “conservative” in the contemporary United States. Because the answer turns upon the distribution of literacy and literate education, these also turn out to be profound questions that cannot be answered without exploring the inner workings of class and capitalism. Thus, the narrative begins by telling the complex and often misunderstood histories of both groups of back-to-the-landers, but turns in the middle chapters to an analysis of the ways in which working-class people are rendered educationally dispossessed through schooling and jobs, as well as discussion of the often devastating consequences of that dispossession. In the final chapter, the book returns to homesteading as a form of resistance, to address the question of whether it provides, as practitioners hope, a measure of shelter from the machine.
James Buhler and Hannah Lewis (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252043000
- eISBN:
- 9780252051869
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252043000.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The introduction sets up the scope and framework of the volume as a whole. Over the past three decades, the study of the film soundtrack has developed into a rich scholarly discipline, characterized ...
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The introduction sets up the scope and framework of the volume as a whole. Over the past three decades, the study of the film soundtrack has developed into a rich scholarly discipline, characterized by diverse approaches and methodologies. As an object of theoretical focus, the voice has helped correct the long-standing ocularcentrism of film theory discourse. Yet, the voice as a narrow concept is itself problematic in that it limits our understanding of how it functions among the various components of the soundtrack. Understood as part of an integrated soundtrack—that is, a soundtrack where the various components have a sense of being planned or composed and where sound design and music are blended into a kind of conceptual unity—the voice assumes a somewhat different role and allows for a more complex and interpretively richer conceptual framework. This volume aims to reconsider and broaden our notion of what the voice as a concept can do for studies of film music and sound. The introduction explores theoretical concerns relating to film dialogue, vococentrism, the spectacle of the singing voice, film music’s commentative function as voice, as well as the voice of various cinematic authorship and production. It concludes with a brief summary of each chapter in the volume. Considering these many different conceptions of “voice” can provide new perspectives on how we consider the relationship between voice and cinema, broadly defined.Less
The introduction sets up the scope and framework of the volume as a whole. Over the past three decades, the study of the film soundtrack has developed into a rich scholarly discipline, characterized by diverse approaches and methodologies. As an object of theoretical focus, the voice has helped correct the long-standing ocularcentrism of film theory discourse. Yet, the voice as a narrow concept is itself problematic in that it limits our understanding of how it functions among the various components of the soundtrack. Understood as part of an integrated soundtrack—that is, a soundtrack where the various components have a sense of being planned or composed and where sound design and music are blended into a kind of conceptual unity—the voice assumes a somewhat different role and allows for a more complex and interpretively richer conceptual framework. This volume aims to reconsider and broaden our notion of what the voice as a concept can do for studies of film music and sound. The introduction explores theoretical concerns relating to film dialogue, vococentrism, the spectacle of the singing voice, film music’s commentative function as voice, as well as the voice of various cinematic authorship and production. It concludes with a brief summary of each chapter in the volume. Considering these many different conceptions of “voice” can provide new perspectives on how we consider the relationship between voice and cinema, broadly defined.
Myriam J. A. Chancy
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252043048
- eISBN:
- 9780252051906
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252043048.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
Autochthonomies is an intellectual project that engages readers in an interpretive journey: it engages and describes a process by which readers of texts created by artists and actors of African ...
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Autochthonomies is an intellectual project that engages readers in an interpretive journey: it engages and describes a process by which readers of texts created by artists and actors of African descent might engage such texts as legible within the context of African Diasporic historical and cultural discursive practices. It argues that there is a cultural and philosophical gain to understanding these texts not as products of, or responses only to, Western hegemonic dynamics or simply as products of discrete ethnic or national identities. By invoking a transnational African/Diasporic interpretive lens, negotiated through a virtual “lakou” or yard space in which such identities are transfigured, recognized, and exchanged, the study demonstrates how to best examine the salient features of the texts that underscore African/Diasporic sensibilities and renders them legible, thus offering a potential not only for richer readings of African Diasporic texts but also the possibility of rupturing the Manichean binary dynamics through which such texts have commonly been read. This produces an enriching interpretive capacity emphasizing the transnationalism of connections between subjects of African descent as the central pole for undertaking such investigations. Through the use of the neologism, autochthonomy, the study argues further that, despite colonial interruptions, critics of such works should seek to situate them as part of an intricate network of cultural and transnational exchanges.Less
Autochthonomies is an intellectual project that engages readers in an interpretive journey: it engages and describes a process by which readers of texts created by artists and actors of African descent might engage such texts as legible within the context of African Diasporic historical and cultural discursive practices. It argues that there is a cultural and philosophical gain to understanding these texts not as products of, or responses only to, Western hegemonic dynamics or simply as products of discrete ethnic or national identities. By invoking a transnational African/Diasporic interpretive lens, negotiated through a virtual “lakou” or yard space in which such identities are transfigured, recognized, and exchanged, the study demonstrates how to best examine the salient features of the texts that underscore African/Diasporic sensibilities and renders them legible, thus offering a potential not only for richer readings of African Diasporic texts but also the possibility of rupturing the Manichean binary dynamics through which such texts have commonly been read. This produces an enriching interpretive capacity emphasizing the transnationalism of connections between subjects of African descent as the central pole for undertaking such investigations. Through the use of the neologism, autochthonomy, the study argues further that, despite colonial interruptions, critics of such works should seek to situate them as part of an intricate network of cultural and transnational exchanges.
Linda Steiner, Carolyn Kitch, and Brooke Kroeger (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252043109
- eISBN:
- 9780252051982
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252043109.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This book addresses the role of media, particularly periodicals, in the American women’s suffrage movement, and in public understandings of the campaign for a Constitutional amendment enfranchising ...
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This book addresses the role of media, particularly periodicals, in the American women’s suffrage movement, and in public understandings of the campaign for a Constitutional amendment enfranchising women. Chapters deal with the rhetoric of pro- and antisuffrage activists as covered in the mainstream regional and national press; several chapters deal with suffragists’ own periodicals, as well as with other non-mainstream periodicals, including the black press and socialist and radical periodicals. These new studies offer fresh perspectives on relatively familiar suffrage narratives while exploring lesser-known aspects of the roles of journalism, publicity, visual communication, and external alliances with organizations and individuals. Taken collectively, the chapters clarify intersections of suffrage ideas with other social and political movements as well as differences by geography and culture. The essays are marked by attention to the movement’s long-term implications; to contemporary concepts such as social movement and countermovement strategies, status conflict, and the public sphere; and by sensitivity to race, class, and regional politics. As the historiography offered here makes clear, these issues were largely ignored in the first wave of suffrage research.Less
This book addresses the role of media, particularly periodicals, in the American women’s suffrage movement, and in public understandings of the campaign for a Constitutional amendment enfranchising women. Chapters deal with the rhetoric of pro- and antisuffrage activists as covered in the mainstream regional and national press; several chapters deal with suffragists’ own periodicals, as well as with other non-mainstream periodicals, including the black press and socialist and radical periodicals. These new studies offer fresh perspectives on relatively familiar suffrage narratives while exploring lesser-known aspects of the roles of journalism, publicity, visual communication, and external alliances with organizations and individuals. Taken collectively, the chapters clarify intersections of suffrage ideas with other social and political movements as well as differences by geography and culture. The essays are marked by attention to the movement’s long-term implications; to contemporary concepts such as social movement and countermovement strategies, status conflict, and the public sphere; and by sensitivity to race, class, and regional politics. As the historiography offered here makes clear, these issues were largely ignored in the first wave of suffrage research.
Stephanie Vander Wel
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252043086
- eISBN:
- 9780252051944
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252043086.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
Well before the success of Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, female artists were integral to the commercial expansion and aural reception of country music. Women in early country music took on and ...
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Well before the success of Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, female artists were integral to the commercial expansion and aural reception of country music. Women in early country music took on and redefined the theatrical and musical roles of the hillbilly maiden, the unruly Okie, the singing cowgirl, and the honky-tonk angel in live performance, on radio, in film, and in the recording studio. This book accounts for the vibrant presence of female country artists through an interdisciplinary focus on performance and vocal expression in relation to the cultural currents of the 1930s and 1950s. Across a variety of media, women’s country music engendered new ways of making sense of public and private spaces (such as the home, the dance hall, and the honky-tonk) that were integral to the real and imagined lives of working-class women striving for upward social mobility and/or resisting the rigidity of middle-class codes of behavior. Connecting the female singing voice to the theatrics of the popular stage and to the musical practices of specific country styles, this study shows how women in country music wielded a range of performative devices in order to work within and against social and commercial expectations.Less
Well before the success of Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, female artists were integral to the commercial expansion and aural reception of country music. Women in early country music took on and redefined the theatrical and musical roles of the hillbilly maiden, the unruly Okie, the singing cowgirl, and the honky-tonk angel in live performance, on radio, in film, and in the recording studio. This book accounts for the vibrant presence of female country artists through an interdisciplinary focus on performance and vocal expression in relation to the cultural currents of the 1930s and 1950s. Across a variety of media, women’s country music engendered new ways of making sense of public and private spaces (such as the home, the dance hall, and the honky-tonk) that were integral to the real and imagined lives of working-class women striving for upward social mobility and/or resisting the rigidity of middle-class codes of behavior. Connecting the female singing voice to the theatrics of the popular stage and to the musical practices of specific country styles, this study shows how women in country music wielded a range of performative devices in order to work within and against social and commercial expectations.
Robert E. Weems
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252043062
- eISBN:
- 9780252051920
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252043062.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Anthony Overton is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century’s most significant African American entrepreneurs. Overton, at his peak, presided over a Chicago-based financial empire that ...
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Anthony Overton is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century’s most significant African American entrepreneurs. Overton, at his peak, presided over a Chicago-based financial empire that included a personal care products company (Overton Hygienic Manufacturing Company) a bank (Douglass National Bank), an insurance company (Victory Life Insurance Company) a popular periodical (the Half-Century Magazine), and a newspaper (Chicago Bee). This impressive business portfolio contributed to Overton being the first businessman to win the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal in 1927, as well as him currently being acknowledged in the Harvard University Business School’s database of “American Business Leaders of the Twentieth Century” as the first African American to head a major business conglomerate. Nevertheless, despite Overton’s noteworthy entrepreneurial accomplishments, he remains a mysterious figure. The most readily apparent reason for this is the unavailability of his business records and personal papers. Still, because of Anthony Overton’s prominence, a large body of scattered alternative primary and secondary sources were available to construct this biography. Along with examining Anthony Overton and his accomplishments, this book places his activities in the context of larger societal occurrences in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. Moreover, by recounting Overton’s life story, this biography seeks to more fully illuminate the role of business and entrepreneurship in the African American experience.Less
Anthony Overton is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century’s most significant African American entrepreneurs. Overton, at his peak, presided over a Chicago-based financial empire that included a personal care products company (Overton Hygienic Manufacturing Company) a bank (Douglass National Bank), an insurance company (Victory Life Insurance Company) a popular periodical (the Half-Century Magazine), and a newspaper (Chicago Bee). This impressive business portfolio contributed to Overton being the first businessman to win the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal in 1927, as well as him currently being acknowledged in the Harvard University Business School’s database of “American Business Leaders of the Twentieth Century” as the first African American to head a major business conglomerate. Nevertheless, despite Overton’s noteworthy entrepreneurial accomplishments, he remains a mysterious figure. The most readily apparent reason for this is the unavailability of his business records and personal papers. Still, because of Anthony Overton’s prominence, a large body of scattered alternative primary and secondary sources were available to construct this biography. Along with examining Anthony Overton and his accomplishments, this book places his activities in the context of larger societal occurrences in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. Moreover, by recounting Overton’s life story, this biography seeks to more fully illuminate the role of business and entrepreneurship in the African American experience.
