Black Manhood and Community Building in North Carolina, 1900-1930 (New Perspectives on the History of the South)

Black Manhood and Community Building in North Carolina, 1900-1930 (New Perspectives on the History of the South) Review

Historical treatments of race during the early twentieth century have generally focused on black women's activism. Leading books about the disenfranchisement era hint that black men withdrew from positions of community leadership until later in the century. Angela Hornsby-Gutting argues that middle-class black men in North Carolina in fact actively responded to new manifestations of racism. Focusing on the localized, grassroots work of black men during this period, she offers new insights about rarely scrutinized interracial dynamics as well as the interactions between men and women in the black community. Informed by feminist analysis, Hornsby-Gutting uses gender as the lens through which to view cooperation, tension, and negotiation between the sexes and among African American men during an era of heightened race oppression. Her work promotes improved understanding of the construct of gender during these years, and expands the vocabulary of black manhood beyond the "great man ideology" which has obfuscated alternate, localized meanings of politics, manhood, and leadership.

Nature, Business, and Community in North Carolina's Green Swamp

Nature, Business, and Community in North Carolina's Green Swamp Review

This environmental history underscores the uneasy balance between conservation and commerce. By using North Carolina's Green Swamp as a case study, Tycho de Boer illustrates the struggle of a rural area trying to preserve its natural environment while encouraging economic growth.

 

De Boer highlights the complex relationship between the swamp, located in the extreme southeast corner of the state, local inhabitants, and outside entrepreneurs. He traces the growth of agriculture and the turpentine and lumber industries from the mid-seventeenth century to the present, and examines their impact, including the destruction of longleaf pine forests.

 

Yet he also reveals how businesses in this region took a leading role in managing the environment. What emerges is an understanding of the complex intersections between nature, business, and community. Naure, Business, and Community in North Carolina's Green Swamp is a history of a rare natural environment and its transformation that demonstrates how communal values and practices individuals can mitigate--and often have mitigated--the damage capitalist interests inflict on the world.