"We Shall Independent Be": African American Place Making and the Struggle to Claim Space in the United States

• Published in: The Journal of American History 2009, Vol.96 (2), p.540-541
• Main Author: Woodruff, Nan Elizabeth
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: African Americans; Colleges & universities; Courts; Nonfiction; Schools; Teachers; White supremacy
• ISSN: 0021-8723; 1936-0967; 1945-2314
• DOI: 10.1093/jahist/96.2.540-a

The essays cover a range of topics, including the creation and disappearance of Seneca Village in antebellum New York City; the formation of the Chicago Woodlawn Association in die 1960s; Luther P. Jackson, who educated teachers for social justice at Virginia State University; a brief history of the Institute of the Black World in Atlanta; the social geography of leisure on the Southside of Chicago in the early decades of the twentieth century; the famous conflict between Columbia University and the black community around the building of a gym in the late 1960s; African American suburbanization and the conflicts over integrated communities; the integration of Philadelphia's street cars in the mid-nineteenth century; contested memories over historical sires related to slaver', burial grounds, and the civil rights movement; rural churches and schools; courtrooms; and fugitive slaves who lived in swamps.