The Life of Madie Hall Xuma

The Life of Madie Hall Xuma
Author: Wanda A. Hendricks
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2022-10-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0252053575

Revered in South Africa as "An African American Mother of the Nation," Madie Beatrice Hall Xuma spent her extraordinary life immersed in global women's activism. Wanda A. Hendricks's biography follows Hall Xuma from her upbringing in the Jim Crow South to her leadership role in the African National Congress (ANC) and beyond. Hall Xuma was already known for her social welfare work when she married South African physician and ANC activist Alfred Bitini Xuma. Becoming president of the ANC Women’s League put Hall Xuma at the forefront of fighting racial discrimination as South Africa moved toward apartheid. Hendricks provides the long-overlooked context for the events that undergirded Hall Xuma’s life and work. As she shows, a confluence of history, ideas, and organizations both shaped Hall Xuma and centered her in the histories of Black women and women’s activism, and of South Africa and the United States.

Sawdust in Your Pockets

Sawdust in Your Pockets
Author: Eric Medlin
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2023-10-15
Genre: Antiques & Collectibles
ISBN: 0820365521

During the twentieth century, three industries—tobacco, textiles, and furniture—dominated the economy of North Carolina. The first two are well known and documented, being the subject of numerous books, movies, and articles. In contrast, the furniture industry has been mostly ignored by historians, although, at its height, it was nearly as large and influential as these other two concerns. Furniture companies employed thousands of workers and shaped towns, culture, and local life from Hickory to Goldsboro. Sawdust in Your Pockets: A History of the North Carolina Furniture Industry is the first survey of the state’s furniture industry from its cabinetmaking beginnings to its digital present. Historian Eric Medlin shows how the industry transitioned from high-quality, individual pieces to the affordable, mass-produced furniture of High Point and Thomasville factories in the late nineteenth century. He then traces the rise of the industry to its midcentury peak, when North Carolina became the largest furniture-producing state in the country. Medlin discusses how competition, consolidation, and globalization challenged the furniture industry in the late twentieth century and how its businesses, workers, and professionals have adapted and evolved to this day.

Threatening Property

Threatening Property
Author: Elizabeth A. Herbin-Triant
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2019-05-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0231548478

White supremacists determined what African Americans could do and where they could go in the Jim Crow South, but they were less successful in deciding where black people could live because different groups of white supremacists did not agree on the question of residential segregation. In Threatening Property, Elizabeth A. Herbin-Triant investigates early-twentieth-century campaigns for residential segregation laws in North Carolina to show how the version of white supremacy supported by middle-class white people differed from that supported by the elites. Class divides prevented Jim Crow from expanding to the extent that it would require separate neighborhoods for black and white southerners as in apartheid South Africa. Herbin-Triant details the backlash against the economic successes of African Americans among middle-class whites, who claimed that they wished to protect property values and so campaigned for residential segregation laws both in the city and the countryside, where their actions were modeled on South Africa’s Natives Land Act. White elites blocked these efforts, primarily because it was against their financial interest to remove the black workers that they employed in their homes, farms, and factories. Herbin-Triant explores what the split over residential segregation laws reveals about competing versions of white supremacy and about the position of middling whites in a region dominated by elite planters and businessmen. An illuminating work of social and political history, Threatening Property puts class front and center in explaining conflict over the expansion of segregation laws into private property.

The Washingtons. Volume 5, Part 1

The Washingtons. Volume 5, Part 1
Author: Justin Glenn
Publisher: Savas Publishing
Total Pages: 981
Release: 2014-09-05
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1940669308

This is the fifth volume of Dr. Justin Glenn’s comprehensive history that traces the “Presidential line” of the Washingtons. Volume One began with the immigrant John Washington, who settled in Westmoreland Co., Va., in 1657, married Anne Pope, and became the great-grandfather of President George Washington. It continued the record of their descendants for a total of seven generations. Volume Two highlighted notable family members in the next eight generations of John and Anne Washington’s descendants, including such luminaries as General George S. Patton, the author Shelby Foote, and the actor Lee Marvin. Volume Three traced the ancestry of the early Virginia members of this “Presidential Branch” back in time to the aristocracy and nobility of England and continental Europe. Volume Four resumed the family history where Volume One ended, and it contained Generation Eight of the immigrant John Washington’s descendants. Volume Five now presents Generation Nine, including more than 10,000 descendants. Future volumes will trace generations ten through fifteen, making a total of over 63,000 descendants. Although structured in a genealogical format for the sake of clarity, this is no bare bones genealogy but a true family history with over 1,200 detailed biographical narratives. These in turn strive to convey the greatness of the family that produced not only The Father of His Country but many others, great and humble, who struggled to build that country. ADVANCE PRAISE “I am convinced that your work will be of wide interest to historians and academics as well as members of the Washington family itself. Although the surname Washington is perhaps the best known in American history and much has been written about the Washington family for well over a century, it is surprising that no comprehensive family history has been published. Justin M. Glenn’s The Washingtons: A Family History finally fills this void for the branch to which General and President George Washington belonged, identifying some 63,000 descendants. This is truly a family history, not a mere tabulation of names and dates, providing biographical accounts of many of the descendants of John Washington who settled in Westmoreland County, Virginia, in 1657. . . . Each individual section is followed by extensive listings of published and manuscript sources supporting the information presented and errors of identification in previous publications are commented upon as appropriate.” John Frederick Dorman, editor of The Virginia Genealogist (1957-2006) and author of Adventurers of Purse and Person “Decades of reviewing Civil War books have left me surprised and delighted when someone applies exhaustive diligence to a topic not readily accessible. Dr. Glenn surely meets that standard with the meticulous research that unveils the Washington family in gratifying detail—many of them Confederates of interest and importance.” Robert K. Krick, author of The Smoothbore Volley that Doomed the Confederacy and Stonewall Jackson at Cedar Mountain