Product Description
This field manual (FM) is a guide for military police, military police investigators (MPIs), and United States (US) Army Criminal Investigations Command (USACIDC) special agents operating in all levels of tactical and garrison environments. This manual makes no distinction between the various levels of investigation, whether it is done by a uniformed military policeman, an MPI, or a USACIDC special agent. Where appropriate, this manual describes nationally recognized methods of investigation and evidence examination adopted from the Department of Justice (DOJ); Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF); National Association of Fire Investigators (NAFI); National Institute of Justice; and US Army Criminal Investigation Laboratory (USACIL). In addition to the techniques and procedures described in this manual, Army law enforcement personnel are encouraged to seek guidance on police and investigative matters from other approved official law enforcement sources. Special terms used are explained in the glossary. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
Women's Work Counts: Women's Bureau 75th Anniversary, 1920-1995  This remarkable set contains nine large, full color posters reproducing art commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Women's Bureau from American women artists. Each poster has a border that lists significant job titles for women. The artists include: Faith Ringgold; Marty Anderson; Jaune Quick-to-See Smith; Becky Heavner; Mary Louise Lopez; Mary Porter; Varnette P. Honeywood; Susan Foster; and Lonni Sue Johnson
... Read more

Product Description
The American 1920s had many names: the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age, the Dry Decade, and the Flapper generation. Whatever the moniker, these years saw the birth of modern America. This volume shows the many colorful ways the decade altered America, its people, and its future. American Popular Culture Through History volumes include a timeline, cost comparisons, chapter bibliographies, and a subject index. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great Intro to Women Blues
Did you know that women were the first popular blues singers? Black Pearls explores the pioneering women who in the 20's changed the record instustry and music as we know it. Having read a few blues books by now, I found that portions in the introductory sections lacked the sort of awe-inspiring insight that makes for an excellent blues book. And my attention span had me skipping half-way through the chapter on lyrical analysis. Howvever, once I got to the sections that focus on the individual performers, this book excelled. There are many who seem hellbent on denying these particular women a hallowed place in the history of popular music (read Alan Lomax's brief dismissal of the classic blues era in his "The Land Where the Blues Began"), but Harrison's prodigious biographical and musical insights really open the door to a greater appreciation of the women she features. As a companion, I might suggest the cd "Classic Blues Women" by Rhino Records. ... Read more

Product Description
"Yellowface details the theatrical and musical history of Chinese and Chinese American performance at a time when ‘Asian American’ identity was unheard of. It should be a welcome addition to Asian American studies and American cultural history, as well as theater and music history."—Josephine Lee, author of Performing Asian America: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage

"Krystyn Moon has produced a finely detailed and nuanced study of China and Chinese Americans on the nineteenth-century American musical stage. Yellowface is an important work for anyone interested in the history of American popular culture and race."—Robert G. Lee, author of Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture

Music and performance provide a unique window into the ways that cultural information is circulated and perceptions are constructed. Because they both require listening, are inherently ephemeral, and most often involve collaboration between disparate groups, they inform cultural perceptions differently from literary or visual art forms, which tend to be more tangible and stable.

In Yellowface, Krystyn R. Moon explores the contributions of writers, performers, producers, and consumers in order to demonstrate how popular music and performance has played an important role in constructing Chinese and Chinese American stereotypes. The book brings to life the rich musical period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During this time, Chinese and Chinese American musicians and performers appeared in a variety of venues, including museums, community theaters, and world’s fairs, where they displayed their cultural heritage and contested anti-Chinese attitudes. A smaller number crossed over into vaudeville and performed non-Chinese materials. Moon shows how these performers carefully navigated between racist attitudes and their own artistic desires.

Although many scholars have studied both African American music and blackface minstrelsy, little attention has been given to Chinese and Chinese American music. This book provides a rare look at the way that immigrants actively participated in the creation, circulation, and, at times, subversion of Chinese stereotypes through their musical and performance work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Unstable performances
Krystyn Moon has written a necessary text in the history of Chinese impersonation 'yellowface' performance.The text includes music and lyrics of the many songs that have been researched. Although I am not specifically interested in the music of the time I found the historical and cultural context of performing Chinese in America in the nineteenth century valuable to my own study of Chinese diaspora.

Chinese American Art Lives in History
With a title like "Yellowface,"I thought this would be the Asian equivalent of Eric Lott's "Love and Theft" on black-defaming minstrelsy.However, Dr. Moon does not discuss non-Asians pretending to be Asian until one of the last chapters of the book.This text really dealt with non-Chinese artistic responses to the Chinese and Chinese Americans and those two groups' counter response.Most cultural studies focuses upon visual art or writings because any modern can read a book or use their eyes to analyze something.However, and surprisingly, the focus in this book is on music.Moon is knowledgeable about Chinese instruments and musical writing.Music majors may be especially appreciative of this text.

This text must be a celebration of tenure, because I can't imagine a graduate student being able to pick up so much for a dissertation.Further, this tenure is well-deserved:it must have taken a lot to be a professor in Georgia and pull up so much historical evidence from San Francisco and New York City.Sometimes the text is repetitive, but the reader can still notice that it took a lot of hard work to pull together and analyze all this material.

This book does not treat "white" and "yellow" exclusively; Native Americans, African-Americans, and even Eurasians are brought up.Still, at one point Dr. Moon mentions a Black vaudevillian who take on the name Ding-a-Ling.She totally fails to recognize the racialized phallocentricity here.

Dr. Moon is great at not seeing things as absolutes.The time periods of the chapters overlap, as history actually doesn't have sharp beginnings and endings.English Americans first dismiss Chinese music as "noise" but by comparing it to Scottish music, they recognize its musicality, at least somewhat.Chinese music is seen as primitive by the white Americans mentioned here, yet they also use it to innovate or rejuvenate Western music.Non-Chinese Americans deem the Chinese as perpetual foreigners, but Chinese Americans resist that label by mastering both Occidental and Oriental musical styles.

This book moves slowly, just like most history and academic books.Still, it may be a great tool for ethnic studies majors and many other learners. ... Read more

Product Description
Ignorant. Brutal. Male. One of these stereotypes of the Ku Klux Klan offer a misleading picture. In Women of the Klan, sociologist Kathleen Blee unveils an accurate portrait of a racist movement that appealed to ordinary people throughout the country. In so doing, she dismantles the popular notion that politically involved women are always inspired by pacifism, equality, and justice.
"All the better people," a former Klanswoman assures us, were in the Klan. During the 1920s, perhaps half a million white native-born Protestant women joined the Women's Ku Klux Klan (WKKK). Like their male counterparts, Klanswomen held reactionary views on race, nationality, and religion. But their perspectives on gender roles were often progressive. The Klan publicly asserted that a women's order could safeguard women's suffrage and expand their other legal rights. Privately the WKKK was working to preserve white Protestant supremacy.
Blee draws from extensive archival research and interviews with former Klan members and victims to underscore the complexity of extremist right-wing political movements. Issues of women's rights, she argues, do not fit comfortably into the standard dichotomies of "progressive" and "reactionary." These need to be replaced by a more complete understanding of how gender politics are related to the politics of race, religion, and class. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Then and Now
According to author Kathleen Blee, "It is more helpful to understand the second Klan by considering it within - rather than as an aberration from - the ideas and values that shaped white Protestant life in the early twentieth century, fueling fundamentalism..." Sound provocative?

Dr. Blee also maintains that Klanswomen held the same fanatical views on race, religion, and nationalism as their menfolk - in other words, anti-negro, anti-semitic, anti-Catholic, and hyper-patriotic - but that their perspcetive on gender roles were often progressive.

In the 1920s, as many as half a million women joined the ladies' auxiliary of the KKK (the WKKK). Were they just aping their husbands or were there specific motivations that brought women to an organization notorious for rough-neck violence? Well, sexual fears may indeed have played a role. The fraudulent portrayal of ex-slaves assaulting white women in the vile racist movie, Birth of a Nation, is credited with stimulating the resurgence of the Klan. Women had received the vote nationally only in 1918, on a wave of optimism that their votes would naturally fall on the side of justice, decency, and pacifism. "Women in the Klan" reveals how fallacious (and sexist) that attitude was.

Racism of the vicious intensity of the Ku Klux Klan is not extinct in America or in the world at large. If you'd like to get a dose of pseudo-scientific anti-Semitism as putrid as any in the rhetoric of the Klan, take a look at "The Culture of Critique" by Kevin MacDonald, a professor at a major university in southern California. Be sure to read some of the many five-star reviews, including ugly diatribes and racial-purity fantasies by young Scandinavian men. Like a herpes zoster virus that lurks in nerve tissue for decades and then erupts as shingles, racism lingers in the scum of our educated populace.

Great short history of both Klu Klux Klans!
This is one of the few histories of the Klan that clearly documents the fact that there have been not one, but two Klu Klux Klans. It also examines just how deeply women were involved in the movement, a little-noticed phenomenon in the past.

Obviously the Klan we know today was always a hate group, but it's astounding just how large, wealthy, and powerful the group was, with millions of members (as opposed to today, where they have a few thousand at best), and members in every state of the union.

It's also astounding just how powerful they were, and how involved women were in the organization. One thing the book highlights, that reviewers generally don't mention, is how many people were in the Klan without recognizing the violent or terroristic nature of the organization. The most discomfiting parts she documents are how many people who were involved simply viewed the Klan as a very normal, responsible organization that was a boon to its communities. The Klan worked hard to develop an aura of respectability--quite successfully, at least for a while.

I am rather stunned by several of the other reviews here, which say dumb things about feminism, animal rights, etc. I suggest ignoring those reviews, as they're obviously written by silly people. This is a very good book--highly readable, informative, and insightful. I recommend it highly.

Disturbing truth
I'm hardly surprised that reviews have been negative as this book breaks into the holy ground of feminism, proving beyond doubt that feminism and racism shared early roots.

I have done a lot of studying on feminism and there is little here that isn't available elsewhere but this work puts much in one place, making it easy to show how the modern femininist organisation NOW and the earlier WKKK are so closely related. More to the point it shows how feminism is a form of hate or superiority cult and has little to do with real equality. For example an extreme radical animal rights type is undisputed as an animal lover - are extreme radical feminists known for a desire for extreme equality? Or simply bias towards women and contempt for men?

Interesting, but...
As I read Ms. Blee's book, I am concerned that she is using informationfrom people who are now about 70 years old, who would have been smallchildren when the Klan was in power, to make such all encompasingstatements about the Klan.A child sees the world around him muchdifferently than an adult.A child would relish going to parades, parties,gatherings and enjoy them.If Ms. Blee asks the participants to describetheir feelings as a child, then reports them as their current feelings,then the reader must be aware of the bias of the author.Did Ms. Blee askthe participants of her interviews what their feelings were 65 years ago,or what their feelings are now, on reflection?I know that she asked theformer and used that information to substantiate her own biases about theKlan.

Complicates our view of race, gender, and social movements
Blee's work on women in hate movements sheds new light on why women join and support white supremacist movements. Her analysis of extensive archival data and interviews complicates how our assumptions about the role ofgender in promoting bigotry and prejudice, while at the same time heraldingeerily feminist principles. My students loved it because it was clear,engaging, and gave them several issues to grapple with around research anddata interpretation. Though white supremacists were (and still are) on thewhole, economically disenfranchised adn educationally bankrupt, Blee showshow a few "dangerous minds" are capable of mobilizing massnumbers of people in the name of "racial superiority." ... Read more

Product Description

This fascinating new study examines the experiences of women involved in the socialist movement during its formative years in Britain and the active role they played in campaigning for the vote. By giving full attention to this much-neglected group of women, Socialist Women examines and challenges the orthodox views of labour and suffrage history. Torn between competing loyalties of gender, class and politics, socialist women did not have a fixed identity but a number of contested identities. June Hannam and Karen Hunt probe issues that created divisions between these women, as well as giving them the opportunity to act together. In three fascinating case studies they explore:

Product Description
Germany of the 1920s offers a stunning moment in modernity, a time when surface values first became determinants of taste, activity, and occupation: modernity was still modern, spectacle was still spectacular. Janet Ward's luminous study revisits Weimar Germany via the lens of metropolitan visual culture, analyzing the power that 1920s Germany holds for today's visual codes ofconsumerism. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Weimar culture
Very interesting slant ona fascinating period.Book arrived when promised and in good condition.Thank you ... Read more

Product Description
After the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, hundreds of thousands of southern women went to the polls for the first time. In The Weight of Their Votes Lorraine Gates Schuyler examines the consequences this had in states across the South. She shows that from polling places to the halls of state legislatures, women altered the political landscape in ways both symbolic and substantive. Schuyler challenges popular scholarly opinion that women failed to wield their ballots effectively in the 1920s, arguing instead that in state and local politics, women made the most of their votes.

Schuyler explores get-out-the-vote campaigns staged by black and white women in the region and the response of white politicians to the sudden expansion of the electorate. Despite the cultural expectations of southern womanhood and the obstacles of poll taxes, literacy tests, and other suffrage restrictions, southern women took advantage of their voting power, Schuyler shows. Black women mobilized to challenge disfranchisement and seize their right to vote. White women lobbied state legislators for policy changes and threatened their representatives with political defeat if they failed to heed women's policy demands. Thus, even as southern Democrats remained in power, the social welfare policies and public spending priorities of southern states changed in the 1920s as a consequence of woman suffrage. ... Read more

Product Description
Despite the vigorous study of modern American fiction, today's readers are only familiar with a partial shelf of a vast library. Gordon Hutner describes the distorted, canonized history of the twentieth-century American novel as a record of modern classics insufficiently appreciated in their day but recuperated by scholars in order to shape the grand tradition of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. In presenting literary history this way, Hutner argues, scholars have forgotten a rich treasury of realist novels that recount the story of America's confrontation with modernity.

Hutner explains that realist novels were frequently lauded when they first appeared. They are almost completely unread now, he contends, largely because they record the middle-class encounter with modern life. This middle-class realism, Hutner shows, reveals a surprising engagement with the social issues that most fully challenged readers in the United States, including race relations, politics, immigration, and sexuality. Reading these novels now offers an extraordinary opportunity to witness debates about what kind of nation America would become and what place its newly dominant middle class would have—and, Hutner suggests, should also lead us to wonder how our own contemporary novels will be remembered. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

What America Read
`What America Read: Taste, Class, and the Novel, 1920-1960` is a fascinating literary history. Hutner examines the vast universe of books that made up most of what was published and read in America from 1920-60. Most of it was soon forgotten in favor of a small handful of "classics" that are studied over and over like Hemingway, Faulkner and a few others. He has found that most novels published then (and now) can be categorized into a genre that he says, like pornography, is hard to define but "you know it when you see it." This genre can perhaps best be defined as "middle class literature". Hutner understands the term "middle class" is a loaded one, but he uses it in a neutral way. It is the people who have the time and money to read books and search for answers in the ever evolving and often confusing cultural landscape of America. The middle class novel is typically instructing, realistic in style, and perhaps mirrors in some way the readers own life, or sets out to show a slice of life in America - to pick a modern example, the "post-9/11 novel". These novels represent the vast majority of literature published, and by their existence, define the "Great" novel. Every "Great novel", Hutner says, has been an anti middle class novel (although to be sure not every anti middle class novel is great).

Hutner's book is long and detailed and full of novels and authors that were once the critical and popular darlings - thought to be among the immortals - and now today forgotten. This is not the exception, but the norm, as Hutner shows in great detail year by year, decade by decade. Each chapter examines each decade, starting with the 1920s, going through the major works of the period. It's a veritable gold mine of novels and authors to read more about for those so interested. However Hutner says none of the works are really lost classics, they are all just "very good" - one should not approach them as individuals, but as a class or type, representative of the realistic middle class concerned literature that is in constant evolution published year after year in America. He also examines an individual year from each decade in depth, going month by month with the major books published. He may name 20 or 30 major books published that year, of which maybe 3 or 4 titles are still familiar today.

It's difficult for this review to do Hutner's nuanced argument for the "middle class novel" of the 1920s-1960s justice, but his theory has changed how I look at present day novels. I can now scan a "Top 100 Novels of the 2000s" list and quickly ask myself, is this a middle class novel? The concept is helpful in determining not only what to read, but why I read - to find a mirror of my own life, to find answers to life problems, to find out what America is like today? Sort of like TV shows are an ever changing mirror of American culture in the moment, these novels are ephemeral as individuals, yet enduring as a class over time. I would recommend this book to anyone trying to make sense of the ocean of literature published each year. How to navigate the present is made easier by looking at the past. It's also useful for the historian interested in reconstructing a vision of the past through realist fiction, not unlike how historians have used Balzac and Zola for learning more about 19th century France. In addition this is a great book for (re) discovering very good fiction that has probably unfairly fallen by, Hutner has read 100s of these books and knows his topic well. ... Read more

Product Description

"I didn't have anything better to do. That's why I went around bumping off cops." So said Francis "Two-Gun" Crowley after shooting it out with dozens of policemen in the most spectacular siege in New York City history. For ninety minutes, authorities poured hundreds of bullets and chucked tear-gas bombs into the gunman's fifth-story apartment as thousands of people swarmed below, watching the drama unfold. Finally, bleeding from several wounds and choking on the gas, the nineteen-year-old desperado surrendered, bringing an end to a three-month-long crime spree that included two murders.

Crowley was just one of a vast number of outlaws--male and female--who terrorized New York City in the years between World Wars I and II. The lawlessness during that era was unprecedented in American history.

Bad Seeds in the Big Apple is the first book to profile New York City's notorious bandits, gunmen, and desperados of the Prohibition and Depression eras. While numerous books have been written on the city's organized-crime scene, this book completes the picture by introducing readers to infamous New Yorkers such as Richard Reese Whittemore, leader of a gang of jewel thieves; extortion queen Vivian Gordon; bandit and Sing Sing escapee James Nannery; Al Stern and his gang of kidnappers, the men behind the ill-fated 1926 Tombs Prison break; the marauders behind the 1934 Rubel Ice Plant armored car robbery; and dozens of other law breakers who have never before been covered in book form. Patrick Downey also includes a fresh look at a few characters of the era who have received individual book-length treatments.

Customer Reviews (10)

Wish it Were Better
A fine overview of little known and forgotton criminals, marred only by a rather pedestrian writing style and and somewhat superfiscial treatment of its subjects.A better book would have pared down the number oif subjects by half and written about them in more detail.Also a bit too much dependence on the New York Times as a source.There are other newspapers.

A great read about some forgotten bits of crime history
In the years between world wars, New York City saw a crime wave that rivaled the wildest of times in the wild west.Car chases, shootouts, robberies big and small--the headline-grabbing exploits of the Big Apple's criminal underworld mirrored those of famous Midwestern outlaws like John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd.But while history (and Hollywood) have remembered Dillinger and Floyd, many of New York's bad guys (and girls) have been forgotten.In this meticulously researched book, author and crime historian Patrick Downey brings these characters and their exploits to life in vivid color.BAD SEEDS IN THE BIG APPLE is a must read for historical true crime buffs and anyone with an interest in NYC history.

Bad seeds
Excellent service! really pleased with the book that I purchased from you!
Allan Dawkins

Interesting and little-known history of the Big Apple
Reviewed by Sandie Kirkland for RebeccasReads (2/09)

Researched meticulously, Patrick Downey's "Bad Seeds In The Big Apple" portrays the robber gangs of New York City from the 1920s through the 1940s.This time period was rife with gangs who robbed banks, jewelers and other businesses.Some were organized gangs that stayed together for years and carried out multiple robberies, while others were collections of gangsters who came together for one job.There were two main reasons for the robbery rate in this era.Since electronic transfers were not yet available, businesses often had large amounts of cash on hand for payrolls, or just for the day's business takings.Secondly, police techniques were not as sophisticated as in modern times, so the likelihood of an initial successful robbery was much higher.

Downey outlines both famous and obscure cases.A short biography of each criminal is given, with their family background, nicknames, list of associates, and crimes they committed. Their captures and trials with their prison lives and in many cases, their deaths by electric chair are covered in depth.There are intelligent robbers as well as those who counted on dumb luck for success.Gentlemen robbers, gun molls, psychotic sadists and those caught up in crime through laziness are all captured in these pages.Some were quick to confess when caught, while others never admitted what they'd done or gave evidence about others in their gangs.Some of the robberies were fairly significant.One robbery, in an ice plant, was for $427,000.There were other details not often mentioned.One I found interesting was that one criminal, who was 220 pounds, was the heaviest man ever executed up to that time.These days that weight seems like one that is more usual.

I enjoyed this book since I have an interest in true crime.There were several things that I found of interest.One was the number of occasions in which prisoners seemed to escape from penitentiaries.I'd always thought escapes were relatively rare, but during this era they seemed to be fairly common.I was also surprised at how often policemen were killed in these robbery attempts.Of course, many of the criminals were also killed, but that seems to be more of an expected outcome from the decision to follow a life of crime.This book is recommended for true crime fans and those interested in getting a view of an era not always covered in history books.

A Great Gem
A must read for anyone who wants to know about what the lower echelons of New York's underworld were up to when their big time gangster counterparts were counting the coins from suds spilling over the gin barrels. Patrick Downey has done an amazing job in providing the background and events that led to their antics being printed in the dailies of the era. One things for sure: if the cops think they have it rough now, they need to see what the recruits before them had to deal with. Keep up the good work Pat! ... Read more

Product Description
For Native Americans, religious freedom has been an elusive goal. From nineteenth-century bans on indigenous ceremonial practices to twenty-first-century legal battles over sacred lands, peyote use, and hunting practices, the U.S. government has often acted as if Indian traditions were somehow not truly religious and therefore not eligible for the constitutional protections of the First Amendment. In this book, Tisa Wenger shows that cultural notions about what constitutes "religion" are crucial to public debates over religious freedom.

In the 1920s, Pueblo Indian leaders in New Mexico and a sympathetic coalition of non-Indian reformers successfully challenged government and missionary attempts to suppress Indian dances by convincing a skeptical public that these ceremonies counted as religion. This struggle for religious freedom forced the Pueblos to employ Euro-American notions of religion, a conceptual shift with complex consequences within Pueblo life. Long after the dance controversy, Wenger demonstrates, dominant concepts of religion and religious freedom have continued to marginalize indigenous traditions within the United States. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Awsome!
This is a beautifully written treatise that answers the question of Pueblo Indian religious practice and the inability of the U. S. government and Constitution to adequately address the needs of these indigenous peoples. Wenger follows the history from the 1880s through 1929 and briefly touches on several court cases involving Native
American legal conflicts.I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in this social-cultural-legal history of the New Mexico Pueblo controversy regarding costumbres and dances. ... Read more

Product Description
The history of the American twentieth century is largely one of race relations. As the twentieth century unfolded, racial tensions between major racial and ethnic groups often exploded. From the backlash against Eastern and Southern European immigration in the early part of the century to the Civil Rights movement and race riots of the 1960s to the backlash against Latino immigration at the century's end, understanding race relations is central to meeting curricular U.S. history standards. The five-volume Race Relations in the United States in the Twentieth Century set incomparably encapsulates the explosive century, with a desirable decade-by-decade overall organization especially tailored for student assignments. The set provides comprehensive reference coverage of the key events, influential voices, race relations by group, legislation, media influences, cultural output, and theories of inter-group interactions that have been evident in the last century and related to race. Each volume, written by an historian, covers two decades. The set format includes this coverage per decade: Timeline, Overview, Key Events, Voices of the Decade, Race Relations by Group, Law and Government, Media and Mass Communications, Cultural Scene, Influential Theories and Views of Race Relations, Resource Guide, allowing comparison of topics through the century. The bulk of the coverage is topical essays, written in a clear, encyclopedic style. Each volume contains a selected bibliography and index. Historical photos complement the text. Volumes include: BLRace Relations in the United States, 1900-1920 BLRace Relations in the United States, 1920-1940 BLRace Relations in the United States, 1940-1960 BLRace Relations in the United States, 1960-1980 BLRace Relations in the United States, 1980-2000. ... Read more

Product Description
Revealing the untold stories of a pioneer generation of young Chinese Americans, this book places the children and families of early Chinatown in the middle of efforts to combat American policies of exclusion and segregation.

Wendy Jorae challenges long-held notions of early Chinatown as a bachelor community by showing that families--and particularly children--played important roles in its daily life. She explores the wide-ranging images of Chinatown's youth created by competing interests with their own agendas--from anti-immigrant depictions of Chinese children as filthy and culturally inferior to exotic and Orientalized images that catered to the tourist's ideal of Chinatown. All of these representations, Jorae notes, tended to further isolate Chinatown at a time when American-born Chinese children were attempting to define themselves as Chinese American. Facing barriers of immigration exclusion, cultural dislocation, child labor, segregated schooling, crime, and violence, Chinese American children attempted to build a world for themselves on the margins of two cultures. Their story is part of the larger American story of the struggle to overcome racism and realize the ideal of equality. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Growing up Chinese
Wendy Jorae, a lecturer at the University of California, has provided a detailed analysis of Chinatown children, showing how they endured intensive segregated schools, crime, violence, and child labor. Basically, Miss Jorae has written this book to tell the full story that Chinatown was not solely a bachelor community. This study assesses carefully how Chinese American children experience the New Year and how this related to their heritage as a member of the Chinese American community. One shown as example is the Year of the Tiger and the festivities which were part of the New York Chinatown celebration such as bands, martial arts, lion dancers, and firecrackers. Arnold Geathe, a photographer, is depicted as famous for his pictures of Chinese American children done mainly at the Chinese New Year.

Chinese children, it is pointed out, during the era of 1850-1920, were quite small and according to Miss Jorae, made up about eleven percent of the population. There was a great hostility towards them this era which resulted several very stringent immigration laws passed which prevented many Chinese immigrants from entering the United States. Meanwhile, schools became segregated, preventing Chinese children from interacting with Caucasian children at either school or play.

Reviewed by Claude Ury

Children of chinatown 1850-1920
I have just started reading the book and am enjoying it already.The pictures are fasinating and I do believe I will really enjoy this selection. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description

Customer Reviews (2)

Coyote Ugly
In Coyote Nation Professor Mitchell struggles to make his case that in order to create a new racial order in New Mexico, colonists had to resort to racializing the intimate recesses of the human body.While it is easy to appreciate that the conquest of New Mexico might not have been as simple as more dichotomous regions, the arguments in Coyote Nation are tortured and repetitious to the point of fetishism.It may be true that New Mexico had the unique problem of having an established Hispanic elite, but it does not follow that we must perform a post mortem gynecological endoscopy to figure out what happened. Mitchell never makes a compelling case for the necessity to deconstruct every pimple, wart, and bunion on the frontier.Concentrating on the racial ephemera of every vaginal discharge, stool sample and cavity search, to the exclusion of a socio-economic analysis is to substitute a biopsy for an audit.

That is not to say that social history is not useful in learning about the past.But the social universe in New Mexico was a function of the racial, cultural and economic commonalities among European Americans whose pedigrees may have varied slightly but whose relationship to modernity is quite similar. The demographics and economic stratification were unique. While it may be useful to contrast the process of colonization in California and Texas with New Mexico and the contemporaneous imperialism in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, Mitchell neglects to superimpose his analysis on these areas and thus he makes the undergraduate mistake of comparing apples to anuses.

No one can be astonished to learn that the dominant settlers had white, Northern European, Victorian sensibilities.It can hardly be surprising to discover people have been sexist, racist, paternalistic, clannish and yet able to compromise when their physical and financial well-being was at stake. Mitchell looks at trials, newspaper accounts and scholarship to support his project of corporeal colonization.But where else could racial and sexual discrimination be found?Regardless of how we assess the motives of the authors of the Dawes act, is it so far-fetched to think that the indoctrination at Native American boarding schools would include the removal of long hair?We could hardly be expected to Americanize, and modernize subordinate people by handing out Tomahawks and eagle feathers.

Many of Mitchell's examples hinge on the tactics of frontier lawyers, prosecuting and defending (often marginalized) persons against the hyperventilated backdrop of rape cases.To grant elevated status to legal histrionics, exclusively in the area of bodily comportment, ignores the circumstances and constraints of desperate courtroom battle.

Sexuality, gender politics and racial stratification are invaluable axes to focus cultural analysis.And while it's fascinating to have learned that the age of consent to New Mexico went from to age 10 to age 14 and that not all Mexicans were alike, there was little else to recommend Mitchell's soft porn theory of history.

Thought provoking & well done
This was a really great read - well researched, well written, and very thought provoking.Even if you are only generally interested in the history of race and ethnicity, this slice of New Mexican history will fascinate you.And for those of you with an interest in the Southwest, this will be a particularly good read. ... Read more

Product Description
In this penetrating examination of African American politics and culture, Paul Ortiz throws a powerful light on the struggle of black Floridians to create the first statewide civil rights movement against Jim Crow. Concentrating on the period between the end of slavery and the election of 1920, Emancipation Betrayed vividly demonstrates that the decades leading up to the historic voter registration drive of 1919-20 were marked by intense battles during which African Americans struck for higher wages, took up arms to prevent lynching, forged independent political alliances, boycotted segregated streetcars, and created a democratic historical memory of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Contrary to previous claims that African Americans made few strides toward building an effective civil rights movement during this period, Ortiz documents how black Floridians formed mutual aid organizations--secret societies, women's clubs, labor unions, and churches--to bolster dignity and survival in the harsh climate of Florida, which had the highest lynching rate of any state in the union. African Americans called on these institutions to build a statewide movement to regain the right to vote after World War I. African American women played a decisive role in the campaign as they mobilized in the months leading up to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. The 1920 contest culminated in the bloodiest Election Day in modern American history, when white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan violently, and with state sanction, prevented African Americans from voting. Ortiz's eloquent interpretation of the many ways that black Floridians fought to expand the meaning of freedom beyond formal equality and his broader consideration of how people resist oppression and create new social movements illuminate a strategic era of United States history and reveal how the legacy of legal segregation continues to play itself out to this day. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Emancipation Betrayed:The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in FL from Reconstruction to Bloody 1920 Elec
This book is more of a documentary of that time in our American History I wish could be rewound and done another way.It's tragic how white's treated people of color, especially our black citizens.It was inspiring in the way blacks organized and pushed for property rights, working rights, and voting rights to make their lives better even in this hateful era.Blacks fought in the civil war, yet were not recognized because of their skin color.There were moments in reading this where I felt frustrated with society's fringe and how they treated blacks.

We have a lot to learn from this book to live life with compassion and tolerance, and to work to righting that what is wrong in our society.

Blacks in Post Civil War Florida Lose the "Second Civil War"
The struggle by blacks to obtain their civil rights in Florida is not well-known. In fact, many have seen blacks' efforts to obtain their civil rights there as weak and ineffectual after the Civil War only becoming powerful after World War I. Paul Ortiz supports his theme that blacks, in fact, engaged in generations-long efforts to force whites to recognize their basic civil rights by showing all of the methods they used to combat white racism and violence. He shows that blacks used organized groups as their most effective tool, including secret societies, lodges, churches, labor unions, black veterans' posts and women's groups to battle white racism and violence. Too, black women took a key role not only within most of these groups but also by individual efforts. By his employment of personal accounts including oral histories and personal interviews, as well as many other primary and secondary sources, he gives an in-depth account of the history of the continuous struggle by African-Americans for civil rights in Florida from antebellum times to the election of 1920.

Ortiz begins by showing that many blacks fled to the Spanish-owned colony of Florida prior to 1763 when it came under British rule. Escaped slaves, many from the British Carolinas, helped the Spanish fight against British forces then joined with Seminole Indians to battle United States militia or federal troops seeking to recapture escaped slaves and displace the Indians. Many escaped slaves settled in Gracie Real de Santa Teresa de Mose (Fort Mose), the first all black settlement in the future United States. This organized settlement showed that blacks must form groups for effective self protection and for mutual aid.

After regaining Florida from Britain following Britain's defeat in the American Revolution, Spain ceded it to the United States in 1819; it became a state in 1845. Before becoming a state, U.S. armed forces engaged in three wars resulting in the removal of most Seminole Indians and decreasing Florida's attraction as a haven for runaway slaves. Violence against blacks in Florida had its beginnings in these and earlier vicious battles. However, escaped slaves early use of Florida a destination was a precursor of later black attempts for freedom.

During the early Civil War, escaped slaves made desperate efforts to escape to Union ships and to Union lines and later many slaves joined the Union military to fight their former owners. After the largest battle in Florida at Olustee, some Confederate soldiers killed black Union prisoners continuing the legacy of violence against blacks and presaging the violence found during the generations following the war. But experience as soldiers fighting for their freedom helped many blacks after the war as they were forced to take up arms to defend themselves and fellow blacks.

After the war, blacks hoped that in addition to emancipation, they would find unfettered access to farmland, jobs, public schools and the right to vote. However, Reconstruction gave only limited success obtaining these goals but one of the most important was the formation of religious and other mutual aid groups for support. These early efforts at organizing were begun to counter the violence and terror whites employed to resubjugate the newly freed blacks.

Some of the early post Civil War groups promoted solidarity among blacks by celebrating Emancipation Day each January 1, and by having organized ceremonies honoring veterans. Other activities maintained and promoted black history of contributions blacks made to the U.S. including those made in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. In addition, efforts were made to ensure that memories of the horrors of slavery were not forgotten during these ceremonies. Black groups pursued every avenue in their quest to fight white domination and terrorism. Unions organized strikes and other actions to try to get better wages and working conditions as well as respect on the job. Churches and women's groups organized successful boycotts such as against segregated public transit during the streetcar boycotts in several Florida cities. Secret societies not only fostered mutual aid and respect but like many of the other groups provided for decent burials for their members and support for those who were ill.

Many blacks were often members of more than one group, e.g., one could be a member of a church, a union and a secret organization simultaneously. Ad hoc committees and groups were sometimes formed in response to volatile situations as in armed black responses to white vigilantes. As blacks made concerted efforts to enforce their suffrage rights under the 15th (and later the 19th) amendment, these already organized groups were immediately available as organizing centers and made them the logical places to which blacks could turn. They served as bases for political action groups since only through politics could blacks fight local, state and federal white racism as the established groups created spaces within which these new efforts could form and grow.

These groups were the fundamental bodies which formed black culture and society in Florida and when combined with the extraordinary efforts of black women, they were in the forefront of black resistance to white tyranny. Ortiz successfully shows that these groups were engaged for generations fighting against white racism and terror with more or less effect. The culmination of the various groups' efforts was the remarkable efforts made in the 1920 elections. Blacks were recruited, registered, and then escorted to polling locations but due to the pervasive efforts of whites including pervasive use of violence and intimidation through the KKK and local law enforcement authorities, opening of mail to detect black plans, unfair enforcement of election laws, poll taxes, and black vigilante actions, their efforts failed. Despite this failure the progress made by these groups and women in general was remarkable.

An Exploration Of Exploitation
There are so many stereotypes perpetrated by mainstream history, especially when it comes to the facts surrounding the road to black freedom in Jim Crow America.

Paul Ortiz uses oral history, reseach of documents and investigative skills to write an outstanding book on the heroic work of blacks in challenging the white power structure in Florida from reconstruction to the bloody violence surrounding the 1920 election.

The white politicians in Florida used a variety of tools in attempting keep the black population in a subserviant position. These included terror and lynching, working with northern businesses and unions to cap the number of blacks leaving the state for better job opportunities and using the judicial system to have a pool of cheap labor sitting in jails.

Through it all, leaders from all walks of life emerged in the black community. Ortiz explains the various aspects surrounding the birth of black organizing and the small victories from boycotts, self-defense groups and other means to achieve the goal of having full rights under the law.

It ultimately centers on the right to vote and how the white power structure used every tool in its Jim Crow arsenal in 1920 to try and break the will of blacks and destoy the ever-expanding civil rights movement.

A time in U.S. History avoided in most books covering this time period, Ortiz again demonstrates that those who forget the past can never set a true course in the future. Emancipation Betrayed is an important book for those seeking the truth surrounding this nation in a proper historical context.



... Read more

Product Description
During the 1920s and 1930s, changes in the American population, increasing urbanization, and innovations in technology exerted major influences on the daily lives of ordinary people. Explore how everyday living changed during these years when use of automobiles and home electrification first became commonplace, when radio emerged, and when cinema, with the addition of sound, became broadly popular. This enjoyable read brings the period clearly into focus. ... Read more