Beyond Lift Every Voice and Sing

Download Beyond Lift Every Voice and Sing PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Black performance and Cultural Criticism
ISBN 13 : 9780814254790
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (547 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Beyond Lift Every Voice and Sing by : Paula Marie Seniors

Download or read book Beyond Lift Every Voice and Sing written by Paula Marie Seniors and published by Black performance and Cultural Criticism. This book was released on 2017-08-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond Lift Every Voice and Sing explores African American life and history as refracted through the musical theater productions of one of the most prolific black song-writing teams of the early twentieth century. This study's overarching question is how representations in black musical theater reflected and challenged the dominant social order.

Beyond Lift Every Voice and Sing

Download Beyond Lift Every Voice and Sing PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (318 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Beyond Lift Every Voice and Sing by : Paula Marie Seniors

Download or read book Beyond Lift Every Voice and Sing written by Paula Marie Seniors and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paula Marie Seniors's Beyond Lift Every Voice and Sing is an engaging and well-researched book that explores the realities of African American life and history as refracted through the musical theater productions of one of the most prolific black song-writing teams of the early twentieth century. James Weldon Johnson, J. Rosamond Johnson, and Bob Cole combined conservative and progressive ideas in a complex and historically specific strategy for overcoming racism and its effects. In Shoo Fly Regiment (1906-1908) and The Red Moon (1908-1910), theater, uplift, and politics collided as the team tried to communicate a politics of uplift, racial pride, gender equality, and interethnic coalitions. The overarching question of this study is how roles and representations in black musical theater both reflected and challenged the dominant social order. While some scholars dismiss the team as conformists, Seniors's contention is that they used the very tools of hegemony to make progressive political statements and to create a distinctly black theater informed by black politics, history, and culture. These men were writers, musicians, actors, and vaudevillians who strove to change the perception of African Americans on stage from one of minstrelsy buffoonery to one of dignity and professionalism.

James Weldon Johnson

Download James Weldon Johnson PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Children's Press(CT)
ISBN 13 : 9780516441740
Total Pages : 36 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (417 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis James Weldon Johnson by : Patricia C. McKissack

Download or read book James Weldon Johnson written by Patricia C. McKissack and published by Children's Press(CT). This book was released on 1990 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

May We Forever Stand

Download May We Forever Stand PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469638614
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis May We Forever Stand by : Imani Perry

Download or read book May We Forever Stand written by Imani Perry and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2018-02-02 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twin acts of singing and fighting for freedom have been inseparable in African American history. May We Forever Stand tells an essential part of that story. With lyrics penned by James Weldon Johnson and music composed by his brother Rosamond, "Lift Every Voice and Sing" was embraced almost immediately as an anthem that captured the story and the aspirations of black Americans. Since the song's creation, it has been adopted by the NAACP and performed by countless artists in times of both crisis and celebration, cementing its place in African American life up through the present day. In this rich, poignant, and readable work, Imani Perry tells the story of the Black National Anthem as it traveled from South to North, from civil rights to black power, and from countless family reunions to Carnegie Hall and the Oval Office. Drawing on a wide array of sources, Perry uses "Lift Every Voice and Sing" as a window on the powerful ways African Americans have used music and culture to organize, mourn, challenge, and celebrate for more than a century.

Lift Every Voice and Swing

Download Lift Every Voice and Swing PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479892327
Total Pages : 340 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (798 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Lift Every Voice and Swing by : Vaughn A. Booker

Download or read book Lift Every Voice and Swing written by Vaughn A. Booker and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2022 Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities, award by by the Council of Graduate Schools Explores the role of jazz celebrities like Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, and Mary Lou Williams as representatives of African American religion in the twentieth century Beginning in the 1920s, the Jazz Age propelled Black swing artists into national celebrity. Many took on the role of race representatives, and were able to leverage their popularity toward achieving social progress for other African Americans. In Lift Every Voice and Swing, Vaughn A. Booker argues that with the emergence of these popular jazz figures, who came from a culture shaped by Black Protestantism, religious authority for African Americans found a place and spokespeople outside of traditional Afro-Protestant institutions and religious life. Popular Black jazz professionals—such as Ella Fitzgerald, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, and Mary Lou Williams—inherited religious authority though they were not official religious leaders. Some of these artists put forward a religious culture in the mid-twentieth century by releasing religious recordings and putting on religious concerts, and their work came to be seen as integral to the Black religious ethos. Booker documents this transformative era in religious expression, in which jazz musicians embodied religious beliefs and practices that echoed and diverged from the predominant African American religious culture. He draws on the heretofore unexamined private religious writings of Duke Ellington and Mary Lou Williams, and showcases the careers of female jazz artists alongside those of men, expanding our understanding of African American religious expression and decentering the Black church as the sole concept for understanding Black Protestant religiosity. Featuring gorgeous prose and insightful research, Lift Every Voice and Swing will change the way we understand the connections between jazz music and faith.

Lift Every Voice and Sing II Accompaniment Edition

Download Lift Every Voice and Sing II Accompaniment Edition PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Church Publishing, Inc.
ISBN 13 : 9780898692396
Total Pages : 420 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (923 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Lift Every Voice and Sing II Accompaniment Edition by : Church Publishing Incorporated

Download or read book Lift Every Voice and Sing II Accompaniment Edition written by Church Publishing Incorporated and published by Church Publishing, Inc.. This book was released on 1993-01-21 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This popular collection of 280 musical pieces from both the African American and Gospel traditions has been compiled under the supervision of the Office of Black Ministries of the Episcopal Church. It includes service music and several psalm settings in addition to the Negro spirituals, Gospel songs, and hymns.

70 and Beyond

Download 70 and Beyond PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Author House
ISBN 13 : 1468596063
Total Pages : 52 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (685 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis 70 and Beyond by : Annè DuBois

Download or read book 70 and Beyond written by Annè DuBois and published by Author House. This book was released on 2012-09-28 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This rare and unique e-Book documents four generations of DuBose’s. The major personalities that begin this journey of talent and destiny fulfillment are two dynamic brothers who are now living in their golden years of 70 and Beyond. Clifford and Jonathan "Papa Joe" DuBose, both grew up in the back hills of Montevallo, Alabama. Both like many boys played games and ball in the streets during the week and sing the songs of Zion in church on Sunday. But little did either of them know that there natural born gifts would bring them or their offspring before the worlds stage in various national or international forums. This publishing is about establishing traditions to be passed down to the many generations to come. And lastly, honoring those who we connected with that joined the movement of music by giving your time and life to promoting soul/quartet music.For current accounts of the evolution visit 70 and Beyond Video & Audio Blog. 70 and Beyond Moving Forward

Reaching Beyond

Download Reaching Beyond PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Middleway Press
ISBN 13 : 1938252764
Total Pages : 191 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (382 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Reaching Beyond by : Herbie Hancock

Download or read book Reaching Beyond written by Herbie Hancock and published by Middleway Press. This book was released on 2017-02-01 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Reaching Beyond, Buddhist thinker and activist Daisaku Ikeda explores the origins, development,and international influence of jazz with legendary artists Herbie Hancockand Wayne Shorter.Reflecting on their lives and careers, Mr. Hancock and Mr. Shorter sharethe lessons they have learned from their musical mentors, including MilesDavis and Art Blakey, and how the Buddhist philosophy they’ve learnedfrom President Ikeda over the past forty years deeply resonates with theemancipatory spirit of jazz.These wide-ranging conversations include such thought-provoking topics as:• Music’s mission for peace in a time of discord• The importance of the artist’s spiritual growth• The Buddhist concept of changing poison into medicine• Ways to make the “ideal America” a reality for everyoneReaching Beyond offers positive new ideasfor musicians and nonmusicians alike.

Lift Every Voice and Sing

Download Lift Every Voice and Sing PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 0375506462
Total Pages : 351 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (755 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Lift Every Voice and Sing by : Julian Bond

Download or read book Lift Every Voice and Sing written by Julian Bond and published by Random House. This book was released on 2001-02-01 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A group of young men in Jacksonville, Florida, arranged to celebrate Lincoln's birthday in 1900. My brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, and I decided to write a song to be sung at the exercise. I wrote the words and he wrote the music. Our New York publisher, Edward B. Marks, made mimeographed copies for us and the song was taught to and sung by a chorus of five hundred colored school children. "Shortly afterwards my brother and I moved from Jacksonville to New York, and the song passed out of our minds. But the school children of Jacksonville kept singing it, they went off to other schools and sang it, they became teachers and taught it to other children. Within twenty years it was being sung over the South and in some other parts of the country. Today, the song, popularly known as the Negro National Hymn, is quite generally used. "The lines of this song repay me in elation, almost of exquisite anguish, whenever I hear them sung by Negro children." —James Weldon Johnson, 1935 Pasted into Bibles, schoolbooks, and hearts, "Lift Every Voice and Sing," written by J. Rosamond Johnson and James Weldon Johnson in 1900, has become one of the most beloved songs in the African American community—taught for years in schools, churches, and civic organizations. Adopted by the NAACP as its official song in the 1920s and sung throughout the civil rights movement, it is still heard today at gatherings across America. James Weldon Johnson's lyrics pay homage to a history of struggle but never waver from a sense of optimism for the future—"facing the rising sun of our new day begun, let us march on till victory is won." Its message of hope and strength has made "Lift Every Voice and Sing" a source of inspiration for generations. In celebration of the song's centennial, Julian Bond and Sondra Kathryn Wilson have collected one hundred essays by artists, educators, politicians, and activists reflecting on their personal experiences with the song. Also featuring photos from historical archives, Lift Every Voice and Sing is a moving illustration of the African American experience in the past century. With contributors including John Hope Franklin, Jesse Jackson, Maya Angelou, Norman Lear, Maxine Waters, and Percy Sutton, this volume is a personal tribute to the enduring power of an anthem. "Lift Every Voice and Sing" has touched the hearts of many who have heard it because its true aim, as Harry Belafonte explains, "isn't just to show life as it is but to show life as it should be."

Beyond the Sound Barrier

Download Beyond the Sound Barrier PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 113672673X
Total Pages : 168 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (367 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Beyond the Sound Barrier by : Kristin K Henson

Download or read book Beyond the Sound Barrier written by Kristin K Henson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond the Sound Barrier examines twentieth-century fictional representations of popular music-particularly jazz-in the fiction of James Weldon Johnson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Langston Hughes, and Toni Morrison. Kristin K. Henson argues that an analysis of musical tropes in the work of these four authors suggests that cultural "mixing" constitutes one of the central preoccupations of modernist literature. Valuable for any reader interested in the intersections between American literature and the history of American popular music, Henson situates the literary use of popular music as a culturally amalgamated, boundary-crossing form of expression that reflects and defines modern American identities.

An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre

Download An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350119652
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (51 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre by : Sean Mayes

Download or read book An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre written by Sean Mayes and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A radically urgent intervention, An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre: 1900 - 1950 uncovers the hidden Black history of this most influential of artforms. Drawing on lost archive material and digitised newspapers from the turn of the century onwards, this exciting story has been re-traced and restored to its rightful place. A vital and significant part of British cultural history between 1900 and 1950, Black performance practice was fundamental to resisting and challenging racism in the UK. Join Mayes (a Broadway- and Toronto-based Music Director) and Whitfield (a musical theatre historian and researcher) as they take readers on a journey through a historically-inconvenient and brilliant reality that has long been overlooked. Get to know the Black theatre community in London's Roaring 20s, and hear about the secret Florence Mills memorial concert they held in 1928. Acquaint yourself with Buddy Bradley, Black tap and ballet choreographer, who reshaped dance in British musicals - often to be found at Noël Coward's apartment for late-night rehearsals, such was Bradley's importance. Meet Jack Johnson, the first African American Heavyweight Boxing Champion, who toured Britain's theatres during World War 1 and brought the sounds of Chicago to places like war-weary Dundee. Discover the most prolific Black theatre practitioner you've never heard of, William Garland, who worked for 40 years across multiple continents and championed Black British performers. Marvel at performers like cabaret star Mabel Mercer, born in Stafford in 1900, who sang and conducted theatre orchestras across the UK, as well as Black Birmingham comedian Eddie Emerson, who was Garland's partner for decades. Many of their names and works have never been included in histories of the British musical - until now.

Women in Music

Download Women in Music PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135848130
Total Pages : 870 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (358 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Women in Music by : Karin Pendle

Download or read book Women in Music written by Karin Pendle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-07-26 with total page 870 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women in Music: A Research and Information Guide is an annotated bibliography emerging from more than twenty-five years of feminist scholarship on music. This book testifies to the great variety of subjects and approaches represented in over two decades of published writings on women, their work, and the important roles that feminist outlooks have played in formerly male-oriented academic scholarship or journalistic musings on women and music.

Congo Love Song

Download Congo Love Song PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469632721
Total Pages : 469 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Congo Love Song by : Ira Dworkin

Download or read book Congo Love Song written by Ira Dworkin and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2017-04-27 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his 1903 hit "Congo Love Song," James Weldon Johnson recounts a sweet if seemingly generic romance between two young Africans. While the song's title may appear consistent with that narrative, it also invokes the site of King Leopold II of Belgium's brutal colonial regime at a time when African Americans were playing a central role in a growing Congo reform movement. In an era when popular vaudeville music frequently trafficked in racist language and imagery, "Congo Love Song" emerges as one example of the many ways that African American activists, intellectuals, and artists called attention to colonialism in Africa. In this book, Ira Dworkin examines black Americans' long cultural and political engagement with the Congo and its people. Through studies of George Washington Williams, Booker T. Washington, Pauline Hopkins, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, and other figures, he brings to light a long-standing relationship that challenges familiar presumptions about African American commitments to Africa. Dworkin offers compelling new ways to understand how African American involvement in the Congo has helped shape anticolonialism, black aesthetics, and modern black nationalism.

The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance

Download The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351751433
Total Pages : 574 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (517 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance by : Kathy Perkins

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance written by Kathy Perkins and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance is an outstanding collection of specially written essays that charts the emergence, development, and diversity of African American Theatre and Performance—from the nineteenth-century African Grove Theatre to Afrofuturism. Alongside chapters from scholars are contributions from theatre makers, including producers, theatre managers, choreographers, directors, designers, and critics. This ambitious Companion includes: A "Timeline of African American theatre and performance." Part I "Seeing ourselves onstage" explores the important experience of Black theatrical self-representation. Analyses of diverse topics including historical dramas, Broadway musicals, and experimental theatre allow readers to discover expansive articulations of Blackness. Part II "Institution building" highlights institutions that have nurtured Black people both on stage and behind the scenes. Topics include Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), festivals, and black actor training. Part III "Theatre and social change" surveys key moments when Black people harnessed the power of theatre to affirm community realities and posit new representations for themselves and the nation as a whole. Topics include Du Bois and African Muslims, women of the Black Arts Movement, Afro-Latinx theatre, youth theatre, and operatic sustenance for an Afro future. Part IV "Expanding the traditional stage" examines Black performance traditions that privilege Black worldviews, sense-making, rituals, and innovation in everyday life. This section explores performances that prefer the space of the kitchen, classroom, club, or field. This book engages a wide audience of scholars, students, and theatre practitioners with its unprecedented breadth. More than anything, these invaluable insights not only offer a window onto the processes of producing work, but also the labour and economic issues that have shaped and enabled African American theatre. Chapter 20 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

America in the Round

Download America in the Round PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Iowa Press
ISBN 13 : 1609386264
Total Pages : 333 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (93 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis America in the Round by : Donatella Galella

Download or read book America in the Round written by Donatella Galella and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2019-03-15 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2020 Barnard Hewitt Award, honorable mention Washington D.C.’s Arena Stage was the first professional regional theatre in the nation’s capital to welcome a racially integrated audience; the first to perform behind the Iron Curtain; and the first to win the Tony Award for best regional theatre. This behind-the-scenes look at one of the leading theatres in the United States shows how key financial and artistic decisions were made, using a range of archival materials such as letters and photographs as well as interviews with artists and administrators. Close-ups of major productions from The Great White Hope to Oklahoma! illustrate how Arena Stage navigated cultural trends. More than a chronicle, America in the Round is a critical history that reveals how far the theatre could go with its budget and racially liberal politics, and how Arena both disputed and duplicated systems of power. With an innovative “in the round” approach, the narrative simulates sitting in different parts of the arena space to see the theatre through different lenses—economics, racial dynamics, and American identity.

Sacral Grooves, Limbo Gateways

Download Sacral Grooves, Limbo Gateways PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820345997
Total Pages : 326 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (23 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Sacral Grooves, Limbo Gateways by : Keith Cartwright

Download or read book Sacral Grooves, Limbo Gateways written by Keith Cartwright and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “We're seeing people that we didn't know exist,” the director of FEMA acknowledged in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Sacral Grooves, Limbo Gateways offers a corrective to some of America's institutionalized invisibilities by delving into the submerged networks of ritual performance, writing, intercultural history, and migration that have linked the coastal U.S. South with the Caribbean and the wider Atlantic world. This interdisciplinary study slips beneath the bar of rigid national and literary periods, embarking upon deeper—more rhythmic and embodied—signatures of time. It swings low through ecologies and symbolic orders of creolized space. And it reappraises pluralistic modes of knowledge, kinship, and authority that have sustained vital forms of agency (such as jazz) amid abysses of racialized trauma. Drawing from Haitian Vodou and New Orleanian Voudou and from Cuban and South Floridian Santería, as well as from Afro-Baptist (Caribbean, Geechee, and Bahamian) models of encounters with otherness, this book reemplaces deep-southern texts within the counterclockwise ring-stepping of a long Afro-Atlantic modernity. Turning to an orphan girl's West African initiation tale to follow a remarkably traveled body of feminine rites and writing (in works by Paule Marshall, Zora Neale Hurston, Lydia Cabrera, William Faulkner, James Weldon Johnson, and LeAnne Howe, among others), Cartwright argues that only in holistic form, emergent from gulfs of cross-cultural witness, can literary and humanistic authority find legitimacy. Without such grounding, he contends, our educational institutions blind and even poison students, bringing them to “swallow lye,” like the grandson of Phoenix Jackson in Eudora Welty's “A Worn Path.” Here, literary study may open pathways to alternative medicines—fetched by tenacious avatars like Phoenix (or an orphan Kumba or a shell-shaking Turtle)—to remedy the lies our partial histories have made us swallow.

The Empire Abroad and the Empire at Home

Download The Empire Abroad and the Empire at Home PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820344060
Total Pages : 169 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (23 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Empire Abroad and the Empire at Home by : John Cullen Gruesser

Download or read book The Empire Abroad and the Empire at Home written by John Cullen Gruesser and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Empire Abroad and the Empire at Home, John Cullen Gruesser establishes that African American writers at the turn of the twentieth century responded extensively and idiosyncratically to overseas expansion and its implications for domestic race relations. He contends that the work of these writers significantly informs not only African American literary studies but also U.S. political history. Focusing on authors who explicitly connect the empire abroad and the empire at home (James Weldon Johnson, Sutton Griggs, Pauline E. Hopkins, W.E.B. Du Bois, and others), Gruesser examines U.S. black participation in, support for, and resistance to expansion. Race consistently trumped empire for African American writers, who adopted positions based on the effects they believed expansion would have on blacks at home. Given the complexity of the debates over empire and rapidity with which events in the Caribbean and the Pacific changed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it should come as no surprise that these authors often did not maintain fixed positions on imperialism. Their stances depended on several factors, including the foreign location, the presence or absence of African American soldiers within a particular text, the stage of the author's career, and a given text's relationship to specific generic and literary traditions. No matter what their disposition was toward imperialism, the fact of U.S. expansion allowed and in many cases compelled black writers to grapple with empire. They often used texts about expansion to address the situation facing blacks at home during a period in which their citizenship rights, and their very existence, were increasingly in jeopardy.