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Product Description
The Land Was Ours: African American Beaches from Jim Crow to the Sunbelt South (9780674050471): Andrew W. Kahrl: Books. A decidedly fresh and nuanced perspective on Jim Crow. By deftly weaving together fascinating and largely unknown stories of African American life and leisure, Kahrl explores how beaches and waterfronts became sites of racial contest. His book shows that the coastlines of the South served as powerful microcosms of the larger forces shaping Southern race relations in the twentieth century. Highly persuasive and original, The Land Was Ours reminds us that serious and innovative academic work can be engaging and enjoyable. --Mark M. Smith, author of How Race Is MadeThose men and women whom Richard Wright once called the landless upon the land now have a history and a historian. Kahrl's rich archival portrait of black-owned beaches and coastal resorts redraws the map of community and capitalism in the Jim Crow South. The Land Was Ours demonstrates that African Americans never abandoned the land as a vital site of struggle in the larger Black Freedom movement. A landmark study of race, leisure, and real estate on America's shorelines. --Davarian L. Baldwin, author of Chicago's New NegroesKahrl's exhaustively researched and compelling book chronicles African Americans' search for seaside sanctuaries beyond the gaze of white America. He uncovers sobering and significant stories that not only extend our understanding of civil rights but also uncover the many faces of coastal communities in the South. We encounter the triumphs and setbacks of African American entrepreneurs and the joys and affirmations of shared recreation, as well as real-estate fraud, environmental degradation, arson, and diabolical schemes to undermine black seaside resorts from the Chesapeake to Mississippi. --Pete Daniel, author of Lost Revolutions The Land Was Ours is a careful, rich, and provocative book that contributes significantly to our understanding of race in twentieth-century America. In addition to offering an original narrative of the ways in which race is an inescapable factor in Americans' conception and construction of class, Kahrl also shines a light on the mechanics of segregation, desegregation, and integration: Jim Crow required intricate planning and execution, but so did efforts to resist and, ultimately, dismantle it. --Henry Louis Gates, Jr., author of Life upon These ShoresA powerful reminder of the pernicious constraints that racism has imposed on African American leisure. In this beautifully crafted and revelatory study, Kahrl recounts the mixture of bootstrap black capitalism and white racism that fueled the creation of segregated pleasure grounds and eventually led to their disappearance. Perhaps only David Mamet could create a more colorful cast of characters than the developers and entrepreneurs who populate Kahrl's bittersweet history of the shifting fortunes of black coastal resorts. --W. Fitzhugh Brundage, author of The Southern Past
Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
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