Transatlantic Liverpool

Mark Christian is professor in the Department of Africana Studies at the City University of New York.

Transatlantic Liverpool employs an Africana critical studies lens to examine transatlantic lives, linkages, and relationships beyond London, which Christian argues has been the center of too much of the Black British experience. He seeks to broaden the scope of transatlantic studies with case studies that consider evidence outside the metropole. Written as a semi-autoethnography that expands Paul Gilroy's concept of the Black Atlantic, the book contrasts the author's experiences with other transatlantic travelers, including Frederick Douglass. As Christian notes, Douglass came to England in search of freedom, whereas the author himself left England for the US in 1992 “to pursue academic freedom” (p. 21). Christian’s analysis thus attempts to connect the modern-day Black British experience to a wider transatlantic phenomenon that defines racial relationships and hierarchies on both sides of the Atlantic. He seeks to unravel the complex hierarchy of racism to reveal a fuller Black British experience that will foster deeper understandings of transatlantic history. His case studies, especially his coverage of the funding decisions made by Liverpool’s city council in the 1980s and 1990s, are particularly interesting. This volume will be valuable to readers seeking to know more about transatlantic linkages, Liverpool, and the Black British experience. Recommended. General readers through faculty.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1.Theorizing Transatlantic Liverpool and the Black Atlantic Paradigm2.Life and Times in a Liverpool Black Family – The Christians 3.Schooling, L8 Community Football, Grassroots Education, and Mainstream Miseducation 4.Anti-Black Riots, Resistance & Black Organization Demise: 1919-2000s 5.A Tale of Two Freedoms: Contemporary Self-Reflexivity and the Memory of Frederick Douglass Appendices a)Liverpool City Council Slave Apology Minutes – from December 9, 1999b)The Age of Slave Apologies: The Case of Liverpool, England – transcript of public lecture presented by Dr. Mark Christian, November 14, 2007c)Front cover: CWCN Reports on Historic Slave Apology (Issue 26: December 1999)d)Consortium of Black Organisations – Liverpool- Response to LCC Slave Apology e)Front cover: CWCN Celebration of College Status (Issue 12: December 1992)f)CWCN Editorial denounces drastic cuts to funding by LCC (Issue 21: June 1997)g)Liverpool Echo (August 27, 1997) – Report praised