E. James West - Böcker

From its launch in 1945, Ebony magazine was politically and socially influential. However, the magazine also played an important role in educating millions of African Americans about their past. Guided by the pen of Lerone Bennett Jr., the magazine's senior editor and in-house historian, Ebony became a key voice in the popular black history revival that flourished after World War II. Its content helped push representations of the African American past from the margins to the center of the nation's cultural and political imagination. E. James West's fresh and fascinating exploration of Ebony's political, social, and historical content illuminates the intellectual role of the iconic magazine and its contribution to African American scholarship. He also uncovers a paradox. Though Ebony provided Bennett with space to promote a militant reading of black history and protest, the magazine's status as a consumer publication helped to mediate its representation of African American identity in both past and present.Mixing biography, cultural history, and popular memory, West restores Ebony and Bennett to their rightful place in African American intellectual, commercial, and political history.

Multiple Award-Winner!Winner of the 2023 Michael Nelson Prize of International Association for Media and History (IAMHIST)Recipient of the 2022 Jane Jacobs Urban Communication Book AwardWinner of the 2023 American Journalism Historians Association Book of the YearWinner of the 2023 ULCC’s (Union League Club of Chicago) Outstanding Book on the History of Chicago AwardRecipient of a 2023 Best of Illinois History Superior Achievement award from the Illinois State Historical SocietyWinner of the 2023 BAAS Book Prize (British Association for American Studies)Winner of a 2023 The Brinck Book Award and Lecture series (University of New Mexico School of Architecture + Planning)Honorable Mention for the 2021-22 RSAP Book Prize (Research Society for American Periodicals)Buildings once symbolized Chicago's place as the business capital of Black America and a thriving hub for Black media. In this groundbreaking work, E. James West examines the city's Black press through its relationship with the built environment. As a house for the struggle, the buildings of publications like Ebony and the Chicago Defender embodied narratives of racial uplift and community resistance. As political hubs, gallery spaces, and public squares, they served as key sites in the ongoing Black quest for self-respect, independence, and civic identity. At the same time, factors ranging from discriminatory business practices to editorial and corporate ideology prescribed their location, use, and appearance, positioning Black press buildings as sites of both Black possibility and racial constraint. Engaging and innovative, A House for the Struggle reconsiders the Black press's place at the crossroads where aspiration collided with life in one of America's most segregated cities.

From its launch in 1945, Ebony magazine was politically and socially influential. However, the magazine also played an important role in educating millions of African Americans about their past. Guided by the pen of Lerone Bennett Jr., the magazine's senior editor and in-house historian, Ebony became a key voice in the popular black history revival that flourished after World War II. Its content helped push representations of the African American past from the margins to the center of the nation's cultural and political imagination. E. James West's fresh and fascinating exploration of Ebony's political, social, and historical content illuminates the intellectual role of the iconic magazine and its contribution to African American scholarship. He also uncovers a paradox. Though Ebony provided Bennett with space to promote a militant reading of black history and protest, the magazine's status as a consumer publication helped to mediate its representation of African American identity in both past and present.Mixing biography, cultural history, and popular memory, West restores Ebony and Bennett to their rightful place in African American intellectual, commercial, and political history.

Multiple Award-Winner!Winner of the 2023 Michael Nelson Prize of International Association for Media and History (IAMHIST)Recipient of the 2022 Jane Jacobs Urban Communication Book AwardWinner of the 2023 American Journalism Historians Association Book of the YearWinner of the 2023 ULCC’s (Union League Club of Chicago) Outstanding Book on the History of Chicago AwardRecipient of a 2023 Best of Illinois History Superior Achievement award from the Illinois State Historical SocietyWinner of the 2023 BAAS Book Prize (British Association for American Studies)Winner of a 2023 The Brinck Book Award and Lecture series (University of New Mexico School of Architecture + Planning)Honorable Mention for the 2021-22 RSAP Book Prize (Research Society for American Periodicals)Buildings once symbolized Chicago's place as the business capital of Black America and a thriving hub for Black media. In this groundbreaking work, E. James West examines the city's Black press through its relationship with the built environment. As a house for the struggle, the buildings of publications like Ebony and the Chicago Defender embodied narratives of racial uplift and community resistance. As political hubs, gallery spaces, and public squares, they served as key sites in the ongoing Black quest for self-respect, independence, and civic identity. At the same time, factors ranging from discriminatory business practices to editorial and corporate ideology prescribed their location, use, and appearance, positioning Black press buildings as sites of both Black possibility and racial constraint. Engaging and innovative, A House for the Struggle reconsiders the Black press's place at the crossroads where aspiration collided with life in one of America's most segregated cities.

A history of two centuries of Black journalism, resistance, and community.For two hundred years, the Black Press has served as one of Black America's most durable and influential institutions. A Full Measure of Freedom marks this bicentennial with a sweeping account of Black journalism's past, present, and future. In this edited volume, Kim Gallon and E. James West bring together essays by scholars working across history, journalism and mass communication, political science, literary studies, and the history of science. This collection provides exciting new perspectives on the history of Black journalism and direction for the development of Black Press Studies as a field.The book traces the Black Press from its origins in the 1820s through the nineteenth century, the early twentieth century, the postwar period, and the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Contributors examine how Black newspapers documented everyday life, challenged racial violence, shaped public opinion, and connected local communities to national and diasporic movements. The volume also considers the Black Press's changing forms and futures in an era of digital media, declining local journalism, and renewed struggles over democracy and representation.A Full Measure of Freedom offers both a landmark historical synthesis and a field-defining intervention to scholars and students of Black history, journalism, and media studies, as well as readers interested in the institutions that have sustained Black public life across generations.

Journalist, activist, popular historian, and public intellectual, Lerone Bennett Jr. left an indelible mark on twentieth-century American history and culture. Rooted in his role as senior editor of Ebony magazine, but stretching far beyond the boundaries of the Johnson Publishing headquarters in Chicago, Bennett's work and activism positioned him as a prominent advocate for Black America and a scholar whose writing reached an unparalleled number of African American readers.This critical biography—the first in-depth study of Bennett's life—travels with him from his childhood experiences in Jim Crow Mississippi and his time at Morehouse College in Atlanta to his later participation in a dizzying range of Black intellectual and activist endeavors. Drawing extensively on Bennett's previously inaccessible archival collections at Emory University and Chicago State, as well as interviews with close relatives, colleagues, and confidantes, Our Kind of Historian celebrates his enormous influence within and unique connection to African American communities across more than half a century of struggle.

Journalist, activist, popular historian, and public intellectual, Lerone Bennett Jr. left an indelible mark on twentieth-century American history and culture. Rooted in his role as senior editor of Ebony magazine, but stretching far beyond the boundaries of the Johnson Publishing headquarters in Chicago, Bennett's work and activism positioned him as a prominent advocate for Black America and a scholar whose writing reached an unparalleled number of African American readers.This critical biography—the first in-depth study of Bennett's life—travels with him from his childhood experiences in Jim Crow Mississippi and his time at Morehouse College in Atlanta to his later participation in a dizzying range of Black intellectual and activist endeavors. Drawing extensively on Bennett's previously inaccessible archival collections at Emory University and Chicago State, as well as interviews with close relatives, colleagues, and confidantes, Our Kind of Historian celebrates his enormous influence within and unique connection to African American communities across more than half a century of struggle.