From West Oakland to Wakanda—the African American history that inspired Marvel’s “Black Panther”

Marvel’s critically-acclaimed new film Black Panther broke multiple box office records this past weekend by delivering the fifth-largest opening of all time. While the film is clearly a superhero movie, it does draw deep inspiration from actual political events of the past century. Director Ryan Coogler, born in Oakland, California, set several key scenes in the city to honor his hometown as well as to bring awareness to Oakland’s pivotal role in setting the stage in 1966 for the founding of the Black Panther Party movement.

Excerpt: White World Order, Black Power Politics

As part of our month-long celebration of Black History Month, here’s an excerpt from the Introduction of White World Order, Black Power Politics, by Robert Vitalis. This award-winning book contends that racism and imperialism are the twin forces that propelled the course of the United States in the world in the early twentieth century and in turn affected the way that diplomatic history and international relations (originally known as “race relations”) were taught and understood in the American academy.

Excerpt: Two Weeks Every Summer, by Tobin Miller Shearer

Tobin Miller Shearer published Two Weeks Every Summer: Fresh Air Children and the Problem of Race in America with Cornell University Press in 2017. In his book, Miller Shearer focuses on the history of the Fresh Air program, and, in particular, the voices of the children themselves through letters that they wrote, pictures that they took, and their testimonials. Shearer offers a careful social and cultural history of the Fresh Air programs, giving readers a good sense of the summer experiences for both hosts and the visiting children.

As part of our month-long focus on Black History Month, here is an excerpt from the Introduction.

Excerpt: Whose Detroit? by Heather Ann Thompson

Picketers at Detroit Police Headquarters protesting the fatal shooting of a black woman, July 13, 1963. Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University. (P. 39, Whose Detroit?)

Heather Ann Thompson recently received the Pulitzer Prize for her book Blood in the Water. She published Whose Detroit?: Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City with Cornell University Press in 2001 with a revised edition in 2017. As part of our month-long focus on Black History Month, here is an excerpt from the Prologue of the 2017 edition.

Back in 2001, in the first printing of this book, I argued most forcefully that if one wanted really to comprehend the fate of America’s inner cities over the course of the postwar period, one had to begin by fully understanding what had happened in the Motor City. Detroit, I had maintained, was in fact ground zero for any scholar seeking to make sense of why cities across the nation that had seemed to be synonymous with economic opportunity and prosperity in the 1950s became, by the 1960s, the epicenter of countless rebellions for greater racial equality and, then, by the 1980s, bastions of crime and decay.