Reclaiming the Black Past: The Use and Misuse of African American History in the 21st Century

(Hardback)

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In this information overloaded twenty-first century, it seems impossible to fully discern or explain how we know about the past. But two things are certain. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we all think historically on a routine basis. And our perceptions of history, including African American history, have not necessarily been shaped by professional historians. In this wide-reaching and timely book, Pero Gaglo Dagbovie argues that public knowledge and understanding of black history, including its historical icons, has been shaped by institutions and individuals outside academic ivory towers. Drawing on a range of compelling examples, Dagbovie explores how, in the twenty-first century, African American history is regarded, depicted, and juggled by diverse and contesting interpretersfrom museum curators to film-makers, entertainers, politicians, journalists, and bloggers. Underscoring the ubiquitous nature of African American history in contemporary American thought and culture, each chapter unpacks how black history has been represented and remembered primarily during the Age of Obama, the so-called era of post-racial American society. Reclaiming the Black Past: The Use and Misuse of African American History in the 21st Century is Dagbovies contribution to expanding how we understand African American history during the new millennium.

Reviews

During the Age of Obama, African American history has been processed, packaged, and delivered to the unsuspecting public by amateurs instead of professional historians. Pero Dagbovie exposes these amateurs and their historical inaccuracies in the painstaking style of the professional historian at his very best. Profoundly researched and crisply written, Americans need Reclaiming the Black Past to recognize their history. -- Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Awardwinning author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas
As I write, President Trump has pardoned boxer Jack Johnson, who was unjustly convicted in 1913 for transporting a white woman across state lines, while slighting black NFL players by arguing they are unAmerican for protesting racial injustice during games. Pero Dagbovie's brilliant new book couldn't be more timely in explaining how black history has been used, and misused, and often manipulated, by presidents, including Trump and Barack Obama - and by other politicians, comedians, Hollywood, and Black History Month advocates and celebrations. Probing the paradox of how black culture, and its colorful history, is at once at the heart of American society while severely under appreciated as a source of its moral vitality and intellectual vibrancy, Reclaiming The Black Past is a thrilling and creative exploration of how and why black history is made and interpreted far beyond the historical guild in the Age of Obama. -- Michael Eric Dyson
Black history matters. Pero Dagbovie's provocative take on the meaning of the African American past in public discourse reveals how it matters in political affairs, in popular culture, in the market place, in law, and in our national monuments. If you think Black history is invisible in this country, read this book and think again. Our history is everywhere, distorted, redeemed, contested, and hidden in plain sight. Slavery, Jim Crow, Civil Rights, Black Power, Rebellion, Reparations-them's fightin' words. And the fight over our past continues to shape our future. -- Robin D. G. Kelley
In Reclaiming the Black Past, Pero Gaglo Dagbovie posits that approaches to African American history generated outside the academy have mattered as much, if not more than, the work of trained scholars. In straightforward and accessible prose, he argues that figures as diverse as comedians, filmmakers, youth activists, museum curators, and public officials are the key interpreters of the black historical record for popular audiences. In appealing to his colleagues in the field to return to the public through the practices of "living history," Dagbovie deftly manages a balance between cultural politics and intellectual thought. In the process, he has delivered an important work about the epic transformations of the last decade. -- Clarence Lang
Pero Dagbovie's Reclaiming the Black Past is an incisive exploration of the way Americans outside of the ivory tower have used and misused black history in the past quarter century. Ranging widely from the treatment of slavery in movies to President Obama's handling of Black History Month, Dagbovie makes a strong case that historians must join public discussions about the black past that have heretofore been dominated by politicians, bloggers, movie producers, and comedians. Practicing what he preaches, Dagbovie brings a rigorous historical analysis to recent public debates about black history, in the process illuminating several much discussed but understudied subjects and enriching our knowledge of the 1990s and 2000s. As we leave the lush racial terrain of the Obama era and enter the barren scrubland of the Trump years, this book is an important resource for the journey ahead. -- Derek Musgrove
Historian Pero Dagbovie has written a much-needed study of the ways in which African American history is explored, understood, and told in the U.S. Reclaiming the Black Past offers an incredibly sophisticated, yet accessible, book on how everything from public museums, films, novels, and even comedians have shaped our collective perspectives on so much of African American history. This book functions as a remarkable and nuanced examination of popular perceptions of black history with a perfect balance of insider perspective and a sensitivity to how laypeople approach the subject. -- Jeff Ogbar
With outstanding precision, Pero Dagbovie sorts through the muddled musings of the many people who profess to know black history and deconstructs the mixed messages emanating from the major cultural institutions claiming to chronicle the black past to reveal the ways black history has been (mis)represented, (mis)interpreted, and (mis)remembered. This is African American intellectual and contemporary history at its very best. -- Hasan Jeffries, Associate Professor, Ohio State University; Author, Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabamas Black Belt
Praise for African American History Reconsidered (University of Illinois Press, 2010)

Pero Gaglo Dagbovie's incisive and timely book compels a new generation to come to terms with African American history. Beautifully crafted, illuminating and passionate, African American History Reconsidered reminds us that politically engaged critical analysis has long been at the heart of the black historian's craft. -- Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original
Praise for African American History Reconsidered (University of Illinois Press, 2010)

A superb study: the first major treatise on African American historiography in the past two decades. Dagbovie's work fills a gap in historiography and contributes immensely to historical studies. -- Derrick P. Alridge, author of The Educational Thought of W. E. B. Du Bois: An Intellectual History
Praise for African American History Reconsidered (University of Illinois Press, 2010)

A refreshing historiographical work. * Journal of Southern History *
Praise for The Early Black History Movement, Carter G. Woodson, and Lorenzo Johnston Greene (University of Illinois Press, 2007)

Dagbovie contributes benchmark research to US historiography. He provides an unprecedented analytical account of two central black history innovators. * Journal of American History *
Praise for The Early Black History Movement, Carter G. Woodson, and Lorenzo Johnston Greene (University of Illinois Press, 2007)

A vital study of black American intellectual life and black professional historians. * American Studies *
Praise for The Early Black History Movement, Carter G. Woodson, and Lorenzo Johnston Greene (University of Illinois Press, 2007)

As scholar-activists, Carter G. Woodson and Lorenzo J. Greene used their professional historical training not only to establish and further the subdiscipline of African American history, but also to help African Americans understand the importance and significance of their role in U.S. development. Dagbovie has done well to highlight their careers and contributions. Recommended. * Choice *
Praise for The Early Black History Movement, Carter G. Woodson, and Lorenzo Johnston Greene (University of Illinois Press, 2007)

Dagbovie draws on the personal papers of these two seminal historians, along with materials from the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH), to chronicle the growth of the modern black history movement. Recommended for all black history and historiography collections. * Multicultural Review *
Praise for The Early Black History Movement, Carter G. Woodson, and Lorenzo Johnston Greene (University of Illinois Press, 2007)

Dagbovie's dual biography of two giants of the black history movement is an important work. The Early Black History Movement gives deeper insight on iconic figures of the early black history movement while simultaneously serving as a rebuke to disinterested black scholars in the present. * Afro-Americans in New York Life and History *
Praise for The Early Black History Movement, Carter G. Woodson, and Lorenzo Johnston Greene (University of Illinois Press, 2007)

A welcome reminder of a period when scholars strove to advance knowledge and social justice. Pero Dagbovie has recovered a vital chapter in that intellectual struggle, offering insight into the African American past and a reminder of roads not taken today. * The A.M.E. Church Review *
Praise for The Early Black History Movement, Carter G. Woodson, and Lorenzo Johnston Greene (University of Illinois Press, 2007)

In addition to a careful assessment of the personalities and motivations of Woodson and Greene, Dagbovie's work provides a solid foundation and model for future work on black historians. * Journal of Southern History *
Praise for The Early Black History Movement, Carter G. Woodson, and Lorenzo Johnston Greene (University of Illinois Press, 2007)

Well-written and original, this dual biography of Carter G. Woodson and one of his leading disciples in the Black History Movement, Lorenzo Greene, allows historian Pero Dagbovie to explore new paths and places touched by Woodson's expansive vision of the importance of history to the overall social, economic, political, and psychological well-being and advancement of people of African descent. This is a major contribution to an overlooked and under-theorized area of African American intellectual history. -- V.P. Franklin, editor of The Journal of African American History
Praise for The Early Black History Movement, Carter G. Woodson, and Lorenzo Johnston Greene (University of Illinois

Author Bio

Pero Gaglo Dagbovie is professor of African American history and Associate Dean in The Graduate School, Michigan State University. His research and teaching interests comprise a range time periods, themes, and topical specialties, including black intellectual history, the history of the black historical enterprise, black womens history, black life during the Nadir, the civil rights-Black Power movement, African American Studies, hip hop culture, and contemporary black history. His books include Black History: Old School Black Historians and the Hip Hop Generation, The Early Black History Movement, Carter G. Woodson, and Lorenzo Johnston Greene, African American History Reconsidered, Carter G. Woodson in Washington, D.C.: The Father of Black History, and What is African American History