Radical South

Historian Oshinsky gives us the true story of the notorious prison, drawing on police records, prison documents, folklore, blues songs, and oral history, from the days of cotton-field chain gangs to the 1960s, when Parchman was used to break the wills of civil rights workers who journeyed south on Freedom Rides.

Being Bad explores such timely issues as the under-education of Black males, the place and importance of scapegoats in our culture, the on-the-ground reality of zero tolerance, the role of mainstream media in constructing Black masculinity, and the critical relationships between schools and prisons. No other book combines rigorous research, personal narrative, and compelling storytelling to examine the educational experiences of young Black males.

Exploring legal, political, and literary texts Smith shows how alienation and self-reliance, social death and spiritual rebirth, torture and penitence came together in the prison, a scene for the portrayal of both gothic nightmares and romantic dreams. The Prison and the American Imagination offers a passionate and haunting critique of the very idea of solitude in American life.

This book looks at the aesthetic cultural artifacts (such as poetry, murals and music) that are created by and deployed within movements. To explore how activists create distinct subcultures, which in turn shape the dynamics of their movements and mainstream culture, Reed examines the artistry of nine social movements in the United States.

Jasper integrates diverse examples of protest—from nineteenth-century boycotts to recent movements—into a distinctive new understanding of how social movements work. Jasper highlights their creativity, not only in forging new morals but in adopting courses of action and inventing organizational forms.

Art made to attach to buildings or to be given away? Wearable art for street demonstrations or art that sets up a booth at a trade show? This is the art of the interventionists, who trespass into the everyday world to raise our awareness of injustice and other social problems. These artists don't preach or proselytize; they give us the tools to form our own opinions and create our own political actions.