{"title":"City of Black Souls","authors":"Kai Parker","doi":"10.9783/9781512827538","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.9783/9781512827538","url":null,"abstract":"How Black Protestants in Chicago created Ethiopianism, a transnational religious movement against Western imperialism City of Black Souls uncovers the history of how, from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, Black Protestants in Chicago created a transnational religious movement that connected the Black struggle for freedom in the United States to the global Black fight against Western imperialism. This was a movement of Ethiopianism—meaning a movement for Black religious and political independence inspired by biblical references to “Ethiopia,” particularly Psalm 68:31, “Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.” Through Ethiopianism, Kai Parker argues, Black Chicago Protestants drew from Coptic and Ethiopian Orthodox Christian traditions and worked with West African Christians to imagine that Afrodiasporic Christian faith heralded the apocalyptic end of imperialism and white supremacy. Parker illuminates the apocalyptic Ethiopianism of famous Black Chicagoans such as Ida B. Wells and gospel musician Thomas Dorsey, and of lesser-known ones such as painter William Edouard Scott and Nigerian immigrant turned anticolonial missionary Samuel Wadiei Martin. When John C. Robinson, a Black Chicagoan, led Haile Selassie’s air force against Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935–1936, this was no coincidence, but rather an outgrowth of decades of Ethiopianism in Chicago. City of Black Souls shows that Ethiopianism was a dynamic, heterogeneous, and modern movement through which Black migrants to Chicago engaged the industrial city and influenced the mid-twentieth-century anticolonial and civil rights movements. The book is especially important to Black religious and political studies in its demonstration of how apocalyptic Ethiopianism differed in its contributions to the Black freedom struggle from the canonical “prophetic” religion grounded in the Exodus notion of moving from slavery to freedom.","PeriodicalId":43963,"journal":{"name":"PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147883416","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Trials of the American Snow George in the British Atlantic, 1805–6","authors":"Phillip Reid","doi":"10.1353/pmh.2023.a909544","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pmh.2023.a909544","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: The story of the George in 1805–6 drives home what \"British Atlantic\" really means. The owner and crew of this ordinary US merchant vessel tried the North Atlantic and Caribbean to make a profit buying, shipping, and selling products—and people—in a commercial environment so dominated by the world's greatest maritime empire that those excluded from the privileges of membership in that empire faced far more adversity than the already considerable hazards posed by the sea and the vagaries of the market. The concerns, ambitions, and challenges of the men of the George , and of those with whom they interacted, come through clearly in a narrative revealed almost completely by surviving primary documents, allowing us aboard the George as the snow's crew experienced the British Atlantic from North America to Ireland to the Caribbean.","PeriodicalId":43963,"journal":{"name":"PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135008800","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Monument Lab:Creative Speculations for Philadelphia ed. by Paul M. Farber and Ken Lum, and: The Battles of Germantown: Effective Public History in America by David W. Young (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/pmh.2023.a909546","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pmh.2023.a909546","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Monument Lab:Creative Speculations for Philadelphia ed. by Paul M. Farber and Ken Lum, and: The Battles of Germantown: Effective Public History in America by David W. Young Abby R. Eron Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia. Edited by Paul M. Farber and Ken Lum (Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 2020. 336 pp. Illustrations. Cloth, $35.) The Battles of Germantown: Effective Public History in America. By David W. Young. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2019. 294 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. Paper, $29.95; cloth, $109.50; ebook, $29.95.) Contemporary artist Karyn Olivier stepped into one of public history's particularly contentious arenas with her The Battle is Joined (2017), one of twenty Monument Lab commissions documented in the present exhibition catalog. Spread across Philadelphia's public spaces, this nontraditional exhibition revolved around the question, \"What is an appropriate monument for the current city of Philadelphia?\" In response, Olivier used acrylic mirrors to encase a 1903 memorial to the Battle of Germantown in Vernon Park, located in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. Her visually and conceptually intriguing intervention, though only temporary, disturbed some, as the installation's reflective surface seemed to disappear the hundred-plus-year-old memorial it enclosed. Americans lost the 1777 Battle of Germantown, but it provided momentum for eventual victory in the Revolutionary War. In The Battles of Germantown: Effective Public History in America, which features an image of Olivier's work on its book cover, David W. Young diagnoses Germantown's public history apparatus with an overly narrow focus on this battle and on white colonial history, to the exclusion of more chronologically, racially, and otherwise diverse narratives. Young writes as former executive director of two of Germantown's historic house museums. His book examines, through a series of \"battles,\" the successes and failures of over a century of public history. He offers Germantown as a case study, arguing that the neighborhood has begun to practice \"effective public history,\" that which fosters dialogue and addresses contemporary problems while confronting and amending the historical record's gaps and biases. [End Page 69] Chapter one looks at how Cliveden house and the Historic Germantown consortium revised their interpretative approaches in the first decades of the twenty-first century to reflect Germantown's majority African American population more meaningfully and truthfully. Chapter two considers the Negro Achievement Week celebration in Germantown in 1928. This event was significant as a predecessor to Black History Month, as an expression of Harlem Renaissance artistry and philosophy, and as \"the first modern public history program in America\" (38). Young analyzes why it was forgotten and discusses how it has since been remembered. Chapter three looks at a failed attempt to enact a Colon","PeriodicalId":43963,"journal":{"name":"PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY","volume":"149 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135009100","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Contributors","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/pmh.2023.a909542","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pmh.2023.a909542","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43963,"journal":{"name":"PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135008827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"Arnold the Traitor\": George Lippard, the Mexican-American War, and the Search for an Antebellum George Washington, 1846–1852","authors":"Benjamin J. Swenson","doi":"10.1353/pmh.2023.a909545","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pmh.2023.a909545","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: During the Mexican-American War (1848–1846), Pennsylvania native and literary giant George Lippard promoted the nation-changing conflict by invoking the heroes and villains of the revolutionary era—most notably Benedict Arnold. An active member of the urban Democratic movement Locofocoism, Lippard used Arnold's infamy to paint political opponents and Mexican War skeptics as traitors while actively seeking to recruit the conflict's hero, General Zachary Taylor, for the presidential election of 1848 as a non-party candidate and antebellum era George Washington. Disillusioned by Taylor's affiliation with the Whig Party, Lippard went on before his death to form a secret society to further his expansionist goals. Although previous historians have examined Lippard's political activities, scholars have overlooked his role in propagating Arnold's traitorous legacy during a contentious period in American history.","PeriodicalId":43963,"journal":{"name":"PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135008795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"Governments, like Clocks\": A Contextualization of William Penn's Horological Simile","authors":"Kerr Houston","doi":"10.1353/pmh.2023.a909543","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pmh.2023.a909543","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: In his 1682 Frame , in which he outlined his vision for Pennsylvania's government, William Penn wrote that \" Governments , like Clocks, go from the motion Men give them.\" The simile has been occasionally acknowledged by scholars, but no one has considered it closely. An attentive analysis of the passage, though, reveals that it meaningfully related to both republican notions of responsible governance and relevant developments in horology, which had recently yielded increasingly accurate timepieces and a nascent literature recommending specific strategies for regular maintenance in response to changing conditions. Penn's simile thus united two discourses in a deliberate manner that illuminates his moderate republicanism, embodies his interest in appealing to wealthy investors, and suggests that he anticipated that the Pennsylvania government would require periodic interventions.","PeriodicalId":43963,"journal":{"name":"PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135009431","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Arlen Specter: Scandals, Conspiracies, and Crisis in Focus by Evan Edward Laine, and: Philadelphia Battlefields: Disruptive Campaigns and Upset Elections in a Changing City by John Kromer (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/pmh.2023.a909547","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pmh.2023.a909547","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Arlen Specter: Scandals, Conspiracies, and Crisis in Focus by Evan Edward Laine, and: Philadelphia Battlefields: Disruptive Campaigns and Upset Elections in a Changing City by John Kromer John J. Kennedy Arlen Specter: Scandals, Conspiracies, and Crisis in Focus. By Evan Edward Laine. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021. 248 pp. Notes, index. Cloth, $40 ; ebook, $38.) Philadelphia Battlefields: Disruptive Campaigns and Upset Elections in a Changing City. By John Kromer. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2020. 340 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. Paper, $37.95; cloth, $115.50; ebook, $37.95.) Two recent publications add to the growing list of books on topics related to Philadelphia and Pennsylvania politics—one relatively narrow in scope, the other with a much broader focus. Simply titled Arlen Specter, a new biography by Evan Edward Laine, associate professor of history at Thomas Jefferson University and director of the Arlen Specter Center, [End Page 71] examines the complex man who was elected a record five times to the US Senate from the Commonwealth. The book unfolds nonchronologically, exploring Specter's role through various policy debates (the stimulus vote, stem cell research, and LGBTQ rights), interactions with other leaders (Bill Clinton, Yasser Arafat, Fidel Castro, and a particularly poignant section on his relationship with Joe Biden), and political challenges (changing parties—several times). In some of these events, such as Iran-Contra, Specter was only a peripheral figure and not central to the overarching story. However, the author wisely begins the book with two separate chapters that effectively outline his considerable impact on American politics and history, while also highlighting the complexity of the person who at times pleased and infuriated both his supporters and critics. Specter was certainly one of the pivotal figures in the rejection of Robert Bork's nomination to the United States Supreme Court in 1987, with the failed nominee himself later reflecting that Specter had played a key role and \"did a great deal\" to prevent his confirmation. Specter's opposition so enraged many conservatives that, in its aftermath, one representative from central Pennsylvania recommended that Specter stay out of his area at least through hunting season. Another state representative notified Specter of his thoughts in one succinct letter: \"Dear Benedict: Go to Hell!\" In the final analysis, Laine makes a strong case that the Bork confirmation hearings represented \"a watershed change in the landscape of political battles,\" moving political conflict from behind closed doors to no-holds-barred public spotlight (15). The following chapter details how the tables turned during Clarence Thomas's nomination battle three years later. Assigned by his Republican colleagues on the judiciary committee as the chief inquisitor of Anita Hill (a former aide to Thomas who accused him of sexual harassment), Specter pilloried","PeriodicalId":43963,"journal":{"name":"PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135009089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Holding the Whole World in Our Hands","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctv2kqx157.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2kqx157.6","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43963,"journal":{"name":"PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY","volume":"1 1","pages":"38-68"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147893615","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Epilogue","authors":"Judith Rodin, Saadia Madsbjerg","doi":"10.9783/9781613631096-011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.9783/9781613631096-011","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43963,"journal":{"name":"PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY","volume":"1 1","pages":"127-132"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147913552","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Bibliography","authors":"Jessie Hock","doi":"10.9783/9780812297706-009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812297706-009","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43963,"journal":{"name":"PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY","volume":"1 1","pages":"217-226"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147916037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}