The shoga of the East African coast, a man accepted as a member of women’s society, did not emerge from a vacuum nor from the imposition of outside influence. She was born from the long encounter between Bantu-speaking Africans and Muslim traders from the Arabian Peninsula. Unlike medieval Christianity, which not only condemned “Sodomites” but sought to prosecute and exterminate them, the posture of classical Islam was categorically different. Liwat [anal intercourse between

Robert examines two parallel "Atlanta Compromises" — Booker T. Washington's famous 1895 bargain accepting segregation in exchange for economic opportunity, and the unspoken accommodationism of Southern Jews, who sought safety by assimilating as loyal Southerners and avoiding controversy. Through figures like Judah P. Benjamin and Leo Frank, he reveals how both communities navigated survival under hostile white power by silencing dissent.

In 1920, Perry Bradford, a Black composer and publisher, had the crazy idea that African Americans would buy music recorded by Black artists and musicians. He convinced Okeh Records to shellac a vaudeville and cabaret singer from Harlem named Mamie Smith backed by Black jazz musicians. “Crazy Blues” proved to be a smash hit. Within two months of release, it had sold 75,000 copies. Record company executives (all white) woke up. There was a market here! Money to be made! And so

Americans with a moderate knowledge of musical history know about the minstrel shows that originated in the 19th century — how could they not? Some of them might even be aware that the Black musical reentered and transformed the Broadway stage during the 1920s. But there is this gap from the last decade of the 19th century to the 1920s where only fragments of Black musicality (ragtime, the cakewalk) flicker through the imposed amnesia of the time. Why? Take a deep breath and

Cotton Club dancers circa 1930s This is a still from a British Pathé newsreel, filmed sometime during the 1930s of dancers at the Cotton Club. Up until the advent of the internet, it would have been impossible to find this episode titled "Harlem (AKA Harlem, New York)." Although the footage, long since recovered and incorporated into every Harlem Renaissance history, is now recognized as a unique and invaluable moving image window on Harlem during the waning days of the Renai

Year one of the Harlem Renaissance