The Forgotten Prophet: Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and the African American Prophetic Tradition, by Andre E. Johnson, is a study of the prophetic rhetoric of nineteenth century African Methodist Episcopal Church bishop Henry McNeal Turner. By locating Turner within the African American prophetic tradition, Johnson examines how Bishop Turner adopted a prophetic persona. As one of America’s earliest black activists and social reformers, Bishop Turner made an indelible mark in American history...

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, protests broke out in Minneapolis and quickly spread across the United States. National unrest led to the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement and added to calls for justice in other American cities, including Los Angeles, Atlanta, Tulsa, and Louisville, Kentucky, where only months earlier, Breonna Taylor was killed by police. By some estimates, BLM protesters numbered between fifteen million and twenty-six million in the US and ab...

Winner of the 2021 Book of the Year Award from the Religious Communication AssociationWinner of the 2021 Top Book Award from the National Communication Association's African American Communication and Culture Division & Black CaucusNo Future in This Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner is a history of the career of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner (1834–1915), specifically focusing on his work from 1896 to 1915....

Henry McNeal Turner (1834–1915) was a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of America’s earliest Black activists and social reformers, and an outspoken proponent of emigration. In The Speeches of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner: The Press, the Platform, and the Pulpit, Andre E. Johnson has compiled selected political speeches, sermons, lectures, and religious addresses delivered by Turner in their original form.Alongside Turner’s oratory, Johnson places the spe...

In The Struggle over Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter, Amanda Nell Edgar and Andre E. Johnson examine the surprisingly complex relationship between Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter as it unfolds on social media and in offline interpersonal relationships. Exploring cultural influences like family history, fear, religion, postracialism, and workplace pressure, Edgar and Johnson trace the meanings of these movements from the perspectives of ordinary participants. The Struggle ov...

Preaching During a Pandemic: The Rhetoric of the Black Preaching Tradition is a two-volume collection of sermons from those who preach within the Black preaching tradition during the COVID-19 pandemic.　By publishing these sermons, the editors address questions such as what were those who preached in the Black preaching tradition sharing with their congregants? How were they incorporating and infusing COVID-19 in their sermons? What shape did the prophetic and pries...

Preaching During a Pandemic: The Rhetoric of the Black Preaching Tradition is a two-volume collection of sermons from those who preach within the Black preaching tradition during the COVID-19 pandemic.By publishing these sermons, the editors address questions such as what were those who preached in the Black preaching tradition sharing with their congregants? How were they incorporating and infusing COVID-19 in their sermons? What shape did the prophetic and priestly sermo...

Womanist thought remains of critical importance given contemporary issues of social justice and advocacy. Womanist Ethical Rhetoric centers discourses of religious rhetoric and its influence on Black women’s aims for voice, empowerment, and social justice in these turbulent times. The chapters utilize womanism, in conjunction with other frames, to examine how Black women incorporate different aspects of their identities into struggles for empowerment and celebrations of who they are in hol...

On May 1, 1866, a minor exchange between white Memphis city police and a group of black Union soldiers quickly escalated into murder and mayhem. Changes wrought by the Civil War and African American emancipation sent long-standing racial, economic, cultural, class, and gender tensions rocketing to new heights. For three days, a mob of white men roamed through South Memphis, leaving a trail of blood, rubble, and terror in their wake. By May 3, at least forty-six African American men, women,...

Though much has already been written on religious freedom in the United States, these treatments have come mostly from historians, legal scholars, and advocates, with relatively little attention from rhetorical critics. In The Rhetoric of Religious Freedom in the United States, fifteen scholars from this field address the variety of forms that free, public religiosity may assume, and which rhetorical techniques are operative in a public square populated by a diversity of religious...

Investigates how Americans have remembered violence and resistance since the Civil War, including Confederate monuments, historical markers, college classrooms, and history books.George Floyd’s murder in the summer of 2020 sparked a national reckoning for the United States that had been 400 years in the making. Millions of Americans took to the streets to protest both the murder and the centuries of systemic racism that already existed among European colonists but ...

Gender, Race, and Social Identity in American Politics: The Past and Future of Political Access explores the ways in which cultural expression is represented in American politics as it intersects with issues of gender, race, and the construction of social identity. Specifically, this body of work examines how representations in the media and larger culture can establish and diminish the status of diverse communities of American politicians. Contributors analyze the rhetorical and performat...