July 1, 2018
In 2010's Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South, Lowery (history, Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), a Lumbee herself, brilliantly described how the Lumbee constructed their identity from the 1930s to 1950s as they sought formal recognition from the federal government. They were ultimately granted recognition but denied access to services and financing that is available to other recognized groups. This inequity is at the heart of this new title, which details the Lumbee experience beginning with the arrival of Europeans in the 16th century. At that time, the ancestors of the Lumbee were coastal peoples living in present-day southern Virginia and the Carolinas. Following the Tuscarora War, what remained of these peoples coalesced into communities described at different times as Cheraws, Siouans, and even Cherokee. Since the Lumbee honored the origins of their ancestors, they created their identity in a way that met their cultural and political perspectives but did not match categories of tribe or nation used by the federal government. As asserted by the author, the Lumbee continue to exert their sovereignty, regardless of whether others want to acknowledge their right to do so. VERDICT An extremely valuable work for anyone interested in race, human rights, or Native American studies.--John R. Burch, Univ. of Tennessee at Martin
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
August 13, 2018
In this illuminating history, Maynor Lowery (Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South) intertwines her own family’s history with a tribal chronology of the Lumbees that features memorable and flawed historical figures involved in bootlegging, school integration, and the century-long battle for federal recognition as a sovereign nation. That quest is thwarted by rigid, unrealistic federal requirements of “pure” blood and physical characteristics—despite wide variation in physical features due to generations of interracial marriage—that don’t map onto the kinship ties of culture and community used by the Lumbees themselves, whose culture combines native and settler heritage in a distinct way. Centuries of injustice against the community receive an unflinching examination, and Lumbee resistance and illegal activities get objective analysis, especially questionable legal tactics used during the 1958 ejection of the KKK from the Lumbees’ collective land and a widespread sheriff’s department drug scandal in the 1980s. Ideal for American history buffs, this rich history explores familiar American periods of turmoil through the singular experience of the Lumbee Indian community.