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In this groundbreaking exploration, the editor of the? New York Times ? bestseller? Barracoon documents and discusses social, political, and economic "disparities" and "inequities" that undermine African American freedom, citizenship, and sovereignty and that inhibits the advancement of America''s evolution as a democratic republic and its principles of freedom, equality, and justice for all. Of Greed and Glory is a penetrating analysis of the systemic barriers intended to manage or prevent African American success in America. It questions the so-called "disparities" that deny and obstruct African American equality, economic stability, and political advancement. In examining the root causes of black impoverishment and the challenges to black mobility, full citizenship, and sovereignty, Of Greed and Glory posits human greed as a primary causal factor and discusses the politics of State officials and civic leaders who, driven by greed, ambition, and a propensity for excess, consciously choose to exploit "white supremacist" ideology to achieve their aims. It interrogates the fiction of a "racial divide" that is manipulated to maintain what is cast as "structural inequities." Through analyses of court decisions, legislative acts, administrative policies, and social custom, and the stories of historical and contemporary figures like Denmark Vesey, Fannie Lou Hamer, and George Floyd, Deborah G. Plant identifies and examines specific dynamics of the oppressive systems that serve to re-enslave or colonize African Americans: deracination, dispossession, systemic exclusion, mass incarceration, and the devaluation of black life. Consequent to the undoing of black life, Plant cautions, is the simultaneous undermining of the very fabric of our constitutional democracy.
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Deborah G. Plant is an African American Literature and Africana Studies Independent Scholar and literary critic specializing in the life and works of Zora Neale Hurston. She is editor of The Life of Herod the Great (2025) by Zora Neale Hurston and author of Of Greed and Glory: In Pursuit of Freedom for All (2024); editor of Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” (2018), a New York Times bestseller, by Zora Neale Hurston; and author of Alice Walker: A Woman for Our Times (2017), a philosophical biography. She is also editor of The Inside Light: New Critical Essays on Zora Neale Hurston (2010); and author of Zora Neale Hurston: A Biography of the Spirit (2007) and Every Tub Must Sit On Its Own Bottom: The Philosophy and Politics of Zora Neale Hurston (1995). She holds a BA from Southern University, an MA from Atlanta University, and MA and Ph. D. degrees in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She was instrumental in founding the University of South Florida’s Department of Africana Studies and chaired the department for five years. Plant resides in Florida.
