The Effect of Geography and Vitamin D on African American Stature in the Nineteenth Century: Evidence from Prison Records

2008 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 812-831 ◽  
Author(s):  
SCOTT ALAN CARSON
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Vitamin D ◽  
African American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Established Method ◽  
Black Farmers ◽  
Antebellum Period ◽  
Blacks And Whites ◽  
Height Data

The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in economic literature. Although blacks and whites today reach similar terminal statures in the United States, nineteenth-century African American statures were consistently shorter than those of whites. Greater insolation (vitamin D production) is documented here to be associated with taller black statures. Black farmers were taller than workers in other occupations, and, ironically, black youth statures increased during the antebellum period and decreased with slavery's elimination.

NINETEENTH CENTURY MEXICAN STATURES IN THE UNITED STATES AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH INSOLATION AND VITAMIN D

2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
SCOTT ALAN CARSON
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Vitamin D ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
The United States ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Established Method ◽  
Us Economy ◽  
The Us ◽  
Height Data

SummaryThe use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in economics. However, there are still some populations, places and times for which the comparison across groups remains unclear. One example is 19th century Mexicans in the US. This study demonstrates that after comparing the statures of Mexicans born in Mexico and the US the primary source of the stature difference between the two groups was birth year, and the stature gap increased as the US economy developed while the Mexican economy stagnated. Moreover, the stature growth of Mexicans born in the US was related to vitamin D, and the Mexican relationship between stature and insolation was more like that of Europeans than Africans.

Recycling Fantasies: Whitman, Clifton, and the Dream of Compost

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-50
Author(s):  
Michelle C. Neely
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Leaves Of Grass ◽  
Human Waste ◽  
Material Recycling ◽  
Ecological Vision ◽  
Lucille Clifton ◽  
Antebellum Period ◽  
Common Practices

Chapter one takes up the paradigm of recycling in Walt Whitman’s first two editions of Leaves of Grass (1855 and 1856). While scarcity of materials meant scavenging and reuse were common practices in the nineteenth century, organic material recycling first emerged as a scientific principle during the antebellum period. Whitman’s documented journalistic and poetic interest in “compost” has led scholars to elevate the once-overlooked Whitman into the ecopoetic pantheon. Chapter one challenges this increasingly standard reading by placing Whitman’s interest in compost and organic recycling alongside his even more famous poetic investment in an indiscriminate, “omnivorous” consumption. Compost emerges as the twin of appetite in Whitman’s poetic environment, which reveals how recycling authorizes consumption without limits and yields a fundamentally static, and therefore nonegalitarian and anti-ecological vision of community. The last part of the chapter explores resistance to this paradigm in the poetry of Lucille Clifton, a twentieth-century African American poet self-consciously rewriting Whitman’s vision of democratic and environmental community. Ultimately, chapter one suggests that while Clifton resists the dream of cyclical, effortless material recycling and consequence-free consumption, it is nineteenth-century Whitman’s fantasy of the earth endlessly recycling and renewing human waste that remains more characteristic of contemporary U.S. life.

The Early Life and Career of the "Black Patti": The Odyssey of an African American Singer in the Late Nineteenth Century

2000 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 543-596 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Graziano
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Rhode Island ◽  
Early Life ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
The Caribbean

The early career of the African American singer Matilda Sissieretta Jones (1868-1933), known as the "Black Patti," was unique in nineteenth-century America. Reviewers gave high praise to her singing, and she attracted large mixed-race audiences to her concerts across the country. Her fame was such that, during the early 1890s, she appeared as the star of several companies in which she was the only black performer. This article documents her early life in Portsmouth, Virginia, and Providence, Rhode Island; her two tours, in 1888 and 1890, to the Caribbean and South America; and her varied concert appearances in the United States and Europe up to the formation of the Black Patti Troubadours in the fall of 1896.

Southeastern institutional change and biological variation: evidence from the 19th century Tennessee State Prison

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
SCOTT ALAN CARSON
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Mississippi River ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Established Method ◽  
State Prison ◽  
Black And White ◽  
White Males ◽  
Close Proximity ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Height Data

Abstract:The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in economics, and a number of core findings in the literature are widely agreed upon. There are still some populations, places, and times, however, for which anthropometric evidence remains thin. This paper introduces a new dataset from the Tennessee State Prison to track the heights of comparable black and white males born between 1820 and 1906. Shorter statures were associated with close proximity to the Mississippi River, and the largest share of the white–black stature gap was associated with nativity. Black and white statures declined throughout the 19th century, and farmers were taller than non-farmers.

scholarly journals Black Cowboys In the American West: A Historiographical Review

1997 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-89
Author(s):  
David Goldstein-Shirley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
American West ◽  
The United States ◽  
Half Century ◽  
History Texts ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Few subjects in the ethnic experience of the United States are as fraught with mythology and misinformation as black cowboys. Although absent from most classic history texts of the American West, black cowboys probably constituted about a quarter of the working cowboys in the nineteenth century, although q uantitative data to establish a number are lacking. This essay reviews the historiography of black cowboys published during the last half-century, noting how much of it is marred either by glossing over the presence of black cowboys or by credulously repeating estimates of their numbers established by earlier work. The essay speculates whether such problematic scholarship stems from unacknowledged prejudice among mainstream historians or from carelessness and calls for more and improved scholarly attention to the role of African American cowboys in the American West.

Constructing Race

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marli F. Weiner ◽  
Mazie Hough
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Political Interest ◽  
Body Type ◽  
Relative Susceptibility ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Antebellum Period ◽  
Blacks And Whites

This chapter explores how Southern physicians of the antebellum period defined the meanings of black and white bodies. In the mid-nineteenth century, the origins of race were of more than theoretical or political interest for those who were concerned with caring for the sick. Diseases did not present the same symptoms or follow the same trajectory from person to person or even in individuals of the same race, sex, or body type. This chapter begins with a discussion of how physicians concerned with the bodily consequences of racial differences typically grounded their thinking in observation. It then considers how physicians addressed the relative susceptibility of blacks and whites to disease as they debated the fundamental differences between black and white bodies. It also examines the role of physicians in the debate about race and slavery and concludes by assessing slaves' explanations for the meanings of raced bodies.

scholarly journals A Comparative Study: Anxiety as an Impact of Slavery in Toni Morrison’s Beloved and William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Bhakti Satrio Nugroho
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
The United States ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
American Novels ◽  
Antebellum Period ◽  
Psychological Element ◽  
American Society

This paper discusses the anxiety as an impact of slavery reflected in two outstanding African-American novels: Toni Morrison’s Beloved and William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!. These novels are set in around the slavery period which shows how cruel and brutal slavery practices in the United States. The plots consist of some traditions and beliefs among White and African-American which have emerged since the antebellum period. By using a comparative approach, this paper focuses on the types of anxiety mentioned by Sigmund Freud. The analysis shows that both neurotic and moral anxieties play a pivotal psychological element throughout the intense “black-white” binary narratives. In this case, Toni Morrison’s Beloved consists of neurotic anxiety in the form of trauma experienced by Sethe and William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! consist of moral anxiety in the form of shame for having Negro bloodline in aristocrat Southern plantation culture. Both novels show that slavery, whether it stands as a tradition or as an economic value, has significantly shaped the direction of American society.

The Antiapartheid Struggle did It/Could it Challenge Racism in the U.S.?

1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 46-47
Author(s):  
Rachel Rubin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
African American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Young Age ◽  
Institutional Policies ◽  
Blacks And Whites ◽  
The U.S

Between the 1970s and 1990s, many whites, including myself, embraced antiapartheid work, partly because we were outraged at the horror of South Africa but also because it gave us a way to fight racism and do antiracism work here in the United States. I had always seen and disapproved of racism and from a very young age felt a need to fight against it. The anti-apartheid struggle gave me a solid way to do that. In the mid 70’s when I was in college, the campus that I was on was so segregated and the institutional policies so paternalistic and racist that there were very few forums for blacks and whites to work together. The first fully-fledge antiapartheid group at my university, which I joined on its inception, was established by an African-American who was a visiting artist on campus.

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