“Spinnin' the Webb”: Representational Spaces, Mythic Narratives, and the 1937 Webb/Goodman Battle of Music

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-196
Author(s):  
CHRISTOPHER J. WELLS
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Black Artists ◽  
New Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
African American Communities ◽  
At Home

AbstractBenny Goodman and Chick Webb's 1937 battle of music has become a mythic event in jazz historical narratives, enshrined as the unique spectacle that defines Harlem's Savoy Ballroom and its legacy. While this battle has been marked as exceptional and unique, as an event it was a relatively typical instantiation of the “battle of music” format, a presentational genre common in black venues during the 1920s and 1930s. Within African American communities, battles of music re-staged ballrooms as symbolically loaded representational spaces where dueling bands regularly served as oppositional totems that indexed differences of locality (Chicago vs. New York), gender (men vs. women), ethnicity (Anglo- or African American vs. Latin), or race (black vs. white). This article details the ten-year history of battles of music that preceded the Webb/Goodman battle and that made its signifying rhetoric legible within African American communities. It then argues that the disconnect between the battle's relatively typical signifying rhetoric and its subsequent enshrinement as an exceptional event occurred due to a specific confluence of circumstances in the mid-1930s that shaped its immediate reception and subsequent legacy: Goodman's emergence as the “King of Swing” during a new period of massive mainstream popularity for swing music, a coterminous vigilance among both white and black jazz writers to credit black artists as jazz's originators and best practitioners, and the emergence of athletes Jesse Owens and Joe Louis as popular black champions symbolically conquering white supremacy at home and abroad.

The Question of Authority: Deracinating Race,Repositioning Religion, and Regenerating Gender in the History of African American Islam

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-111
Author(s):  
Rosemary R. Hicks
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Islam ◽  
African American Islam ◽  
Oxford University Press

Essay reviewing Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Toward the Third Resurrection by Sherman A. Jackson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 256 pages. $29.95 (hardcover)

From the Ground Up

2021 ◽  
pp. 71-108
Author(s):  
Marilisa Jiménez García
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
African American ◽  
Children's Literature ◽  
Children’S Literature ◽  
Public Library ◽  
York Public Library ◽  
New York Public Library ◽  
History Of

This chapter centers on the education and role of “ethnic” librarians during the founding and professionalization of children’s literature and librarianship at the New York Public Library, tracing a legacy back to Afro-Boricua public pedagogies in Puerto Rico. This chapter also analyzes the centrality of Blackness and activism project of Latinx children’s literature as a US tradition grounded in the work of librarians of color, interweaving the stories of Pura Belpré and Arturo Schomburg, both key figures in the Harlem Renaissance and history of African American and AfroLatinx literature.

Harlem Nightclubs

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Templeton
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
York City ◽  
Black Identity ◽  
Big Band ◽  
Artistic Creation ◽  
Black Artists ◽  
Lindy Hop ◽  
Tap Dance ◽  
Social Dances

In the 1920s and 1930s, Harlem became a major hub of New York City nightlife and a prolific space for African American artistic creation. It was in Harlem’s nightclubs (also known as cabarets) that big band jazz became a sensation and where theatrical dance forms like tap dance, and social dances like the lindy hop and the Charleston, gained widespread popularity. These artistic developments contributed to an emerging modern black identity among the intellectuals and artists of the Harlem Renaissance. While the artists in these nightclubs tended to be African American, the more elaborate and expensive clubs catered almost exclusively to white patrons; black artists were often faced with the challenge of catering to white expectations while creatively developing their own art. The music and dance that emerged in these nightclubs also became the inspiration of many black modernist authors.

scholarly journals Afrocentricity as the Organizing Principle for African Renaissance. Interview with Prof. Molefi Kete Asante, Temple University (USA)

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 210-217
Author(s):  
Aaron X. Smith
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
Florida State University ◽  
State University ◽  
Temple University ◽  
African Renaissance ◽  
Howard University ◽  
History Of ◽  
Distinguished Scholar ◽  
The University

Professor Molefi Kete Asante is Professor and Chair of the Department of Africology at Temple University. Asante’s research has focused on the re-centering of African thinking and African people in narratives of historical experiences that provide opportunities for agency. As the most published African American scholars and one of the most prolific and influential writers in the African world, Asante is the leading theorist on Afrocentricity. His numerous works, over 85 books, and hundreds of articles, attest to his singular place in the discipline of African American Studies. His major works, An Afrocentric Manifesto [Asante 2007a], The History of Africa [Asante 2007b], The Afrocentric Idea [Asante 1998], The African Pyramids of Knowledge [Asante 2015], Erasing Racism: The Survival of the American Nation [Asante 2009], As I Run Toward Africa [Asante 2011], Facing South to Africa [Asante 2014], and Revolutionary Pedagogy [Asante 2017], have become rich sources for countless scholars to probe for both theory and content. His recent award as National Communication Association (NCA) Distinguished Scholar placed him in the elite company of the best thinkers in the field of communication. In African Studies he is usually cited as the major proponent of Afrocentricity which the NCA said in its announcing of his Distinguished Scholar award was “a spectacular achievement”. Molefi Kete Asante is interviewed because of his recognized position as the major proponent of Afrocentricity and the most consistent theorist in relationship to creating Africological pathways such as institutes, research centers, departments, journals, conference and workshop programs, and academic mentoring opportunities. Asante has mentored over 100 students, some of whom are among the principal administrators in the field of Africology. Asante is professor of Africology at Temple University and has taught at the University of California, State University of New York, Howard University, Purdue University, Florida State University, as well as held special appointments at the University of South Africa, Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, and Ibadan University in Nigeria.

A History of African American Autobiography

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Personal Essays ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of

This History explores innovations in African American autobiography since its inception, examining the literary and cultural history of Black self-representation amid life writing studies. By analyzing the different forms of autobiography, including pictorial and personal essays, editorials, oral histories, testimonials, diaries, personal and open letters, and even poetry performance media of autobiographies, this book extends the definition of African American autobiography, revealing how people of African descent have created and defined the Black self in diverse print cultures and literary genres since their arrival in the Americas. It illustrates ways African Americans use life writing and autobiography to address personal and collective Black experiences of identity, family, memory, fulfillment, racism and white supremacy. Individual chapters examine scrapbooks as a source of self-documentation, African American autobiography for children, readings of African American persona poems, mixed-race life writing after the Civil Rights Movement, and autobiographies by African American LGBTQ writers.

3. African American Christianity: The early phase (1760–1863)

2014 ◽  
pp. 32-46
Author(s):  
Eddie S. Glaude
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Early Phase ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Churches ◽  
American Christianity ◽  
Emancipation Proclamation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Black Populations

The majority of African Americans are Christian. Black Christianity has played a critical role in the history of African American responses to white supremacy in the United States. ‘African American Christianity and Its Early Phase (1760–1863)’ is the first of four chapters that examine this complex history and introduce key moments and personalities, as well as the importance of black churches over the course of three historical periods. The early phase covers the period when the economy of slavery dominated political matters up to the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the plantation regime. Slavery defined the contours, even among free black populations, of black Christianity during this period.

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