scholarly journals Aaron Douglas and Aspects of Negro Life

October ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 174 ◽  
pp. 126-162
Author(s):  
Leah Dickerman
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The United States ◽  
Art Making ◽  
History Writing ◽  
American Modernism ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Aaron Douglas ◽  
The Great Migration ◽  
Black Modernism

In 1934, Aaron Douglas created an epic four-panel mural series, Aspects of Negro Life (1934), for the branch library on 135th Street in Manhattan, now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The panels answered a call, issued by the first major program for federal support of the arts in the United States, to represent “an American scene.” In them, Douglas traced the trajectory of African American history in four stages and across two mass migrations: from Africa into enslavement in America; through Emancipation and Reconstruction; into the modern Jim Crow South; and then northward with the Great Migration to Harlem itself. The narrative Douglas constructed was remarkable in both its historical sweep and as a story of America seen through Black eyes. This essay explores how Douglas's approach to the trenchant and understudied Aspects of Negro Life panels was shaped by rich conversations across a decade-about what it meant to be Black in America, how the “African” in “African-American” was to be understood, and what a distinctly African-American modernism might be-with an interdisciplinary nexus of thinkers, activists, and artists that included W. E. B. Du Bois; a co-founder of the NAACP and co-editor of the Crisis, sociologist Charles S. Johnson; poet-activist James Weldon Johnson; bibliophile Arturo Schomburg; and philosopher-critic Alain Locke. Looking at Douglas's visual narrative in this context offers insight into how parallel practices of archive-building, art making, history writing, and criticism came together not only to shape a vision of America but also to champion a model of Black modernism framed through diaspora.

The Great Migration Escape

Gone Home ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 29-52
Author(s):  
Karida L. Brown
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Social Order ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Great Migration ◽  
Eastern Kentucky ◽  
United States Steel Corporation ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Great Migration ◽  
Black Codes

This chapter provides an account of the first wave of African American migration into the Appalachian region of eastern Kentucky. It addresses the implementation of Black Codes, also known as Jim Crow laws, the convict leasing system, and how psychological and physical terror in the form of public lynchings helped maintain the social order of white supremacy. Brown attends to the role of the labor agent as a grey-market actor in facilitating the onset of the first wave of the African American Great Migration. Drawing on the oral history and archival data, the chapter distils a profile of the legendary figure, Limehouse, the white labor agent hired by United States Steel Corporation to sneak and transport black men and their families out of Alabama to Harlan County, Kentucky to work in the coalmines. The chapter also focuses on the psychosocial dimensions of this silent mass migration, specifically the spiritual strivings, the hopes, dreams, and disappointments that accompanied the Great Migration.

Exhibiting a New South Empire

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Cardon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
New South ◽  
The United States ◽  
Clerical Staff ◽  
Technical Schools ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
International Exposition

Chapter 4 argues that the Jim Crow modernity at the fairs foreshadowed a Jim Crow empire after 1898. The Cotton States and International Exposition and Tennessee Centennial Exposition presented arguments for a distinctly southern imperial expansion. The Negro Buildings coupled with African American participation provided a blueprint for the incorporation of nonwhite colonial natives into the United States. By solving the supposed problems of a multiracial society by including the labor of African Americans while denying them the rights of citizenship, the South presented a framework for empire. At the same time, the exhibits and conferences held at the Negro Buildings often embraced the civilizing language of imperialism. Rhetoric about “primitive” and “heathen” Africans and the need for technical schools in Africa placed the southern African American professional and clerical staff within and alongside American expansionism.

Eugene Kinckle Jones

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix L. Armfield
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Social Work ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Migration ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Urban League ◽  
The Great Migration

A leading African American intellectual of the early twentieth century, Eugene Kinckle Jones (1885–1954) was instrumental in professionalizing black social work in America. In his role as executive secretary of the National Urban League, Jones worked closely with social reformers who advocated on behalf of African Americans and against racial discrimination in the United States. Coinciding with the Great Migration of African Americans to northern urban centers, Jones' activities on behalf of the Urban League included campaigning for equal hiring practices, advocating for the inclusion of black workers in labor unions, and promoting the importance of vocational training and social work for members of the black community. Drawing on rich interviews with Jones' colleagues and associates, as well as recently opened family and Urban League papers, the book freshly examines the growth of African American communities and the new roles played by social workers. In calling attention to the need for black social workers in the midst of the Great Migration, Jones and his colleagues sought to address problems stemming from race and class conflicts from within the community. This book blends the biography of a significant black leader with an in-depth discussion of the roles of black institutions and organizations to study the evolution of African American life immediately before the civil rights era.

African American Boxer Billy Clarke in Modernizing Guatemala

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alvis E. Dunn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
North American ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The United States ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Central American ◽  
Limiting Factor ◽  
Guatemala City ◽  
American Nation

In the final decades of the 19th century the Central American nation of Guatemala represented some intriguing employment and entrepreneurial possibilities from the point of view of US citizens. The lure of coffee cultivation, mahogany harvesting, even mining was real. Additionally, the promise of employment building an inter-oceanic railroad resulted in significant numbers of African Americans journeying to Guatemala. The relocation offered good pay and many apparently believed that it would also take them to a place where Jim Crow racism was not the predominant and limiting factor that it was in the United States. For at least one of those men however, railroad work was not the primary enticement to the region. By 1893, such alleged opportunities in Guatemala had attracted the black athlete, entrepreneur, and entertainer Billy A. Clarke. During his two years in the country, with his sometime business partner and sparring mate, Rod Lewis, also an African American, Clarke operated a gymnasium where he taught the “Art of Pugilism,” staged several prize fights, and, for a time, captured the imagination of the capital city with the example of modern, imported entertainment and professional sports. Between 1892 and 1898, Guatemala was ruled by, first president, and later, dictator, General José María Reina Barrios. A globalizer enamored of modernization, European architecture, and North American technology, the environment fostered by Reina Barrios attracted not only contractors and African American workers from the United States to build railroads but also other foreigners who made for the Central American nation, bringing the outside world to the mile-high capital of Guatemala City. Into this setting came Billy A. Clarke, drawn by the same baseline possibilities of solid work and the prospect of less Jim Crow as his African American railroad compatriots, but with the additional promise that his individual skills as a fighter and promoter might reap even bigger rewards. The story of Clarke in Guatemala is one of race, identity, and creative self-promotion. Building an image that combined ideas of the exotic and powerful African with ideas of the North American armed with “know-how” and scientific fighting skills, Clarke became a Guatemala City celebrity and was eventually known as the “Champion of Central America.”

A Sphinx upon the Dnieper: Black Modernism and the Yiddish Translation of Race

Slavic Review ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 280-289
Author(s):  
Eli Rosenblatt
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
James Weldon Johnson ◽  
Race And Racism ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Black Modernism ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This article examines the context and content of the 1936 Soviet Yiddish publication of Neger-Dikhtung in Amerike, which remains to this day the most extensive anthology of African-Diasporic poetry in Yiddish translation. The collection included a critical introduction and translations of nearly one hundred individual poems by twenty-nine poets, both men and women, from across the United States and the Caribbean. This article examines the anthology's position amongst different notions of “the folk” in Soviet Yiddish folkloristics and the relationship of these ideas to Yiddish-language discourse about race and racism, the writings of James Weldon Johnson and W.E.B. Du Bois, with whom Magidoff corresponded, and the Yiddish modernist poetry of Shmuel Halkin, who edited the book series in which the anthology appears. When placed alongside Du Bois's and others’ visits to the Soviet Union in the 1930s, the appearance of African-American and Caribbean poetry in Yiddish translation shows how a transatlantic Jewish avant-garde interpreted and embedded itself within Soviet-African-American cultural exchange in the interwar years. Magidoff served as a Soviet correspondent for NBC and the Associated Press from 1935. He was accused of espionage and expelled from the USSR in 1948.

scholarly journals artscanada’s "Black" Issue: 1960s Contemporary Art and African Liberation Movements

2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Krys Verrall
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
Art Making ◽  
Greenwich Village ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Subsequent Publication

ABSTRACT In August 1967, as the slogan Black Power burst the confines of African American subcultures and global anti-colonial movements began to circulate prominently within mainstream mass media, seven men from two countries met via a transnational telephone connection to talk about the colour black. Their conversation, and its subsequent publication in the arts journal artscanada’s October 1967 issue titled “Black,” provides this article’s focus. While the thematic issue indexes a rare intersection between elite art and racial politics, and while it is unlikely that any of these representatives of innovative contemporary art practices intimate with the radical countercultures of Greenwich Village and Yorkville saw any cloying taint of bigotry compromise their views about art and art-making, the issue nonetheless enforces covert racism sustained by ideologies of Whiteness. The result is that rather than embracing creative expression associated with black, Black-as-race is construed as alien to contemporary art’s mise-en-scène.RÉSUMÉ En août 1967, quand le slogan « Black Power » se fait entendre au-delà des subcultures afro-américaines et les principaux médias commencent à couvrir les mouvements anti-impérialistes mondiaux, sept hommes vivant dans deux pays, par l’intermédiaire d’un lien téléphonique interurbain, ont eu une échange sur la couleur noire. Cet article porte sur cette conversation et sa publication ultérieure en octobre 1967 dans un numéro de la revue artscanada intitulé « Black ». Ce numéro thématique est l’occasion d’une rare intersection entre l’art d’élite et la politique raciale. Il est peu probable que ces représentants de pratiques innovatrices d’art contemporain, avec leur connaissance intime des contrecultures radicales de Greenwich Village et de Yorkville, aient été conscients d’avoir exprimé des préjugés à l’égard de l’art et de la création artistique. Pourtant, le numéro comporte des exemples de racisme implicite soutenu par une idéologie favorisant la blancheur. En conséquence, plutôt que de reconnaître l’expression créative associée à ce qui est noir, les interlocuteurs traitent le noir en tant que race étrangère par rapport à l’art contemporain.

Art as Black and White: examining interactions between race in the 20th century through Black artist experience.

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tucker Collins ◽  
Shannon Davis
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
American Art ◽  
African American Community ◽  
African American Art ◽  
Black And White ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Aaron Douglas ◽  
White Majority

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between African-American art throughout the 20th century and mainstream art critics’ perspectives of the African-American community. Aaron Douglas’, Jacob Lawrence’s, and Jean Michel Basquiat’s experiences as artists spanned the 20th century. The study examined approximately 40 primary documents written by White individuals who played a role in the mainstream art world during the 20th century. The analysis determined that there was no change in the perspectives of the White majority towards the African-American community in response to Aaron Douglas’, Jacob Lawrence’s, and Jean Michel Basquiat’s art.  Two main themes emerged regarding White response to these artists. First, the White majority seems to have felt threatened by the African-American community and utilized its power to keep African-American art confined to its own community. Second, the White majority commodified African-American art in order to keep it outside the mainstream. Therefore, the key contribution of this study is to document one important way that racism seeped into the arts. Not only can the findings be applied to other methods of cultural production, but the construction of this study can provide a model for other studies dealing with similar qualitative materials.

Dance Rooted in the Movements of Bedford-Stuyvesant

2019 ◽  
pp. 37-55
Author(s):  
Indira Etwaroo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
African Dance ◽  
Black Arts ◽  
Political Events ◽  
The Great Migration ◽  
Historical Periods

Reinterpreting the works of choreographers Kariamu Welsh and Ronald K. Brown as ethnographies of Brooklyn, New York’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, Indira Etwaroo situates Welsh’s and Brown’s respective bodies of work from two historical periods as artistic expressions shaped by the Great Migration, the Black Arts and Black Power movements, and the daily realities of mid and late 20th Century African-American urban life. As examples of “Neo-traditional African dance,” Etwaroo explores how Welsh and Brown recalibrated traditional African dance aesthetics for North American and European performance contexts that were quite distinct from those rooted in traditional African societies. As Welsh and Brown addressed current African-American political events in their works, they secured a contemporary relevance for the historically rooted dance aesthetics they pioneered. Etwaroo also places Welsh and Brown within a long tradition of African-American dance choreographers and explores Welsh’s influence on Brown as evidence of an established neo-traditional African dance ethos in the United States, which constitutes a tradition in its own right.

“No Such Thing as Stand Still”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kendra Taira Field
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Great Migration ◽  
Indian Land ◽  
Mineral Rights ◽  
The Great Migration ◽  
White Settlers ◽  
Back To Africa

Chapter 4 recovers the origins of the little-known 1913–15 Chief Sam back-to-Africa movement and the lifelong migrants who created it. African-American access to Indian land ended abruptly after 1907 with the advent of Oklahoma statehood, Jim Crow segregation, and oil speculation. These migrants and many of their black and Indian counterparts lost their land and the associated mineral rights to white settlers and oil speculators through a combination of legal and extralegal exploitation. Thousands, including Coleman and Davis, joined Chief Alfred Sam’s 1914 “back-to-Africa” movement in hopes of claiming lasting freedom once and for all on the Gold Coast. This chapter employs the stories of Elic Davis and Monroe Coleman to show that this movement was not only prelude to Garveyism and the Great Migration, but capstone to “a century of negro migration.”

Book Faces

2020 ◽  
pp. 150-165
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Goldsby
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
American Literature ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Work ◽  
Black Literature ◽  
Ethics Of Reading ◽  
The Face

Across the first half of the twentieth century, author portraits migrated from the frontispiece inside of books to the exterior covers of dust jackets; at the same time, while Jim Crow segregation reached its repressive heights in the United States, African-American literature enjoyed unprecedented circulation in the mainstream literary marketplace. This chapter traces this convergence to explore the cultural work performed by the “face” of a book—frontispieces, dust jackets, and author portraits. Examining these lays bare the signal development that distinguishes mid-twentieth-century African-American authorship from its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century precedents: namely, the turn away from writing as corroboration of black humanity to writing as expressive of black pluralities or personae. By setting alterity, not authenticity, as the threshold where readers meet and interpret black literature as works of art, the migration of author portraits also functions as a trope for the ethics of reading.

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