This chaptertraces the connections between a prevailing mode of “authenticity” in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 film The Ten Commandments and the music Elmer Bernstein wrote for the film. It describes how Bernstein’s musical score for the riot around the Golden Calf created the necessary orgiastic impression and how DeMille’s narration created the distance that freed the scene from any risk of censorly reproach. It also considers the devotional and political elements of the film and its religious and social impact.
This paper explores trends in summer and intermittent teaching practices among African American students in the post-Civil War South, focusing on student activities in the field, the institutions they attended, and the communities they served. Transitioning out of the restrictions and impoverishment of slavery while simultaneously seeking to support themselves and others was an arduous and tenuous process. How could African American youth and young adults obtain the advanced education they sought while sustaining themselves in the process? Individual and family resources were limited for most, while ambitions, both personal and racial, loomed large. Teaching, widely recognized as a means to racial uplift, was the future occupation of choice for many of these students.
While researching racially segregated education, I came across speeches delivered in the 1940s by two educational leaders—one a black man and the other a Native American man. G. B. Buster, a longtime African American teacher, implored his African American listeners to work with white Americans on enforcing equal rights for all. A few years before Buster delivered his speech, Henry Roe Cloud (Winnebago), a Native American educator, was more critical of white Americans, specifically the federal government, which he blamed for destroying American Indian cultures. At the same time, Roe Cloud praised more recent federal efforts to preserve cultural practices, study traditions before they completely disappeared, and encourage self-government among Native American tribes.
The Impact of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Discovery of the “Original” Version of the Ten Commandments upon Biblical Scholarship: The Myth of Jewish Particularism and German Universalism
