Transformative Performances

2019 ◽  
pp. 10-34
Author(s):  
Annette Trefzer
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
American South ◽  
African American Men ◽  
Racial Segregation ◽  
Cultural Integration ◽  
The American South ◽  
Visual Record

This chapter proposes that Eudora Welty’s “Negro State Fair Parade” photographs of Jackson during the 1930s capture not only the segregated practices and spaces of the American South but also the transgressive rituals and transformative performances of an increasingly socially mobile black culture. These photographs, many of them never before published, display the tensions between cultural integration and racial segregation, and they speak sharply and sometimes humorously to the immediate political and economic contexts. Welty captures new African-American middle class opportunities in photographs that display long-standing black professions such as the burial and beauty parlor business, but also aspirations for upper middle-class vocations. Together these photos depict boisterous African American men and dignified women whose access to parade floats and cars indicates a new kind of racial and social mobility in the segregated southern cityscape. Welty creates a visual record of the act of claiming public space as she zooms in on various strategies of African American self-fashioning.

Slavery and Class in the American South

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
William L. Andrews
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American South ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Harriet Jacobs ◽  
Slave Narrative ◽  
William Wells Brown ◽  
The American South ◽  
Work Family

In this study of an entire generation of slave narrators, more than sixty mid-nineteenth-century narratives reveal how work, family, skills, and connections made for social and economic differences among the enslaved of the South. Slavery and Class in the American South explains why social and economic distinctions developed and how they functioned among the enslaved. Andrews also reveals how class awareness shaped the views and values of some of the most celebrated African Americans of the nineteenth century. Slave narrators discerned class-based reasons for violence between “impudent,” “gentleman,” and “lady” slaves and their resentful “mean masters.” Status and class played key roles in the lives and liberation of the most celebrated fugitives from US slavery, such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, William Wells Brown, and William and Ellen Craft. By examining the lives of the most- and least-acclaimed heroes and heroines of the African American slave narrative, Andrews shows how the dividing edge of social class cut two ways, sometimes separating upper and lower strata of slaves to their enslavers’ advantage, but at other times fueling convictions among even the most privileged of the enslaved that they deserved nothing less than complete freedom.

Mobility and Insecurity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd M. Michney
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Geographic Mobility ◽  
Black Middle Class ◽  
African American Families ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
White Families ◽  
Downtown Redevelopment ◽  
The American South ◽  
American Families

This chapter considers the structural factors and life dilemmas upwardly mobile black Clevelanders faced even after achieving geographic mobility, and explicates the dynamic whereby less-affluent African American families steadily moved into new, outlying black middle-class neighbourhoods. Topics discussed include lending discrimination, the unfavourable financing arrangements available to African American homebuyers and the associated economic setbacks they experienced, the role of black professional real estate brokerage associations, the phenomenon of isolated white families remaining in post-transitional neighbourhoods, and the forces driving lower-income African American families into outlying neighbourhoods, mainly downtown redevelopment and ongoing migration from the American South. It also investigates black middle class notions of status and the intra-racial, cross-class frictions that ensued around issues of property upkeep, personal comportment, child rearing, and leisure-time practices.

scholarly journals Jim Crow Downunder? African American Encounters with White Australia, 1942––1945

2002 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 607-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Brawley ◽  
Chris Dixon
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
American South ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
White Americans ◽  
American Experience ◽  
The American South ◽  
The U.S

Between 1941 and 1945, as the U.S. military machine sent millions of Americans——and American culture——around the world, several thousand African Americans spent time in Australia. Armed with little knowledge of Australian racial values and practices, black Americans encoutered a nation whose long-standing commitment to the principle of "White Australia" appeared to rest comfortably with the segregative policies commonly associated with the American South. Nonetheless, while African Americans did encounter racism and discrimination——practices often encouraged by the white Americans who were also stationed in Australia during the war——there is compelling evidence that their experiences were not always negative. Indeed, for many black Americans, Australians' apparent open-mindedness and racial views of white Britons and others with whom African Americans came into contact during the war. Making use of U.S. Army censors' reports and paying attention to black Americans' views of their experiences in Australia, this article not only casts light on an aspect of American-Australian relations that has hitherto recieved scant scholarly attention and reveals something about the African American experience, but also offers insights into race relations within the U.S. armed forces.

Rethinking the Relationship of African American Men to the Street

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alford A. Young
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Social Power ◽  
African American Men ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This article examines how the street has become a point of reference in scholarly and public discussions of the behavior of low-income African American men living in urban communities. It begins with a discussion of how the street has attained such an overriding centrality in the cultural analyses of low-income, urban-based African American men in public space, especially in the formation of images and understandings about them. It then considers how and why African American men have come to be viewed as a frighteningly disturbing presence on the street because of the social power they are assumed to have in affecting the actions and lives of others who make use of the streets. It also looks at various frameworks for the cultural analysis of African American men and concludes by arguing that the street has been both overdetermined and incompletely theorized in terms of its significance for cultural analysis.

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