Framing Frederick Douglass

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest J. Quarles
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Black Woman ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Black America ◽  
Talented Tenth ◽  
Anna Julia Cooper ◽  
Twentieth Century America ◽  
Thought Leaders

In this era of “My Brother’s Keeper,” we have been blinded from fully recognizing the Black woman’s race-, gender-, and class-based persecution and oppression. This daunting reality, though, has existed since 1619. She has lived through the dehumanizing experience of slavery and the unfulfilled promises of Reconstruction, lynching, Jim Crow, and segregation, and today she often finds herself left out or at the margins of our concern with regard to her humanity. Even during the life of the great Frederick Douglass, who spoke out against America’s torturous evils, the Black woman was unchampioned.  She was never offered a pedestal to speak, yet she spoke boldly nonetheless. America wanted her to be the footstool for white society, but she vehemently refused. Anna Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Rosetta Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, and others were the thought leaders who shaped and defined the truest sense of humanity and morality for nineteenth- and twentieth-century America. They are the talented tenth who saved Black America and, in so doing, the heart and soul of our nation.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald Horne
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Black America ◽  
Pan Africanism ◽  
The Way

This introductory chapter provides a background of Claude Barnett and the Associated Negro Press (ANP). Though not often recognized as such, Claude Barnett was one of the leading Pan-Africanists of the twentieth century, just as the ANP was an exemplar of the often discussed but little implemented doctrine of Pan-Africanism. Yet his very success carried the seeds of its demise; that is, as his anti-Jim Crow and anticolonial campaigns gained traction, it opened both Black America and Africa to incursions by mainstream entities that theretofore either had ignored these sizable communities or winked at their bludgeoning. Meanwhile, what ANP accomplished was to provide an assessment of the balance of global forces that historically had been essential in plotting the way forward for African Americans not least. Yet as the prize of anti-Jim Crow came within reach, ironically the way had been paved for the ultimate liquidation of the ANP.

The Spectacle of Free Black Personhood

Black Market ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 51-104
Author(s):  
Aaron Carico
Keyword(s):  
Jim Crow ◽  
Black Body ◽  
Frederick Douglass ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Aesthetics And Politics ◽  
Trompe L'oeil ◽  
Black America ◽  
Free Black ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This chapter examines the aesthetics and politics that inform modes of realism increasingly used to represent Black Americans in the late nineteenth century. Beginning with a trompe l’oeil painting that depicts a Black boy playing soldier (Attention, Company! by artist William Harnett), read alongside sections of Frederick Douglass’ narratives and the mass-reproduced image of Gordon the slave, this chapter also surveys a Brooklyn park that was remade into a cotton plantation as part of the immersive performance called Black America. Each of these texts conjures the “free” Black body as a sensuous object for white consumption. This racialized dynamic is linked to segregation through an analysis of the eponymous protagonist of Mark Twain’s novel Pudd’nhead Wilson and a history of the anonymous subject of Harnett’s painting. Focusing on the logic of realism as it intersects with the ideologies of liberalism and of Jim Crow segregation, this chapter exposes how free black personhood was turned into a form of commodity spectacle.

The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America

Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 139
Author(s):  
Jason Pierceson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century America

Reviewed by Jason Pierceson

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melinda Powers
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Greek Drama ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Twentieth Century America

The Introduction begins by providing a brief overview of the reception of Greek drama by under-represented communities in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century America. After situating the book’s topic within this historical timeline, it proceeds to explain the development of the project, the focus on live theatre, the choice of productions, and the reasons for them. It defines terms, provides disclaimers, explains the methodology used, clarifies the topic, situates it within its historical moment, summarizes each of the chapters, describes the development of the ‘democratic turn’ in Greek drama, and finally speculates on the reasons for the appeal of Greek drama to artists working with under-represented communities.

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