Historical Context of Leisure, the California Dream, and the African American Experience during the Jim Crow Era

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-28
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Jim Crow Era

Liberia, South Carolina

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Coggeshall
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
African American ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Small Community ◽  
Her Family ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Jim Crow Era ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ethnographic History ◽  
First Time

In 2007, while researching mountain culture in upstate South Carolina, anthropologist John M. Coggeshall stumbled upon the small community of Liberia in the Blue Ridge foothills. There he met Mable Owens Clarke and her family, the remaining members of a small African American community still living on land obtained immediately after the Civil War. This intimate history tells the story of five generations of the Owens family and their friends and neighbors, chronicling their struggles through slavery, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, and the desegregation of the state. Through hours of interviews with Mable and her relatives, as well as friends and neighbors, Coggeshall presents an ethnographic history that allows members of a largely ignored community to speak and record their own history for the first time. This story sheds new light on the African American experience in Appalachia, and in it Coggeshall documents the community’s 150-year history of resistance to white oppression, while offering a new way to understand the symbolic relationship between residents and the land they occupy, tying together family, memory, and narratives to explain this connection.

Eddie Anderson, Rochester, and Race in 1930s Radio and Film

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Black Press ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Jim Crow Era ◽  
Time Part

African-American dancer, singer, comedian Eddie Anderson pursued an entertainment career in California, his opportunities limited by Jim Crow-era racism in Hollywood but also shaped opportunities in night clubs and cabarets that catered to both black and white patrons. Winning an audition for a one-time role on Benny’s radio show, Anderson’s inimitable gravelly voice spurred Benny to create a full time part, the character of Rochester Van Jones, Jack’s butler and valet, in late 1937. Although initially hampered by stereotyped minstrel-show dialogue and character habits, Rochester soon became renowned by both white and black listeners for his ability to criticize the “Boss” in impertinent manner. Virtually co-starred in three films with Benny that were highly successful at the box office, commenters in the black press in 1940 hoped that Rochester offered “a new day” in improved race relations.

In Living Color: Early “Impressions” of Slavery and the Limits of Living History

2019 ◽  
Vol 124 (5) ◽  
pp. 1732-1748
Author(s):  
Drew Swanson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Public History ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Living History ◽  
Mount Vernon ◽  
Jim Crow Era ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Historical Sites ◽  
Embodied History

Abstract In the 1970s, American historical sites began to more thoroughly and critically interpret slavery’s history, with a few institutions employing living history as an interpretive form. At sites like Virginia’s Mount Vernon and Colonial Williamsburg, the hope is that these historical “impressions” will engage audiences with a more authentic or credible representation of racial bondage. An earlier wave of living historical representations of slavery suggest the challenges and hazards of embodied history, however. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a significant number of southern sites employed African American interpreters who claimed to have been born into slavery, often on the very sites where they were currently working. Historical attractions used the “authenticity” and “credibility” of these interpreters to advance the narrative of a happy Old South. Historians have noted these performances as part of the sectional reconciliation of the Jim Crow era, but have rarely interpreted them as public history. Although the contemporary living history of slavery has different—and far better—goals than impressions of a century past, this long history of embodied bondage suggests the implicit dangers of interpreting slavery and race through living people.

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.

Pink and Sister

Goat Castle ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen L. Cox
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Great Depression ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
African American Principals ◽  
American Experience ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
History Of ◽  
Edgar Allen Poe

This chapter introduces the African American principals in the book, Emily Burns and George Pearls a.k.a. Lawrence Williams. The history of the African American experience in Natchez, from slavery through Reconstruction and Jim Crow, is discussed. George lived in Chicago and when he came to Natchez in 1932 he introduced himself to Emily as Pinkney. He was called “Pink” and she was known in the community as “Sister.” Emily’s mother Nellie Black is introduced, as is their boarder, Edgar Allen Poe Newell or “Poe.” Both Emily and her mother were widows and domestics. All suffered from poverty, particularly in the depths of the Great Depression.

Black Lives Matter: An African American Experience!

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-93
Author(s):  
Mack T. Hines III
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Black Lives Matter

The purpose of this article is to provide a historical context for the meaning of the words Black Lives Matter. First, the author highlights the African perspectives of Black Lives Matter. Then, the author describes the American experiences that gave rise to this term. Through these analyses, readers will acquire a more in-depth understanding of the historical underpinnings of the Black Lives Matter Movement.

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