scholarly journals Processional Culture and Black Mobility in Maggie Washington's Wilmington

2022 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-91
Author(s):  
Elijah Gaddis
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North Carolina ◽  
African American ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
American South ◽  
Time Span ◽  
Color Line ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Ubiquitous Presence ◽  
Oriented Approach

This article addresses changes in the built environment of the postbellum American South through an examination of the life histories, parade routes, and costuming practices of the Afro-Caribbean Jonkonnu masking tradition. I juxtapose the stories of two practitioners of the tradition across the color line in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Wilmington, North Carolina. Using a material culturally inflected approach to the study of landscapes, I use these two narratives to deepen the histories of African American processional cultures toward a longer time span and a more immersive, performer-oriented approach. Though few conventional objects of ornamentation and display from these practices survive, this article posits that an approach rooted in the materiality of landscape can help uncover festive cultures that have been understudied or undertheorized in more conventional historical approaches. Further, the ubiquitous presence of Jonkonnu and other Black processional traditions in the post-emancipation city suggests the importance of these and other objects, practices, and larger cultures of celebration in combating white supremacist culture. 

The Making of the Modern Death Penalty in Jim Crow North Carolina

2019 ◽  
pp. 192-214
Author(s):  
Seth Kotch
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North Carolina ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Convictions ◽  
The Impact

focuses on the transition from local public hangings to state-controlled electrocutions in North Carolina in the early twentieth century. The chapter addresses the impact of this shift on African American communities. Although the death penalty had long served as an instrument of racial control, the ritual of a local hanging nevertheless had allowed the condemned and black witnesses a public space to express religious convictions and honor the condemned’s suffering. Once the state seized control of this ritual, African Americans were largely excluded as witnesses. The modern death penalty thus came to represent the racial subjugation of Jim Crow, indeed having more in common with lynchings than legal hangings had.

Behind Enemy Lines with No Beachhead

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reginald K. Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
North Carolina ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Political Awareness ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
American Leader

This chapter examines the changing political awareness of Shepard after he became president of NCC. Moreover, this chapter evaluates Shepard’s role in the early civil rights movement in the Durham, North Carolina, area and how he was affected by the outcome of many protests that took place. Most important, this section tackles the idea of a “conservative” African American leader, such as a Booker T. Washington during the early twentieth century.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Cressler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Color Line ◽  
African American Religion ◽  
Black Catholics ◽  
Catholic History

This chapter begins with the ten Black bishops declaring in 1984 that Black Catholics should be “authentically Black and truly Catholic.” It contrasts this statement with the story of Mary Dolores Gadpaille, who argued in 1958 that Catholicism “lifted her up above the color line.” It juxtaposes these two examples in order to introduce readers to the central questions that govern the book. Why did tens of thousands of African Americans convert to Catholicism in the middle decades of the twentieth century? What did it mean to be Black and Catholic in the first half of the twentieth century and why did it change so dramatically in the thirty years that separated Gadpaille from the bishops? How would placing Black Catholics at the center of our historical narratives change the ways we understand African American religion and Catholicism in the United States? The chapter situates the book in scholarship and briefly introduces readers to Black Catholic history writ large.

The Impresarios of Beale Street: African American and Italian American Theatre Managers in Memphis, 1900–1915

2013 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-47
Author(s):  
Stephen Huff
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
National Level ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Color Line ◽  
American Theatre ◽  
Italian American ◽  
History Of ◽  
Southern City ◽  
Theatre Management

Music scholars Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff have researched what they call “a deep African American vaudeville theater tradition” in Memphis during the first decade of the twentieth century that helped lead the way to the commercialization of the blues. Their body of work provides a very useful and fascinating historical overview of the black vaudeville scene of the time on the national level. This article seeks to broaden that overview, using a much more focused, microhistorical perspective on the history of theatre management on one particular street in one particular, midsized southern city. It argues that in Memphis, the story of African American and Italian American theatre managers shows that realities were often much more complex than histories that portray a rigid and heavily drawn color line have suggested.

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