Black Bottom

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrienne Stroik
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Black Community ◽  
Southern United States ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Social Dance ◽  
Theatrical Performance ◽  
The Great Migration ◽  
American Society

The Black Bottom dance began as an early twentieth-century African American social dance in the Southern United States. It later entered the American mainstream via Broadway productions, and underwent significant alterations during transmission. The Great Migration, urbanization, and industrialization resulted in the Black Bottom being brought into urban black communities and theaters in the Northeast and Midwest. In the 1920s, white directors and performers went into the predominately black neighborhood of Harlem and witnessed the dance performed by black performers in segregated theaters, and later received private instruction from black dancers. These performers and directors took their knowledge of Black Bottom out of the black community and onto the stages of Broadway. This transmission into theatrical performance ignited the widespread popularity of the Black Bottom, and led to its presence in white social entertainment venues (the dance, however, was drastically simplified). Black Bottom became part of modernist American society, which in itself was drawn to white appropriation of black practices. The Black Bottom established that dancing modern often meant adopting, adapting, and performing black dances.

Chick-a-ma-feeno

Jockomo ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 75-108
Author(s):  
Shane Lief ◽  
John McCusker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Black Community ◽  
The United States ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Social Equality ◽  
Mardi Gras ◽  
Personal Histories

This chapter lays out several different narratives about the origins of Mardi Gras Indians. Some are based on oral histories shared among Mardi Gras Indians themselves, while others are based on various archives and newspaper accounts. The emergence of the Mardi Gras Indian tradition is set against the backdrop of the evolution of Mardi Gras as celebrated during the colonial period and beyond, after Louisiana had become part of the United States. The struggle for African American political power and social equality is another parallel thread for this narrative, especially as Mardi Gras Indian practices overlapped with other masking traditions and institutions in the Black community. The earliest known account of Mardi Gras Indians, identified as such, is analysed and the personal histories of the first known Mardi Gras Indians reveal connections to Black participation in the Civil War and continuing struggles during Reconstruction and through the early twentieth century.

Black Chicago Pioneers in the Training of Dancers

2020 ◽  
pp. 166-182
Author(s):  
Clovis E. Semmes
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Broad Spectrum ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Performing Artists ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Renaissance ◽  
And Performance ◽  
American Society

This chapter examines the life of pioneer dance instructor Hazel Thompson Davis in early twentieth-century Black Chicago. Contextually, diverse venues for live entertainment in the broad spectrum of American society created significant demand for a trained theatrical workforce, of which varieties of dancers were major components. By 1916, Chicago’s Hazel Thompson Davis began to meet this demand through the school she created and the performing artists she trained. A pioneer and innovator in her field, the Chicago tradition in dance instruction and performance initiated by Davis would make Chicago a powerful force in the instruction of an African American theatrical workforce nationally and internationally, in the broader cultural renaissance taking place in Black communities across the country, and in the evolution of American popular culture.

When Pushkin's Blackness Was in Vogue: Rediscovering the Racialization of Russia's Preeminent Poet and His Descendants

Slavic Review ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 80 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-257
Author(s):  
Korey Garibaldi ◽  
Emily Wang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Henry James ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
African Heritage ◽  
Queen Of Spades ◽  
Racially Ambiguous

This essay investigates interconnections between the novelist, Henry James, Ivan Turgenev, and Aleksandr Pushkin and identifies the racial subtext of these associations. Several scholars have connected Pushkin and James. But none of this scholarship has speculated on whether it was the poet's African heritage that was at the root of hidden connections between these authors. Moreover, though most scholarship on Pushkin's reception in the United States focuses on twentieth-century African American literature, his African heritage was publicized much earlier. In fact, nineteenth-century commentators on both sides of the Atlantic frequently discussed Pushkin's racial heritage as a canonical European writer of African descent. This essay recovers how Henry James used Pushkin's daughter, the morganatic Countess Merenberg, as a model for the racially ambiguous “morganatic” Baroness Münster in The Europeans (1878). A decade later, James seems to have invoked the Countess Merenberg once more in his rewriting of Pushkin's “The Queen of Spades” (1833) in The Aspern Papers (1888). While James publicly attributed Byron and Shelley as inspirations, the discourse surrounding the African heritage of Pushkin and his heirs helps explain why the novelist minimized and erased the racial lineage at the center of The Europeans and The Aspern Papers.

scholarly journals Book Review: Field Recordings of Black Singers and Musicians: An Annotated Discography of Artists from West Africa, the Caribbean and the Eastern and Southern United States, 1901–1943

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 194
Author(s):  
Molly Molloy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Southern United States ◽  
Sound Recording ◽  
African Music ◽  
Field Recordings ◽  
The Caribbean

This last work of author/compiler Craig Martin Gibbs joins his other unique discographies from the same publisher—Black Recording Artists, 1877–1926: An Annotated Discography (2012) and Calypso and Other Music of Trinidad, 1912–1962: An Annotated Discography (2015)—to provide detailed access to the legacy of African American and African music from the earliest years of sound recording. As noted in the front matter, Craig Martin Gibbs died in October 2017.

Advising the Race

2021 ◽  
pp. 86-114
Author(s):  
Julie Golia
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Women Readers ◽  
Racial Uplift ◽  
Black Newspapers ◽  
The Many

This chapter examines the advice column “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise,” which ran in the Chicago Defender, one of the most successful black newspapers in the United States. In the early twentieth century, black publishers recognized the many ways that mainstream newspapers reinforced the racial status quo in America and failed to address the needs of African American readers. They also sought to offer more feature content to women readers. “Advice to the Wise and Otherwise” was one of the country’s most widely read black advice columns. Columnist Princess Mysteria, a vaudeville mentalist, embraced the Defender’s mission of racial “uplift” and advocacy. But her counsel also reflected a unique sensitivity to the dual prejudices that her female readers faced as African Americans and as women. The columnist offered a worldview very different from that of white columnists, one that doled out assertive, even feminist advice.

Robert Johnson e o racismo em Mississipi nas décadas de 1910-1930 no documentário "O Diabo na Encruzilhada"

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Letícia Ferreira Aguiar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Black Community ◽  
American History ◽  
African American History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Symbolic Racism ◽  
Untimely Death ◽  
Social Tension ◽  
The Devil

Neste estudo busca-se analisar a trajetória do músico Robert Johnson em razão da sua vivência como homem negro no Mississipi entre as décadas de 1910 e 1930, período de tensões sociais extremas para a comunidade negra nas condições existentes no estado e no país em si. Para realizar este objetivo, a investigação toma como ponto de partida o documentário “O diabo na encruzilhada”, do diretor Brian Oakes, que aborda a vida de Johnson desde suas origens, destacando os conflitos de classe e raça entre membros de sua família e o Klu Klux Klan, até sua morte, aos 27 anos. Sua vida conturbada é marcada tanto pelo racismo institucional como simbólico. Desmistifica-se Johnson, documentando os aspectos sociopolíticos da época, de forma a explicar seu legado deturpado pela mentalidade racista.Palavras-chave: Blues. História Afroamericana. Racismo.AbstractThis study intends to analyze the trajectory of Robert Johnson, an established african-american musician, about his experiences with racism during the decades of 1910 to 1930. This period was a time of extreme social tension for the black community, especially in the existing conditions of Mississippi, and the entirety of the United States at the time. "The Devil at the Crossroads," a documentary directed by Brian Oakes, approaches Johnson's life focusing from the conflicts of class between Johnson's family and members of the Klu Klux Klan to details of Johnson's life up until his untimely death at 27. Johnson's life was turbulent, stained by institucional and symbolic racism. By demythologizing Johnson, documenting the sociopolitical aspects of the period, Oakes explains how Johnson's legacy was perverted by the racist mentality.Keywords: Blues. African-American History. Racism.

scholarly journals Cultures of light: Electric light in the United States, 1890s-1950s

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Margaret Maile Petty
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Cultural Beliefs ◽  
The United States ◽  
Light Industry ◽  
Electric Light ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Impact

<p>Cultures of Light is set within a period that stretches from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century in the United States, an era in which nearly every aspect of American life was impacted to a lesser or greater degree by the introduction, distribution and integration of electric power and light. By no means attempting to comprehensively examine the impact and effects of this expansive transformation, this thesis has a narrow but meaningful target, defined by key intersections of electric lighting and American culture. Primarily concerned with the investigation of culturally bound ideas and practices as mediated through electric light and its applications, my thesis is focused on particular instances of this interplay. These include its role in supporting nationalizing narratives and agendas through large-scale demonstrations at world’s fairs and exhibitions, in the search for and expression of modernism and its variations in the United States. Similarly electricity and electric light throughout the better part of the twentieth century was scaled to the level of the individual through a number of mechanisms and narratives. Most prominently the electric light industry employed gendered discourses, practices and beliefs in their efforts to grow the market, calling upon the assistance of a host of cultural influencers, from movie stars to architects to interior designers, instigating a renegotiation of established approaches to the design of architecture and the visual environment. Connecting common themes and persistent concerns across these seemingly disparate subject areas through the examination of cultural beliefs, practices, rituals and traditions, Cultures of Light seeks to illustrate the deep and lasting significance of electric light within American society in the twentieth century.</p>

The FBI Helped to Define the Twentieth-Century Black Atlantic, Both Blocking and Forcing Its Flows

F.B. Eyes ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Maxwell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Atlantic ◽  
World War ◽  
Black Transnationalism ◽  
The Mind

This part marshals the largely uncompiled evidence of FBI author files to suggest that the worst suspicions about the stakeout of Paris noir were basically correct—that Wright was not too wrong, it follows, when he darkly joked that any African American “who is not paranoid is in serious shape,” at least if he or she sought literary license outside the United States during the Hoover era. Two decades before American involvement in World War II opened the floodgates of black Paris, the FBI began to influence the movements of expatriate Afro-modernists—this even as it manipulated “lit.-cop federalism” to nationalize itself in the mind of white America. In the French capital of black transnationalism, and satellites beyond, FBI agents and informers kept tabs on a network of black literary travelers they hoped to link by the vulnerabilities of statelessness alone. Thus, this book's fourth thesis: The FBI helped to define the twentieth-century Black Atlantic, both blocking and forcing its flows.

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