Demography and Ethos

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Robert Reed
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Racial Consciousness ◽  
The Political ◽  
Deep South ◽  
New Negro ◽  
Black Metropolis ◽  
Head Count ◽  
The City

The political economy of the 1920s were intricately linked to the demographic changes, emerging social structure, level of racial consciousness, cultural and aesthetic expressions, and religious practices and activities of this pivotal period in Chicago's history. This chapter focuses on demographics and the thinking accompanying the expansion of this population. Between 1910 and 1920, the African American population of Chicago increased by 148.5 percent. By 1927, a head count around the city in all three of the major geographical divisions found 196,569 persons of African descent in residence. The demographic growth of the Black Metropolis rested firmly on the continuous in-migration of primarily adults from the South—not only from the plantations of the Deep South and small towns but also cities such as Birmingham, New Orleans, Atlanta, and Mobile. Chicago's new Negro personality also bloomed and grew enormously in terms of an expanded African American worldview, expectations, and accomplishments.

AFTER THE STORM: In the Wake of Katrina

2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-158
Author(s):  
Michael C. Dawson ◽  
Lawrence D. Bobo
Keyword(s):  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Gulf Coast ◽  
The Political ◽  
Large Share ◽  
Loss Of Life ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City

By the time you read this issue of the Du Bois Review, it will be nearly a year after the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina swept the Gulf Coast and roiled the nation. While this issue does not concentrate on the disaster, (the next issue of the DBR will be devoted solely to research on the social, economic, and political ramifications of the Katrina disaster), the editors would be amiss if we did not comment on an event that once again exposed the deadly fault lines of the American racial order. The loss of the lives of nearly 1500 citizens, the many more tens of thousands whose lives were wrecked, and the destruction of a major American city as we know it, all had clear racial overtones as the story unfolded. Indeed, the racial story of the disaster does not end with the tragic loss of life, the disruption of hundred of thousands of lives, nor the physical, social, economic, and political collapse of an American urban jewel. The political map of the city of New Orleans, the state of Louisiana (and probably Texas), and the region is being rewritten as the large Black and overwhelmingly Democratic population of New Orleans was dispersed out of Louisiana, with states such as Texas becoming the perhaps permanent recipients of a large share of the evacuees.

Learning from New Orleans: Will Revising or Relaxing Public Space Ordinances Create a Just Environment for Street Commerce?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renia Ehrenfeucht ◽  
Ana Croegaert
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Public Space ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Urban Residents ◽  
Second Line ◽  
Street Vending ◽  
The City ◽  
Instructive Case

During 2010s, in response to new food truck operators, the city of New Orleans loosened regulations for food truck vending. At the same time the city turned its regulatory eye towards other forms of street vending and introduced a new second line vending ordinance. Using the New Orleans case, we argue that relaxing rather than revising regulations—and subsequently planning for ways to make street vending compatible with other activities—would be more effective and just. The authors participated in and observed 32 second line parades (parades organized and sponsored by African-American historic benevolent societies) during one season to understand how second line vending played out and the potential impacts of the new ordinance. This analysis demonstrates that compliance with the second line ordinance would have restricted vending without resolving identified concerns. New Orleans is an instructive case because the intent was to allow rather than eliminate vending. We argue that increasing compatibility between vending and other street activities makes food and goods available in the spaces were urban residents can most easily access them, and thereby establishes a more effective and just public space.

When They Blew the Levee

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Todd Lawrence ◽  
Elaine J. Lawless
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Emergency Management ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Deep South ◽  
Management Agency ◽  
Levee Breach ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Town ◽  
Flood Diversion

In this ethnography of a destroyed town in southern Missouri’s Bootheel region, authors David Todd Lawrence and Elaine J. Lawless examine two conflicting narratives about the flood of 2011—one promoted by the Corps of Engineers that boasts the success of the levee breach and the flood diversion, and the other gleaned from oral narratives collected from the displaced Pinhook residents, stories that reveal a lack of concern on the part of the government for the destruction of their town. Receiving inadequate warning and no evacuation assistance during the breach, residents lost everything. Many still seek restitution and funding for relocation and reconstruction of their town. The authors’ research traces a long history of discrimination and neglect of the rights of the Pinhook community, beginning with migration from the Deep South to the southern-most counties in Missouri, through purchasing and farming the land, up to the Birds Point levee breach. Their stories relate what it has been like for the former residents of this stable African American town to be displaced dispersed in other small towns, living with relatives and friends while trying to negotiate the bureaucracy surrounding Federal Emergency Management Agency and State Emergency Management Agency assistance. Ultimately, the stories of displaced citizens of Pinhook reveal a strong African American community, whose bonds were developed over time and through shared traditions, bonds that will persist even if the town is never rebuilt.

Free at Last: Post-Katrina New Orleans and the Future of Conspiracy

2010 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 601-611 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALLISON GRAHAM
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Hurricane Katrina ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
First Year ◽  
Deep South ◽  
Guest Workers ◽  
The Us ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The City

In the first year following Hurricane Katrina and the breaking of the New Orleans levees, the New Orleans-based Alliance of Guest Workers for Dignity and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit on behalf of eighty-two workers from South and Central America who were stranded in the city. By 2008, the consequences of the regional reliance on slavecatchers began attracting global attention, most notably in the case of the eighty-nine Indian workers at Signal International's Pasacagoula, Mississippi shipyard. This essay explores the invocation of the American civil rights movement in contemporary transcultural dramas and the fact that another “universal” movement has been marching alongside new protesters, and demonstrates that the Free Trade movement in the US has been not only the cause of many current civil rights struggles, but also the beneficiary of the older struggle's very definition of its “cause.” New laborers in the Deep South – Latin Americans and Asians – find themselves not just homeless, but placeless post-Katrina. Black Americans who were shipped out of the city in 2005 to provide a “cleansed” urban area open to new demographics now find themselves in permanent exile, as placeless as their replacements.

A Family Long Free

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally McKee
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
North America ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Emancipation Proclamation ◽  
History Of ◽  
High Level ◽  
Free African Americans ◽  
The City ◽  
And Training

This chapter argues that no family embodies the anomalous history of New Orleans better than the Dede family. Of all the towns and cities in North America with populations of free African Americans, the chapter goes on to argue, New Orleans was the city most likely to have produced a black man like Edmond Dede—possessed of enough talent, ambition, and training to launch himself up to a high level of accomplishment. Only in New Orleans could African American families trace their family's history back beyond 1864, the year the Emancipation Proclamation took effect. Contrary to later reports that Edmond Dede was the son of West Indian refugees, he in fact belonged instead to a long-established family with roots in North America.

From “These ‘Colored United States,’ VIII—Illinois: Mecca of the Migrant Mob,” The Messenger 5 (December 1923)

2020 ◽  
pp. 254-256
Author(s):  
Charles S. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Current Volume ◽  
Black Intellectual ◽  
Black Metropolis ◽  
Chicago Renaissance ◽  
The City ◽  
Literary Devices

Editors’ Note: In our second literary selection—excerpts from Charles S. Johnson’s 1923 essay “Illinois: Mecca of the Migrant Mob”—the famed sociologist renders a broad-stroke account of consolidation and growth of the Black Metropolis. This essay, like many pieces of historical, sociological, and journalistic writing emanating from Chicago contributed to a literature of fact that was characteristic of early African American literary work in the city. While Johnson’s assertions about the paucity of black intellectual and cultural life are challenged throughout the current volume, equally important to note is the stylistic strategy with which he presents his analysis of “this Colored Chicago—the dream city—city of the dreadful night!” His elegant, high-keyed prose employs metaphor and other literary devices and arrays facts with novelistic selectivity and pacing. In this manner, Johnson’s essay looks ahead to a mutually beneficial interpenetration of fiction and sociological writing that would mark many of the most notable works of the Black Chicago Renaissance....

Sweeping through the City

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Marovich
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Sacred Music ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
The Political ◽  
Baptist Church ◽  
New Members ◽  
African American Churches ◽  
Black Sacred Music ◽  
The City ◽  
American Churches

This chapter examines the contributions of Thomas A. Dorsey and the gospel nexus to the development of gospel music in Chicago during the years 1932–1933. Pilgrim Baptist Church is often cited as the birthplace of gospel music because Dorsey served as its music director. However, it was actually Ebenezer Baptist Church that provided the creative spark that propelled gospel to the forefront of black sacred music. This chapter first discusses the political infighting endured by Ebenezer over two turbulent years before turning to its gospel programs, along with the establishment of the Ebenezer Gospel Chorus and the Pilgrim Gospel Chorus. It then considers the roles played by Dorsey, Theodore R. Frye, and Magnolia Lewis Butts in the advancement of the gospel chorus movement in Chicago; how gospel choruses became a means for African American churches to attract new members and more revenue; and Dorsey's composition of the gospel song “Take My Hand, Precious Lord.” The chapter concludes with a look at the Martin and Frye Quartette, renamed the Roberta Martin Singers.

scholarly journals Study on Function Transformation and Spatial Reconstructuring of Small Towns in China’s South of the Yangtze River From 1840 to 1949: Case on Changzhou

2021 ◽  
Vol 1203 (2) ◽  
pp. 022095
Author(s):  
Dai Haiyan ◽  
Zhang Hong ◽  
Zhao Liang
Keyword(s):  
Urban Form ◽  
Yangtze River ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Transformation Model ◽  
The Political ◽  
Original Material ◽  
The Yangtze River ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The City ◽  
Urban Functions

Abstract Taking Changzhou as a case, this paper studies on the functional transformation and spatial reconstructuring of small towns in the south of the Yangtze River in China from 1840 to 1949. Then, the article analyzes its adaptability and mechanism. During this period, there were three significant transformations of urban functions in Changzhou. The political status of Changzhou declined from the Changzhou Prefecture of the Qing Dynasty to the county of the Republic of China; the transportation function reduced from the regional transportation hub city to the local transportation hub city; and the economic function was transformed from the traditional agricultural city to the light industrial city. Functional transformations have driven the spatial reconstructuring. Urban construction has transformed from urban internal transformation to a composite expansion mode, a ring-layer and axial-type composite model. Finally, a lute-shaped urban form was formed, and the internal facilities of the city were more modern.Although there are some regrets, Changzhou's urban spatial reconstructuring has changed the original material framework of the city. This adapted and promoted the transformation of urban functions during this period. In terms of mechanism, first, this is a passive transformation model. Changzhou mainly promotes urban functions through local private forces and relies on the role of the market. Second, industrialization is the fundamental driving force.In the political and economic context of this period, these changes in function and space manifested self-organizing and progressive characteristics.

Browning the Dark Princess

Brown Beauty ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 193-224
Author(s):  
Laila Haidarali
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Asian Indian ◽  
Harlem Renaissance ◽  
African American Male ◽  
The Political ◽  
Transnational Activism ◽  
New Negro ◽  
Narrative Device ◽  
Female Protagonist ◽  
Indian Princess

Chapter 5 explores how brownness appeared in Harlem Renaissance fiction as an index of growing sentiments around transnational activism. Focusing on W. E. B. DuBois’s novel, Dark Princess: A Romance (1928), this chapter analyzes the novel’s narrative device of brownness with a focus on the representation of an Asian Indian princess as the main female protagonist and love interest of the African American male hero. This chapter also explores DuBois’s intellectualizing on the “race concept”; it highlights the political, social, and legal shifts in understandings of race while considering how these meanings shaped views of New Negro womanhood.

The Time of Jazz

2018 ◽  
pp. 166-183
Author(s):  
Jason Berry
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Lost Cause ◽  
Large White ◽  
Brass Bands ◽  
Hot Climate ◽  
Special Circumstances ◽  
The City ◽  
Catholic Churches ◽  
Jelly Roll

Jazz began as a story of the city in church and parades, a performance narrative countering that of the Lost Cause. A chorus of various instruments with vocal-like warmth, jazz offered moderate, relaxed tempos to which people could dance or march, even in a hot climate. Jazz rose from working class roots to popularity with the elite. Some jazz songs satirized issues in the city. Brass bands flourished in towns near New Orleans, and the bands often played funerals for prominent people and benevolent society members. Influential jazz and ragtime musicians included John Robichaux, Buddy Bolden, Paul Barbain, Kid Ory, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Manuel Perez, Lorenzo Tio, and James Brown Humphrey. A white redemption narrative also grew during this time. A large white-unity event happened in 1889 in the form of the funeral of Jefferson Davis, who died in New Orleans. African American funeral processions faced pushback from whites. In 1903, Pope Pius X banned bands from playing in church except in special circumstances. As Catholic churches fell into line, black Creole musicians from Catholic families played funerals in other churches as the burial tradition spread.

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