“Strange What Cosmopolites Music Makes of Us”: Classical Music, the Black Press, and Nora Douglas Holt's Black Feminist Audiotopia

This article examines the music criticism of Nora Douglas Holt, an African American woman who wrote a classical music column for the Chicago Defender (1917–1923) and published a monthly magazine, Music and Poetry (1921–1922). I make two claims regarding the force and impact of Holt's ideas. First, by writing about classical music in the black press, Holt advanced a model of embodied listening that rejected racist attempts to keep African Americans out of the concert hall and embraced a communal approach to knowledge production. Second, Holt was a black feminist intellectual who refuted dominant notions of classical music's putative race- and gender-transcending universalism; instead, she acknowledged the generative possibilities of racial difference in general and blackness in particular. I analyze Holt's intellectual commitments by situating her ideas within the context of early twentieth-century black feminist thought; analyzing the principal themes of her writing in the Chicago Defender and Music and Poetry; and assessing her engagement with a single musical work, Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, op. 36. Ultimately, Holt's criticism offers new insight into how race, gender, and musical activity intersected in the Jim Crow era and invites a more nuanced and capacious understanding of black women's manifold contributions to US musical culture.

O império da supremacia branca e a Frente Negra Brasileira: as representações sobre as relações raciais da América Latina no jornal afro-americano Chicago Defender (1916-1940)

<p>O objetivo deste artigo é demonstrar, a partir da publicação de notícias sobre a Frente Negra Brasileira (1931-1937), a construção de representações sobre as relações raciais no Brasil e na América Latina no jornal afro-americano <em>Chicago Defender</em> entre 1916 e 1940. Por um lado, o periódico negro divulgou entre seus leitores a ideia de fraternidades raciais estabelecidas nas nações latino-americanas, principalmente no Brasil. Por outro, demonstrou como a influência de um imperialismo norte-americano que poderia comprometer as relações sociais na América Latina pela difusão internacional de práticas racistas que haviam marginalizado os negros nos Estados Unidos já afetava a América Central. A ascensão da Frente Negra Brasileira foi considerada pelos jornalistas do <em>Chicago Defender</em> como o sinal do “perigo da influência racista norte-americana” nos países da América do Sul.</p>

The Black Creole Vision of Archibald J. Motley Jr.

This essay explores how Archibald J. Motley Jr. developed into the successful, notably iconoclastic, artist he became. In 1918, Motley announced his aesthetic independence, his embrace of “art for art’s sake,” in a manifesto in the Chicago Defender -- a significant precursor to later debates associated with an artistically-inclined New Negro movement dominated rhetorically by W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke. Unlike such Chicago peers as William Farrow and Charles C. Dawson, Motley pursued his exceptionalist path without artistic, social, or financial support from Chicago's Black elite. Motley also described himself as a black Creole, or "French Negro." This unique ethnic heritage, his racially-exclusive associations within the art world, and his residence in the overwhelmingly white Englewood neighborhood amplified his sense of uniqueness.

Black Women’s Internationalism and the Chicago Defender During the “Golden Age of Haitian Tourism”

Between 1950 and 1952, during a period known as the “golden age of tourism” to Haiti, the Chicago Defender fostered black internationalism in Haiti that revolved around African American women. This form of black internationalism appeared in the Defender as a prizewinning trip to Haiti for winners of a popularity contest. This essay examines how the Defender used the popularity contests to simultaneously increase circulation and further African American economic development and investment goals in Haiti. The Defender used the winners’ trips to create a counter discourse to the challenges that everyday Haitians faced on a daily basis and the political issues that plagued the Haitian government. This narrative helped to facilitate a flow of business and political alliances between African Americans and Haitians.