so, how do certain bodies become associated with cities?

Still photo from Julie Dash's "Daughters of the Dust."

So, how do certain bodies become associated with cities? The initial answer (so far in the context of the United States): labor needs. Last week, the students looked at black labor in New York during the colonial era. In the coming week, they will continue exploring this issue by looking, among other places, at Charleston, South Carolina during the antebellum period.  Founded by English settlers from Barbados in the seventeenth century, Charleston had an amazingly large concentration of people of African descent, some free and some enslaved. As Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, the author of the book pictured to the right, tells us, urban slavery in Charles Town, later renamed Charleston was, “first and foremost, about labor.” People of African descent were employed in many professions. Some worked in rice mills and other industries, sometimes beside poor whites. Others had jobs related to sea life. Women of color worked as domestic servants and in a variety of trades. Some women were also the "leading purveyors" of needed food, raising prices and picking customers at will. The experiences of these bondsmen and working class blacks contrasted sharply with those around them including free black Eliza Lee, a pastry chef and co-owner of a hotel. Using a chapter from Myers’ recently published book, an essay from Ronald L. Lewis, and a clip from Julie Dash's 1991 motion picture "Daughters of the Dust," the students will learn more about how “industrial” slavery posed tensions with agricultural slavery. Along the way, they will keep thinking about how focusing  on location, specifically, the city, may deepen what we know about African American life across time.