connections between "AlabamaNorth" and Brazil

Page from Kimberley Phillips' study on black urban Cleveland.

As I prepped for this coming Monday's class, I was struck by Kimberley Phillips' thoughts about an image appearing in her study on African Americans in Cleveland. In her book, which is this Monday's reading, Phillips captures how the image tells a story about the migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North during the first half of the twentieth century. She was especially drawn to the African American man who surfaces as a sort of pedestal in this image, and thus this story (as if the accomplishment of the militant African American working class she describes was entirely dependent on masculine strength). This drawing, which is housed at Cleveland's Western Reserve Historical Society, made me think of the Afro-Brazilian civil rights posters recently critiqued by the students in this class for an April 23 exhibit at the University of Alabama. Like the Afro-Brazilian posters, the image here shores up the gains to be had when an oppressed group unites to create new change. But, unlike the Afro-Brazilian posters, this sketch does not draw attention to the degree to which African American women helped create change in Cleveland (see one example of the way women are included in the Afro Brazilian story in the image to the right of this blog). The students will learn more about the gender issue as it relates to black struggle and other things including the formation of the Future Outlook League, an organization that was active in Cleveland between the years 1935 and 1952. Some of its members were migrants were from Birmingham and Bessemer, Alabama. Hence, Cleveland was known then as "Alabama North." One  aside: as Phillips tells us, little is known about the above sketch. The same is true of the Brazilians posters in question, which were found in the attic of a West Virginia home (of all places). Brazilian scholar Amilcar Pereira will present a lecture on these posters prior to April 23's exhibit. Please stay tuned for more details.

the "impersonal and mechanical city"

Gilbert Osofsky's 1962 study of Harlem.

Since W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1899 study  “Philadelphia Negro,” an abundance of scholarship has been produced on the subject of  African Americans in cities.Unlike in previous weeks when  students taking this course typically learned via case studies by various scholars, last week they were introduced to three issues on which historians, sociologists and political scientists often focus when studying black urban life: race, ghettos and class. In doing so, the students discovered now-classic writings. Tiffany, one member of this class, was especially drawn to Richard Wright’s introductory essay in St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton’s classic 1945 ground-breaking study of the Chicago, the “Black Metropolis.” Wright, as she wrote, was well aware of the sociological issues affecting people of African descent in the "impersonal and mechanical city." By the 1960s, Gilbert Osofsky looked  at Harlem and observed a “tragic sameness” about black urban life. Osofsky's position was critiqued by later researchers who were more attentive to the ruptures and richness of black life in urban spaces. Their ideas and others, among them, William Julius Wilson's "underclass" arguments, or his generally greater concentration on class and not race,  were juxtaposed against clips from Spike Lee’s “Jungle Fever.” Most students saw the ways in which debates about race, ghetto and class figured into this 1991 American drama concerning Flipper (Wesley Snipes), a successful African American architect who commits adultery with Angie (Annabella Sciorra), his white administrative assistant. Their moments of indiscretion are placed alongside Flipper's life in Harlem, and Angie's  life in a white Italian Brooklyn community. Thinking of Osofsky's work, Lauria, one student, was struck by how white immigrants “participated in [racism] in [order to] ...become more ‘Americanized.'" Raven, another student, thought about how race figured into a white cop’s thoughtless behavior toward Flipper after responding to a 911 call about an "Afro"-American assaulting a white woman (Flipper and Angie were actually just play-fighting). Shariyah also thought about race when she observed that for many whites,  “a black man must be committing a crime when hanging [with] or communicating with [a] white woman.” Christin lamented how no matter their individual accomplishments, “black men were viewed [negatively] by society as a whole.” Also thinking of Osofsky, Roosevelt observed the more difficult aspects of black “ghetto” life in scenes of the Taj Majal, a crack den frequented by Gator (Samuel L. Jackson), Flipper’s older brother. Interestingly, after watching this film, Alexis,  recalling a not often evoked stance by Osofsky, observed how ghettoes were “not just a place filled with trouble, but a community.”

race, ghetto and underclass talk

Gordon Parks' photography has often captured African American life in cites

The transformation of rural African Americans into urban people is a twentieth century event. By World War II, more blacks lived in cities than in the countryside.  As they settled in, African Americans were affected by many things including deindustrialization, high unemployment and residential segregation.  Scholars, among them, W.E.B. Du Bois, Charles S. Johnson, E. Franklin Frazier, St. Clair Drake,  Horace R. Cayton. Gilbert Osofsky and Williams Julius Wilson, have contributed to the growth of black urban studies as a scholarly field. After initially focusing on northern cities like Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, researchers have in recent decades concentrated on urban communities across the nation. This week, the students taking this class will think about how African American life in cities has been shaped by critical attention to race, ghettoes and what has been called the “underclass.”

"from lynchings in Texas to room service in Massachusetts"

Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Nate Parker, and Denzel Whitaker star in The Great Debaters.

The students learned this week about the experiences of African Americans during the postbellum period. They did so partly by juxtaposing an excerpt from Tera Hunter's study of African American female laborers in Atlanta and an excerpt from Martha Sandweiss' study on the experiences of Georgia-born Ada Copeland  faced as a  domestic worker in New York (and as the "black" wife of the white geologist Clarence King who passes as an African American) against the 2007 motion picture The Great Debaters. Like the readings, the film uncovers the ongoing oppressed conditions for African Americans amid racial progress. Set in the 1930s, the film depicts the trials and triumphs experienced by four members of an award-winning debate team from a Texas-based African American college  who eventually travel by train to debate their white Harvard opponents. Tiffany observed how the movie "perfectly illustrated the 'heightened...awareness of race" in Jim Crow America, which Sandweiss addresses in her examination of the different worlds Copeland and her white husband inhabited in New York. As Tiffany wrote, while maneuvering between "lynchings in Texas to room service in Massachusetts, the 'Great Debaters'  felt a "sense of wonder and astonishment...at being far from the crushing racial order of the South" (the latter part of her sentence uncovers her use of a quote from African American novelist Paul Laurence Dunbar). Aaron focused more on the changes in black-white relations - as made evident in the white Harvard student who offered to carry their luggage - the debaters saw while visiting Massachusetts. Lauria noted how blacks were "still see as inferiors" though "Harvard gave [the debaters] a chance to be ...seen as students with great minds." Alexis noted how the Great Debaters did not let "fear...stand" in their way. They forced their opponents to see how ideas concerning "morality and justice" were no longer suitable only for others in distant places, but for them, too. In this way, they were not unlike the  African American domestic workers who formed kinship networks in their community and churches after migrating South for the North to improve their lives.  Kalynn honed in on the debaters' grappling over the "basic rights of human[s]," something she also observed in the Atlanta female washerwomen. But not all was not well in Jim Crow America as made evident in obviously educated Wilson, the African American man who worked as a butler at Harvard even though he could translate Latin. Speaking to this, Roosevelt wrote, in the North, "poor conditions" remained. Roosevelt also detected, too, the ways in which women working as domestic workers faced special challenges, among them, sexual oppression while working in the homes of white Americans. Christin saw how the debaters "faced...[the] stubborn mindsets of people not willing...to change" including a police officer who asked them if they were "supposed to be" in the Harvard hall where their debate would take place. Raven maintained, in the end, there has not been as much racial progress as people believe because "blacks were...and still are underestimated" not unlike the African American washerwomen in postbellum Atlanta.

the city as a gendered personal and a work space

This week, we will finally discuss African American city life in the years following the Civil War. The two texts before us are Tera Hunter's study on African American women's personal and work lives in postbellum Atlanta and Martha Sandweiss' investigation of a hidden interracial romance in New York during the same period. In both books, the students will  pay close attention to gender. They will be asked to look for how the labor experiences of African American women workers differ from others. They will also think deeply about the ways in which the city became the pulse of American life as the century closed and the challenges/triumphs such a dynamic posed for people of African descent, women in particular. Among other things, they will ponder how and why residential patterns changed after the war.

on race and place

 Marpessa Dawn played Eurydice in "Black Orpheus."

Aline Helg's study on race in Colombia

In last week’s readings, we explored how the “meanings of blackness” for people of African descent can change depending on several factors including class and geography. As Aline Helg demonstrates in her study of the Caribbean rim of Colombia, many people of color identified themselves based on region rather than skin color even though they encountered some of the same stereotypes and oppression that people of African descent have generally experienced across time. The students saw how the latter idea played out in Colombia and Jamaica, but also Brazil. They watched the 1959 film “Black Orpheus,” a French re-telling of the Greek myth, which is set in Rio de Janeiro.  Lauria, one student, observed how dark skinned Brazilians featured in this imagined work seemed to have “worse off living conditions.” Roosevelt, yet another student, took the idea of complexion further by drawing our attention to the experiences of lead character Eurydice, a fair-skinned women of color (His observation struck me as I would like to see this class better tackle the issue of women and gender. I feel even more strongly about this as I just attended a women’s and gender conference at my home university in Illinois). The departure point for Roosevelt’s observation was his witnessing the horrific ending to Eurydice's life. Noting that Eurydice's experiences fit the "tragic mulatto" trope, which, among other things, incorrectly blames race-mixing - rather than racism - for the troubles endured by biracial people, he said some of the challenges she faced stemmed from her not being “fully black" (i.e. her seemingly beautiful fair skin, an outcome of her being of mixed race, contributed to her fate). Tiffany, another student, brought the idea of skin complexion together with geography and racial politics. Returning to the Helg reading, she thought about the ways in which people of African descent often lacked unity in Colombia because of the "territorial fragmentation" in their country. But Tiffany was still attentive to how people of African descent also separated themselves based on race. She wrote, “People often assume that people of color are automatically unified based on the fact that we have often been identified as [the] ‘other.’ …This idea is both true and false…Whenever something ‘bad’ happens involving a ‘black person,’ some [black] people rush to lament [those] who  make… us look bad. But, …black people [still see difference even amongst themselves when they separate] themselves into categories [like] light-skin, dark skin [and] brown skin.” As we go forward, we will hopefully keep thinking about how race, place and gender intersect in discussions involving cities. We will also think about how certain bodies' association with urban spaces in this course thus far are most often related to labor needs or desires (certainly Eurydice's streetcar driving Orpheus, and the working women in urban Jamaica and Colombia, demonstrate as much). As we continue, we will also see how that narrative changes. Next week's readings take us to the experiences of postbellum washerwomen of color in Atlanta and an interracial couple residing in Gilded Age New York.