from memphis to watts...black music and black struggle

Yesterday Taleisha recasted "Da Butt," a 1988 tune from E.U., a Washington DC-based go-go band, as a spoken word presentation. The song, like many songs across time, among them "Dancing in the Streets" and "Chocolate City," mentions the names of several U.S. cities, especially ones in which African Americans increasingly lived during the 20th century. Before her presentation, the students discussed the historiography on black urban life from W.E.B. Dubois' late nineteenth century study on Philadelphia and the Chicago school's look at African American life in Chicago to William Julius Wilson's "underclass" thesis. They generally understood that scholars have across time paid attention to race, ghettoes and class while trying to understand the particular trials and triumphs of African Americans in urban spaces.

Indianola, MS-born B.B. King

After Spring Break, we will look more closely at the postwar era as it relates to black life in the U.S. by reading - of all things - B.B. King's autobiography. This book, which was co-written by David Ritz, unveils how King's move from the Mississippi Delta to nearby Memphis, positioned him to expand his employment opportunities beyond rural work. In this way, he joins many African Americans who did something similar. As true of other blacks, King initially did not experience the promise of America's economic boom on the heels of the Second World War. But he eventually went on to become a famous guitarist and singer. His life's story offers us a chance to think deeply about the work of many scholars who drew various conclusions about black life including ones concerning the role of women and men in the black family.

We will take up these issues and more while also thinking about how the black freedom struggles during the 1940s through the early 1970s manifest musically. Wattstax, a  1973 documentary about the seeming black version of Woodstock, opens the door for that discussion. The movie focuses on a concert that took place in 1972 in the Watts section of Los Angeles.

Connections have been made between the high unemployment rates of African Americans and the race rebellion  that took place in Watts 1965. The concert was organized by Stax Records, a Memphis company known for its production of soul music beginning in the 1960s. Between interviews with many noted figures discussing black life in the America, the film presents performances by several artists including the Staple Singers, Isaac Hayes, Rufus Thomas and the BarKays.

dancing in funky streets...can you dig it

 
Today three more students did their spoken word presentations. Ann Marie recasted Martha and the Vandella's "Dancing in the Street" (She did as much with inspiration from Marvin Gaye's 1971 hit "What's Going On" because Gaye helped pen the Vandella's hit. I didn't know this. I am big fan of the album on which this song appears. As I told the students, it was the first album I listened to from beginning to end with tears in my eyes). Katarina Thompson recasted Wilson Pickett's 1967 hit "Funky Broadway" and  Trakayla recasted Parliament's 1975 hit "Chocolate City" (which is an alternately revolutionary and humorous nod to Washington D.C.) All this as we moved beyond discussing themes often associated with black urban life in America, among them resistance, identity, labor and housing.

We will now turn to how how scholars have historically written about African American life in the urban space. While W.E.B. Dubois certainly christened this subfield of African American history with his late nineteenth century study on the Philadelphia Negro, the students learned that in the opening decades of the twentieth century Chicago was the site to which many scholars often turned  to better understand black life in urban spaces. Stay tuned for excerpts from the students' reflections on what we discussed in class today.  Chicago figured greatly into our conversation.

Meanwhile, I look forward to next week's class and hearing their thoughts on two writings that have helped shaped black urban literature: St. Clair Drake and Horace Clayton's 1945 study Black Metropolis, which is indeed centered on Chicago, and Gilbert Osofsky's 1968 study which presents Harlem as an "enduring ghetto." The class will  do well to prepare by first starting with the introductory pages to a recently published edited collection of essays on black urban life by Joe W. Trotter with Earl Lewis and Tera Hunter.

an empire state....that thing

Cooper's novel unveils complexities of urban space

Kerry Washington stars as Olivia Pope

Today Callie and Dushane presented their spoken word presentations. Dushane recast "Empire State of Mind" by Jay-Z featuring Alicia Keys and Callie recast Lauryn Hill's "Doo Wop (That Thing)." Again, another set of impressive performances. The students are truly understanding the complexities of urban life when race is part of the equation. 

In today's discussion, we also took up the issue of class and gender by looking at black female laundry workers in postbellum Atlanta as presented in a monograph by historian Tera Hunter. We juxtaposed those women's experiences against the migrating working class women of color under surveillance in northern cities during the interwar period as presented by historian Hazel Carby. 

In an effort to help the students see the degree  to which African American women in both narratives had "self-determined" spirits no matter the level of their oppression, I encouraged them to turn to Olivia Pope, a character in a modern day television drama's "Scandal" (I did as much because I earlier saw some of them enthusiastic about this show). A lively conversation ensued, so much so Callie set up a Group Me app and we will all watch tomorrow's episode separately and continue talking about the specific experiences of African American women who, as Carby explains, created a "moral panic" for both whites and the black elite after migrating north. Jake noted how the iconic "Miss Anne," or white women who spent time in Harlem among African American artists and musicians, created panic, too. It will be interesting to see what new things we will learn about such panic and about the urban space via Pope. 

We will  continue discussing such issues next week while turning to an excerpt from J. California Cooper's Some People, Some Other Place, an imagined work unveiling a woman who could easily be one of the women Carby is describing. Eula Too has recently arrived in a Chicago suburban home as a new migrant from the South. She finds an unlikely friend and employer. We will also turn to Reynolds Farley's essay on the urbanization of "the Negro" in the United States as another avenue to continue thinking about how urban life was increasingly defined by the black body. We will also read Allan Spear's essay on how white racism affected residential patterns in 20th century Chicago. Farley and Spear's writings will set the stage for how we, among other things, consider the "tone" of historical scholarship on black urban life and how it came to be that Chicago is often front and center when we look at academic work on African American "urban" experiences.