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.

coming spring 2014

Gilbert Osofsky's study of the African American presence in Harlem from the late 19th century through the early years of the Great Depression is one of numerous books taking up the issue of black bodies in the urban space. Next spring, students at the University of Alabama will have an opportunity to explore how people of African descent became associated with cities. As mentioned in an earlier blog entry, few people thought twice about the racial identity of the Supremes' 1960s hit Love Child. Talk of starting one's life in a "cold, rundown tenement slum" was enough to make it an easy guess that the child in question was African American. This course will take up the issue of how race came to be a "social construction," which is to say, agreements made about who was "white" or "black" for political reasons before moving on to how ideas about race figure into black bodies in the urban space. However, unlike last semester rather than framing this discussion from the colonial period to the present, we will start with the antebellum period, or years leading to the Civil War and bring it forward to the Obama administration. One reason is because  it proved difficult, at least for this instructor, to cover this topic with a longer sweep. More time seemed warranted for certain eras like the late nineteenth century period that witnessed the rise of Jim Crow, or the postwar years of urban renewal. We'll see how it goes as we try it again. Please join us by taking this course via Gender and Race Studies or the History Department. It is now titled "Black Urban Culture."

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.”