"flowers on the distant frontier"

Beyonce reunited with her old cohort on Superbowl Sunday.  Years ago while walking the streets of Stockholm during a research trip, I was so happy to see Destiny's Child "brown" faces on this poster.

This past Monday, a day on which many of us found ourselves exhausted from Super Bowl-watching, I was impressed by the degree to which the students recognized how space, or location, has meaning for everyone, not just African Americans. The class, among other things, discussed the impressions many have of people from Alabama. Beyond that, the students also had a range of responses to “Daughters of the Dust,” the motion picture unveiling the anxieties felt by one family of African descent in 1902 as they prepared to leave their out island home for the “mainland.” In migrating, this family was leaving not only kinfolk, but old traditions. Lauria noted how one worldly relative named “Yellow Mary” demonstrated the ways in which skin complexion has had an impact on the status of people of African descent across time. Lighter-skinned African Americans, according to Lauria, are perceived as having more privileges, an idea that she also gathered from the Amrita Chakrabarti Myers’ reading. Alexis honed in on how Myers’ book and “Daughters” both demonstrate how the city is believed to be a place “where fortunes can be made.” To this point, Raven took note of the idea of migration and its role in how people look for a “new and better life.” Roosevelt saw how the family’s decision to move from their island home posed tensions with the desire of slaves who, too, desired to be “free.”  Tiffany noticed small, but important details in the movie, including “flowers on a distant frontier.” She also recognized the “deep [-] rooted community” depicted in the film, something she also sensed in Myers’ work. Finally, Shanece understood how migrating was not easy. She noted “the girl [who] wanted to stay with the guy she was seeing.” Shanece also grasped how the family was moving from the “periphery” (this idea appeared in a Ronald Lewis essay, the second assigned reading) to the mainland. We will continue learning about how space and place figures into the life of African Americans during the antebellum period next week when we turn to the cities of Cincinnati and Buffalo.

meet the students

Nina Simone's version of "Pirate Jenny" resonated against this weeks' readings.

We finally meet the students taking “African Americans in the City” this semester at the University of Alabama. To see them, click the video up top.  Jesse "NapNat" Childs, a friend from my college days in Chicago, generously created the lovely beats playing underneath this clip. This week, the students read about various attempts to build a European “empire”  on land now known as the United States. Using Leslie Harris’ study of African American labor in colonial New York,  they discovered how the Dutch helped establish slavery  here and elsewhere in the New World, but also how early New Yorkers of African descent, even enslaved ones, initially had some rights. Some even formed alliances with poor whites and Native Americans. But the color of one’s skin was eventually used to determine who was enslaved and who was “free.”  Here are the students' impressions of African American life during the colonial period in one city:

Raven: I did not expect to learn about …[early American] blacks being able to have land, join the military, and have legal rights.

Shariyah: I [now know] …how diverse our race was during the colonial period and how interracial groups met up in pubs.

Kalynn:  It is interesting to [know] that elite whites considered themselves superior to anyone of a lower class, regardless of race.

Roosevelt: When I think of [city life] now, I will think about the poor black[s] and whites that were working in an industrialized economy [long ago]…I want to know more.

Aaron: Leslie Harris… shed light on the common misconception that slavery only took place in the South or countryside. If you ask anyone to think about slavery, they will almost certainly think of a large plot of land with cotton fields and a huge white-[owned] plantation house rather than more industrial…settlements [with] greater population density. It is…important to consider every facet of the “peculiar institution.”

Tiffany: [After this week’s lesson], I will…think about the importance of class and race in the future.

Lauria: I will think about class structure in the future.  I will do so because so much has changed…Blacks were seen as the lowest of the low. [N]ow …people like Beyonce or Denzel Washington..are seen as better than whites like Lindsay Lohan…In the future, maybe we will … see people as [being] all the same;...Middle Eastern[er] s, Blacks, Whites, everyone.

Christin: I knew how whites would come together in the name of race, but [now I know] it was not always the case. Not only did blacks build the [city],  poor whites also [helped].

Alexis: [I learned] about the importance of names during the 16^th century. [It] was primarily for work purposes…Today names are [still] “created,”…but people with [names that seem unique] are stereotyped as [being] inferior.