"i am somebody ... in detroit"

Diana Ross and the Supremes were a Detroit-based group.

This past Wednesday, Robyn, Brandy and Alex presented their spoken word adaptations of popular songs invoking images of people of color in urban spaces. Robyn recasted Gladys Knight and the Pips' "Mr. Welfare," a song from the 1974 movie Claudine; Brandy recasted Diana Ross and the Supremes' 1967 hit "Love Child" and Alex recasted Stevie Wonder's 1974 hit "Living for the City" (though I had to read his words as he'd lost his voice).

What these songs have in common: they allow us to see some of the trials of black life after the Second World War. This is an issue we will closely study  next week after reading an excerpt from Thomas Sugrue's The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Sugrue essentially argues that the period from the 1940s through the 1960s sets the stage for the many-layered racial crises all-too apparent in today's cities. In saying this, he is pointing to a particular window in which we see how capitalism produces inequality and how African Americans disproportionately figure into such inequality. As Sugrue has written, the joblessness, desolate landscape, and racist housing patterns in Detroit since the war can be found in other Rust Belt cities, or urban spaces from the northeast to the Midwest that were once the industrial "backbone" of this country.

 While reading Sugrue, we will consider some of the candid words offered in the 1973 documentary Wattstax, which we watched this past Wednesday. I was pleased to see the students' response to this historical music festival in the Watts section of Los Angeles. This so-called "black Woodstock" opened the door for us to learn more about why Watts went up in flames in 1965. I was particularly intrigued by how this one movie creates opportunities for conversations about black on black crime, black love, and black pride.

Hip hop performer/actor Ice Cube has sampled B.B. King's music.

On Wednesday, we also discussed the first third of B.B. King's memoir, which provided a chance for us to see how King, an African American man from a rural area, pushes our thinking about black life before the postwar era. King was born in poverty in the Mississippi Delta in the early 20th century. He would eventually relocate to Memphis where he slowly made a name for himself as a dee jay and a musician (By the way, the Wattstax festival was organized by the Memphis-based Stax Records whose roster included the Staple Singers and Isaac Hayes). Though he would go on to make considerable money as a blues musician, King was not unacquainted with racism. While serving a term in the U.S. Army during the Second World War, he saw how German prisoners of war were given better treatment than black American soldiers by white Americans.  King was still able to see that "not all whites" were behind the lynchings of which he was aware in the South. 

That said, speaking of King, Wattstax and Cube, we will also want to remember that black migration during the 20th century was not only to the north, but to the Far West where African Americans did not experience the full promise of postwar wealth - especially in the defense industry. This reality sits uneasily against that portrayed on the late-1960s/early-1970s television series Julia, which finds Diahann Carroll (who starred in Claudine) playing a single widowed mother who works as a nurse in the California aerospace industry.  The show has  across time had a mixed response for a variety of reasons including the belief by some that the show's producers attempted to erase race from Julia's experiences.

Diahann Carroll also stars in the 1974 film Claudine.

As we move on to the second third of King's book, it is worth it for us to think about this as we consider the "underclass" thesis we earlier discussed. Another challenge before us: revisiting our interest in how the postwar growth and movement of the black upper and middle class seems to have resulted in a black  underclass. Can we observe King's life against the picture that Sugrue offers? Is King part of this postwar urban crisis narrative that Sugrue describes? How does he circumvent or find himself in this story of racial urban oppression? Certainly his music resonates with many artists who have focused on black urban life, among them Ice Cube who sampled King's  "Chains and Things" for his rap song "Bird in Hand." I hope my mention of Cube's sample on Wednesday helped the students reflect more on our earlier attention to Robin Kelley's Race Rebels: Culture, Politics and the Black Working Class. King said he turned to his guitar to cope with pain. Some hip hop performers appear to have done something similar.

That said, how does the narrative of  postwar urban life change (or stay the same) with the specific experiences of black women front and center as seen in Julia, scenes from Wattstax, and various songs and readings in mind -  high among the latter, the Daniel Monynihan 1965 report on the black family via the excerpt from the Joe Trotter, Earl Lewis and Tera Hunter edited collection?

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.