different meanings of "blackness"

Copies of the posters to be used in
an  upcoming art exhibition.

While working on their weekly readings concerning African American life in cities, the students in this course knew they would soon be analyzing posters for an upcoming art exhibition. The posters tell a story about the shared struggles of Afro Brazilians and African Americans. The exhibition along with a Brown Bag discussion and lecture by Brazilian researchers Amilcar Periera will be held at the University of Alabama on April 23. University of Alabama Assistant History Professor Teresa Cribelli is the lead organizer. One of her classes is also analyzing a select group of posters. Together, both classes will produce two separate curatorial statements, reflecting impressions of posters. University of Alabama Assistant Professor of Art History Lucy Curzon has provided insight on getting the students to see how art images can "speak." As the photo here demonstrates, the themes that "spoke" to the students enrolled in "African Americans in the City" this semester are resistance, education, community, black consciousness and oppression. Next week, as they continue working on this project, the class will use Ula Taylor's study on Jamaican-born Amy Jacques Garvey, wife of Pan Africanist Marcus Garvey, and Aline Helg's exploration of Afro-Colombians, to explore how "blackness" has different meanings in and outside the United States. How those different meanings still permit people of African descent to share particular experiences and impressions will drive this lesson.

Afro Brazilian and African American struggle poster exhibition

This blog ends the year 2012 with an announcement and an opportunity. Students taking “African Americans in the City” next spring at the University of Alabama will have a chance to work on a project centered around a group of posters found in Charles Town, West Virginia, which unveil the shared struggles of African Americans during the era generally known as the Civil Rights movement. Brazilian researcher Amilcar Pereira and UA's History professor Teresa Cribelli will coordinate. Using information learned in the course, the class will collectively write a curatorial statement. The project will culminate in an exhibition to be held April 28 at the University. Among the tasks will be exploring how “black” means one thing in the United States, but often something entirely else in the Caribbean and Latin America. For example, C.L.R. James' study of the Haitian revolution uncovers how elite people of mixed race were pitted against African slaves during the late eighteenth century in that country. Ula Taylor's exploration of the life of Amy Jacques Garvey, wife of the famous political leader, Marcus Garvey, learned upon her entry into Harlem in 1917 that meanings about "black" differed from those in her native Jamaica where people were generally known as "black," "brown" and "white." In her investigation of  how “blacks”became invisible in Colombia, Aline Helg reveals how the costenos, or people of color on la Costa or the Atlantic coast of Colombia, shied away from racially distinguishing themselves even though anthropologists have noted racial stereotyping of this group by others. Interestingly, Helg discovered that the lack of transportation and communication between the frontier, cities and towns compelled people, including the costenos, to focus more on their immediate environment, and not the “country” as a whole for identity purposes. Her findings are striking given that Colombia at the time of her 2004 study had the largest population of people of African descent in the “Western” world outside of the United States and Brazil. What allows some countries to create racial ideologies and prohibits others from fully doing the same? How do people of color in different countries still manage to come together to address their shared oppression? These are among the questions this course will try to answer. From time to time, students will write future blog entries here. Again, happy holidays and all best in the new year!