"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.

so, how do certain bodies become associated with cities?

Still photo from Julie Dash's "Daughters of the Dust."

So, how do certain bodies become associated with cities? The initial answer (so far in the context of the United States): labor needs. Last week, the students looked at black labor in New York during the colonial era. In the coming week, they will continue exploring this issue by looking, among other places, at Charleston, South Carolina during the antebellum period.  Founded by English settlers from Barbados in the seventeenth century, Charleston had an amazingly large concentration of people of African descent, some free and some enslaved. As Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, the author of the book pictured to the right, tells us, urban slavery in Charles Town, later renamed Charleston was, “first and foremost, about labor.” People of African descent were employed in many professions. Some worked in rice mills and other industries, sometimes beside poor whites. Others had jobs related to sea life. Women of color worked as domestic servants and in a variety of trades. Some women were also the "leading purveyors" of needed food, raising prices and picking customers at will. The experiences of these bondsmen and working class blacks contrasted sharply with those around them including free black Eliza Lee, a pastry chef and co-owner of a hotel. Using a chapter from Myers’ recently published book, an essay from Ronald L. Lewis, and a clip from Julie Dash's 1991 motion picture "Daughters of the Dust," the students will learn more about how “industrial” slavery posed tensions with agricultural slavery. Along the way, they will keep thinking about how focusing  on location, specifically, the city, may deepen what we know about African American life across time.

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.

birmingham's children

The four girls killed during a 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, AL.

 Birmingham students participating in a human rights demonstration.

I learned today that lawmakers are planning to consider giving a Congressional Medal of Honor to Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins and Cynthia Wesley, four girls whose tragic deaths in 1963 were among several events that put the city of Birmingham, Alabama, on the map of an international public's imagination. A photo of the girls is presented above. Below it is an unrelated photo demonstrating how Birmingham children were an important part of the era generally known as the Civil Rights Movement. For more about the Congressional Medal honor, see this story.

consummating empire

"Consummation of Empire," one of five panels in a series created in 1836 by Thomas Cole.

Next week, students taking "African Americans in the City" will explore the experiences of people of African descent in early America, namely in New York. Among their readings is an excerpt from Thomas Bender's look at the ways in which everyone from politicians to artists weighed the value of urban life as opposed to rural living. As Bender tells us, when Thomas Jefferson became president, few Americans believed this country's future could be linked to the progress of cities. Landscape artist Thomas Cole pondered such questions. Cole showed in a five-panel series of paintings, including one pictured here, how a landscape could be transformed, not always for the good, by man's "progress." He  later produced a piece revealing his belief that "nature and civilization" could coexist. The students will ponder this issue and others, among them, how slavery and freedom figured into the rise of "civilization" and "empire" in New York.

"...all will be well in the garden."

Still from "Being There,"(Dir. Hal Ashby), a 1979 film, starring Peter Sellers. It traces the experiences of a simple-minded gardener whose impressions of the world are based almost entirely on what he has seen on television. The film, which is set in the 1970s,  is ultimately a commentary on various aspects of contemporary culture.

Here goes. This is the first blog entry for the students taking “African Americans in the City.” Sorta. Since we have not yet done any readings, I am posting “their” first entry, which contains some insightful replies to the following prompt: “When I saw ___________________it made me ____________________________.” These replies were composed in response to clips from  “Being There,” a film about a Chance aka Chauncey Gardner, a simple-minded, Washington D.C.-based, er, uh, gardener, who for the first time is forced to leave the house in which he has lived all of his life. He is a middle-aged white man in a postwar city in which African Americans, especially males, young and old, are not flourishing socially. But Chance/Chauncey approaches them all with seeming ease. He has nothing to fear. The only African American he has ever known is Louise, a maid in the house in which he lived, and she was very nice (“She brought me my meals.”). Beyond her and his now-dead benefactor (the “Old Man”), nearly everything he knows is based on what he has seen on television. I used this comedy, in which Peter Sellers stars, as a way to push the students to think about several things, among them, the degree to which we make assumptions based on what we think we know about so much, African Americans included. The students composed a five-minute written reflection. Here are excerpts from what the students wrote:

1.       “When I saw Chauncey [interact with the African American teenagers]….it made me think a message was being sent.”

2.       “When I saw Louise’s response to Chance [speaking on television as a political authority after meeting the President of the United States] (“It’s a white man’s world!” she said), it made me think [that's] a general statement often repeated.

3.       When I saw Chance walking down the street near the Washington Monument, it made me think of when I rode down that street over the summer. Being in D.C… [makes you] overwhelmed by all [of] the history you’re surrounded by.”

4.       When I saw Chauncey interact with the black doctor, it made me think that he saw some sort of connection…between small and large black males, as if …they inherently know each other.”

5.       When I saw Chance take his first steps outside of the only home he knew, it made me think of the times when stepping out of your comfort zone becomes necessary…He draws from what he learns from T.V. to function in the ‘real world.’ College [,] for me [,] was a similar experience.”

6.       When I saw the way Chauncey interacted with the world…it made me think about the way people assume things…based on their limited experiences – often failing to truly understand.”

7.       When I saw Chauncey[lying] on the table getting an X-ray, it made me think of the movie “I Am Sam”…when Sam had to prepare the birthday party for his daughter. Their facial expressions were the same.”

8.       When I saw “Chauncey Gardner/Chance’s” obsession with the television and gardening, it made me think of my great grandmother’s former neighbor, _______________. Whenever my sister or I would go next door, he would always give us a seed to plant. Whenever we would visit he would take us to water our seed [and] he always assured us that he would take care of our seeds while we were [away]….”

9.       When I saw Chance describe the different seasons, it made me think of how much I dislike the cold, rainy weather we have been getting for the past week.”