on taking long walks on the "A" train

Here are excerpts from two students reading from their spoken word presentations after class this week. Elizabeth recast Duke Ellington's "Take the A Train" and Apryl recast Jill Scott's "A Long Walk." The ways in which both students  made their presentations personal and historical was quite impressive. 

Notably, Apryl used the University of Alabama as a political landscape to take a long walk. Among places she rhetorically visited was the "schoolhouse" door on Foster auditorium where Governor George Wallace stood in 1963 in an attempt to delay the segregation of the university.

Elizabeth was more drawn  to the difficulties of urban living as seen in the  dilapidated buildings often inhabited by African Americans in cities, and to the specific challenges that black girls and women face in a modern world anywhere. She used the "A" train -  which, as the song tells us,  goes to Harlem - as a metaphor for a new kind of journey that African American women and girls could take that would allow them to harness their stronger selves anywhere. As an aside, I was very proud to sit this week beside Elizabeth on a Black Feminism panel, which was sponsored by the Women's Resources Center here at the university. 

Jake and Shayla, two more students, also presented. Jake did a wonderful job recasting the 1950s rhythm and blues song "Kansas City" and Shayla recast Janelle Monae's recent hit "Q.U.E.E.N."

Tera Hunter's book on black female labor.

On another note, the class took up the issue of mobility again as it relates to life in and outside the urban space by discussing the upheaval that white and black Americans experienced during the Civil War as relayed in Yael Sternhell's Routes of War: The World of Movement in the Confederate South. We juxtaposed that book against an excerpt from Dolen Perkins-Valdez' Wench  that unveils the first time a group of four enslaved women enter the city of Dayton without the oversight of their white masters. Both readings put the idea of "transitions" squarely before us, something we will want to continue thinking about when we turn to an excerpt from Tera Hunter's To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors after the Civil War and Hazel Carby's look at how black women's bodies were under surveillance in urban spaces at the turn of the century. As we read, we will want to keep in mind how time figures into black mobility. We will want to wonder about the things that black bodies could and could not do before and after the Civil War. We should also wonder how gender pushes our thinking on this matter. With Carby in mind, we should also be very attentive to whether or not there is a monolithic black female experience, or whether there are differences, as Wench seems to suggest, in how some black women experience oppression. Finally, we should also be thinking about how geography figures into everything before us. For example, what makes the efforts of black laundry workers in Atlanta extremely significant for the "South"? I look forward to a hearty discussion on these and other issues
next week.

"She made up her mind while standing on the street of Dayton."

Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of Wench.

I returned the students' midterms yesterday and was happy to see how well some of them engaged ideas like "identity" and "resistance" in their short writings (they had a choice between writing a poem or an essay in addition to answering multiple choice questions). The issue of identity certainly figured into our look at the ways in which "blackness" is appropriated via music  as seen in the movie The Commitments. This motion picture concerns a group of Dubliners who form a band that plays hits made famous by African American artists during the 1950s and 1960s. After the movie, we saw the beginnings of a heated discussion on whether we are persuaded that the Irish, as the movie suggests, are the "blacks" of Europe. 

One of the more provocative observations came from a student who commented that Mexicans seem to be the "blacks" of Latin America. That comment and others stated in class or via written reflections that I read later pushed my own thinking about race as a social construction. Moreover, like some of the students who indicated as much via their written reflections, I remain quite interested in how the urban space expands the possibilities of understanding how race appears (and disappears) whenever other issues like ethnicity, poverty and labor are before us. 

To be clear, Dublin is very much a city and while watching the movie yesterday, the grime and poverty we tend to see in America's inner cities, which are heavily-populated by people of African descent, it was hard to not see what message Alan Parker, the filmmaker was trying to send. Whether we are persuaded by his story or not, it was a good discussion that sets us up to return to the idea of race and space next week. We will look at excerpts from Yael Sternhell's study of how southern people - black and white, enslaved and not - were forced to make sense of the world around them simply because they had to move through space amid the upheaval surrounding the Civil War. Their experiences pose unique tensions with an excerpt from Wench, a work of fiction by Dolen Perkins-Valdez. In an excerpt from that novel, we will learn about four enslaved women who traveled to a city away from the direct oversight of their masters. How does the urban space inform their impressions of their oppression? How does the opportunity to simply be mobile make them aware of the possibility of freedom? We will try to think about possible answers to these questions while keeping race and gender squarely before us.

"say it loud. i'm black and i'm proud!"

still image from The Commitments (1991)

I am still grading the students' mid-terms exams while writing new lectures for my US Since 1865 survey so, I am behind on keeping up this blog. I especially wanted to share more of the students' ideas about identity. We will certainly return to this issue this week by completing Lynda Barry's book The Good Times Are Killing Me and watching one of my favorite films of all time, "The Commitments." This 1991 motion picture, which is set in Dublin, presents an Irish band that has an incredible love for African American music - especially tunes from the 1950s and 1960s. At one point,  they declare, "Say it loud. I'm black and I'm proud" a la James Brown. 

I first fell in love with this film by accident. I was still working as a journalist and stumbled upon a promotional poster for this movie in a newspaper library. It was a freebie. I took it home. I loved the many black and white images and decided to look for the film on VHS. 

Years later, I recall watching the film with new eyes as I learned more about how race is socially constructed. Indeed, upon hearing that today some Irish people do not like African immigrants in their country, fearing as did some antebellum Irish in the United States , that they will take away much needed resources, I wondered how I could still love the film. I was reminded of the lyrics in one Sounds of Blackness tune that go, "Everybody wants to sing my blues, but nobody wants to live my blues." I am still working through this inner conflict and lean more toward seeing the complexities in people and being very curious about how to find meaning in it all.

My students and I will take up the issue of identity again by looking again at music. American singer Miley Cyrus' "performance" of "blackness" certainly prompted lively conversation not just in class, but in at least one poem that a student turned in for her mid-term. Yes, in addition to 30 multiple choice questions, the students had a choice of exploring identity, resistance, housing and labor across time via a short essay question or a poem. I was stunned by the creativity seen in those who decided to address these themes via poetry.

I am reminded again of the value in exploring the alternatives to writing essays. Instructors often see students with different skill sets and it is worth it to allow those who "get" the material to find new ways of showing as much. Three colleagues here at Alabama and I recently proposed a panel talk for an upcoming conference on this subject. To be continued....

bringing together key themes

Taleisha's drawing on identity

Still from "Claudine"

still from "Django Unchained"

Yesterday, the students in this class were pushed to think about four key themes addressed so far in this course in preparation for next week's mid-term: identity, resistance, labor and housing. The idea is to get them to think about how these concepts relate to African American life across time.

Inspired by Lynda Barry's work, I began by asking them to write or draw images related to the idea of "identity." Taleisha's drawing, which takes into account how you see yourself and how others see you, is posted above. 

The 1974 movie "Claudine," which presents the story of a mother on welfare, further pushed our thinking. I love that  movie and enjoyed hearing the students laugh. Diahann Carroll should have won an Oscar for it. We also discussed the readings including Barry's picture book on a friendship between a white girl and black girl in the United States some time in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Their experiences in a segregated city were juxtaposed against that of blacks and Germans in antebellum Buffalo as presented by historians James Horton and Hartmut Keil. I told them that although Quentin Tarantino's 2012 "Django Unchained" is not without problems, Tarantino nailed it when he allowed us to see an enslaved black woman speaking German before the  Civil War. As Horton and Keil reveal, blacks and Germans often lived beside each other peacefully during the antebellum period. There are reasons why their interactions were quite different from those African Americans had with other Europeans, namely the Irish. Among the reasons is how Irish immigrants often arrived in the States poor unlike the Germans who were fleeing a failed revolution.

I look forward to seeing how the students find meaning in all of these ideas when they take the midterm next week. Stay tuned for more of their initial thoughts on identity.

"...I can remember when the houses White, White, White, Japanese, White, White...."

Self portrait of artist Lynda Barry

The snow has melted. While it was here, we had lots of time to catch up on our reading since the University was closed for two days. I really look forward to seeing how the students in this class thought through the Robin Kelley Race Rebels reading (by the way, Kelley will be on our campus 7 pm Thursday in Gorgas Library 205 in conjunction with an exhibit on the Scottsboro boys). 

Kelley draws our attention to  black working class labor issues in postwar Los Angeles. We will pivot from him to Lynda Barry's wonderful picture book The Good Times Are Killing Me, which is also set after World War II in an unnamed city (feels like it is also the West Coast). As mentioned earlier in this blog, one of my favorite parts of the book finds Edna Arkins, a young pre-adolescent girl and protagonist, saying: "...I can remember when the houses White, White, White, Japanese, White, White....Then it seemed like just about everybody kept moving out until now our street is Chinese, Negro, Negro, White, Japanese, Filipino and about the same but in different orders for down the whole street and across the alley." I fell in the love with this book after buying it in a university bookstore when I was an undergrad at the University of Miami many years ago. 

I selected Barry's book for this coming week because it allows us to think about another issue that has been important to African Americans across time: housing. As I told the students, for many years whites and blacks lived beside each other and sometimes in a peaceful manner as James Horton and Hartmut Keil's look at pre-Civil War Buffalo, New York, our second reading for this coming week, demonstrates. 

19th century Buffalo, Perry-Casteneda Map Collection

What permitted blacks and German Americans in the particular to live peacefully beside each other before the Civil War? What makes it more difficult for blacks and whites to sometimes live together by the time we get to the late 1960s-early 1970s world Barry paints in her book? Moreover, how can we tie housing issues together with ones concerning labor, resistance and identity, the three themes in earlier readings? 

No matter how we do it, we will want to do it fearlessly as our midterm exam is Feb. 12. One of the five questions the students may pick from for their short essay on this first exam allows them to write a poem. Seeing as Barry as allows her students to draw in class, I think she would approve. Check it out.

of water and resistance via dance, talk and song

Alvin Ailey's "Wade in the Water" dance from Revelations.

Last week, the students looked at the concept of  black resistance while studying Alvin Ailey’s choreography in “Wade in the Water,” a piece from Revelation,  a famous 1960 performance. They also read excerpts from David Celcelski’s study of black maritime workers in antebellum America. To help them think deeply about resistance across time, I showed them the movements of dancers behind Marvin Gaye performances, circa 1960s, and “Soul Train” episodes from the early 1970s. The idea was to help them see how the Ailey movements presaged the way American vernacular dance reflected the resistance seen in Americans during the Civil Rights and Black Power (and, I might add now,  counterculture) movements. More critically, I wanted them to see how this foreshadowing happened more than a century after those maritime workers expressed independence by moving through space. Whether they wrote in, before or after class, several students were able to pick up on the many things I hoped they would. 

One of our take-aways was understanding how the African American men, free or enslaved, who navigated the waters off the coast of Wilmington, often resisted the oppression they faced as people of color simply because they were mobile. They could thus build traditions – such as singing - and maneuver strategically (sometimes with poor results if the many failed rebellions by blacks who lived in coastal areas are considered ) away from the direct oversight of whites. Decades earlier, some had even been used by the British government to fight white settlers before the American Revolution. As Anne Marie, one student wrote, “The black maritime seamen began to see in a silver lining in the opportunities that could present themselves if they would only rise up and claim them.”

Seahawks' Richard Sherman was criticized for postgame comments.

Marcia said while watching the Ailey piece, which also had a water motif, she did not immediately make the connection that it could be seen as a performance about how “blacks were able to rebel in their own way to the confinements of slavery.” But she finally did, saying, “Flashforward to the 1960s and the dance company…in their own way [was] also rebelling the confinements of being black in America through dance.”  Added Trakayla, African Americans were “almost silently telling whites that they will not be held down.” However, Elizabeth still noticed that the movements were “restricted [and] limited,” and thus, uncover the ways in which oppression continued. Conversely, Alex was able to still see a “celebration” in the Ailey dancers and make connections between black urban dwellers of the past who often “enjoyed living in…cities” because the freedom such a life seemed to offer differed from that endured in the plantation setting. Brandy, another student, noticed how the Ailey dancers seemed to “release their pain…via chest convulsions.”

As a means of helping the students to also keep the “city” in view (especially because Cecelski does something similar when he directs attention away from the black plantation life to black sealife), I also asked the class to pay close attention to how urban life emerges in the United States during the nineteenth century by reading an excerpt from Thomas Bender’s Toward an Urban Vision: Ideas and Institutions in Nineteenth Century America. They discovered that early American leaders like Thomas Jefferson never understood the degree to which American life would be defined by the urban space rather than the open land. Interestingly, because African Americans have long been tied to the urban space, they were always an integral part of this space. Wrote Marcia, “many port cities had large populations of black people,” something that whites feared. As Brandy also relayed, these men were sometimes able to be political by taking messages to blacks in distant places.

Speaking of Thomas Jefferson, Jake, another student, shared his troubles with the man. More critically, Jack was able to draw connections to the scuttlebutt over the recent 18-second post-NFC championship tirade by Seattle Seahawks player Richard Sherman. Jake later emailed me to say that Sherman, who grew up in the tough Compton section of Los Angeles and went on to Stanford University, was under a national microscope for his “trash-talking” because he was African American. Pre-Civil War maritime workers suffered similarly, Jake wrote. Though the urban space is hugely important because it allowed black seaman to work independently, they, too, were constantly being monitored by others.

And speaking of Compton, this week we turn to the idea of black labor by reading an excerpt from historian Robin Kelley’s Race Rebels: Culture, Politics and the Black Working Class. Kelley is among the many scholars since W.E.B. DuBois’ 1935 Black Reconstruction who are interested in recounting labor stories from “below,” which is to say from people who are often oppressed, black and white ones. In the excerpt before us, we will want to continue exploring how the city space figures into the post-World War II social problems faced by black Los Angelenos and moreover, how those problems figure into the emergence of gangsta rap. Though this reading may feel like quite a  jump from our recent look at black seaman, this approach reflects my wish to proceed with themes rather than chronologically as I did when I taught this class last spring. The theme this week is labor, something that certainly figured into last week’s look at resistance. The students will want to find meaning in these two concepts – resistance and labor - while keeping urban life and black identity front and center.

Interestingly, all four themes that will be addressed by the time we finish this week – urban, identity, resistance and labor – figure prominently into the 1974 movie “Claudine,” which we will watch this Wednesday.

do we need the city to understand the complexities of black life?

Peter Sellers (Chance, the gardener) and Ruth Attaway (Louise, the maid)

This Wednesday, the students will continue exploring “black” urban culture by reading two writings. The first, written by Thomas Bender, reveals the thoughts that some early American leaders had about the open land. The second, written by David S. Cecelski, looks at the critical role that African Americans played in “maritime,” or sea life, before the Civil War. The students will also watch “Wade in the Water,” a portion of a famous dance by African American choreographer Alvin Ailey. 

One of the things at stake in this class meeting is helping the students to see how the black body, which has often been associated with cities, could be found in other spaces. But the biggest issue is how no matter where the black body is found, we see it resisting something.  Among the questions before us: “How do African Americans fit into the vision of rural life that Thomas Jefferson and George Washington preferred?,”   “How did port cities like Wilmington, NC, permit African Americans – free or enslaved – to exercise freedom and independence?”  and finally, “What kinds of emotions do Alvin Ailey capture about black life before the Civil War in ‘Wade in the Water’?”

Finding answers to such questions should prompt us to return to what we have discussed in our first two meetings. In those meetings, we thought about the iconic Miss Anne of 1930s Harlem, Miley Cyrus and slam poetry performances  and the ways in which a gardener learns about the world around him via television.  All of these things made us think about black identity, or how we come to have agreements about what we think blackness is and how the city sometimes helps us find answers. 

Before the students departed last week, they were all given opportunities to turn in short replies to questions that were designed to stimulate discussion and thinking. I enjoyed reading what was turned in as I got a better sense of how some of them are digesting the material. If any of the others have more thoughts, they were welcomed to share them via email before we meet again. It is always good to see them thinking things through. Sometimes I have to step back from what I have read or watched before I really understand my position on it. I want to now share a few ideas that some of the students had after seeing excerpts from the 1979 movie “Being There,” which introduced us to the gardener in question, and after reading the Susan B.A. Somers-Willet article on slam poetry.

Anne Marie thought that Chance, the gardener, could understand “black life without the city.”  Though she did not say as much, I wonder if she believes this after seeing his interactions with Louise, the black maid who gave him his meals, or because of the images he saw of African Americans on television (something that Trakayla, another student, understood). Worth noting, Anne Marie was more explicit about Chance’s ability to understand black rural life. She said he could do as much if he saw pre-Civil War depictions of African Americans on television.

Marcia, another student, said while Chance was introduced to black life on television, he only understood its “complexities” once he got out into the city. Marcia was also reflective about the Somers-Willet article. She rightly saw that Somers-Willet was as interested in showing how African Americans share their identity as a marginalized group via slam poetry as she was in showing how such poetry “challenge[s]” its audiences who are often white middle class people (Brandy, yet another student, also understood this). I would have loved to hear Marcia and the rest of the class pull apart the idea of “challenge” and whiteness more. Why should white audiences be challenged when they hear the many topics about race discussed via slam poetry? This question is pertinent as we read Bender's article, which addresses something specific - maybe something beyond land - that early and antebellum American whites cherished.

As we go forward, we should keep thinking about all of these difficult issues and always keep the city, or urban life, black “identity” and now black “resistance” in view.