Pub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1007/s12111-021-09551-5
J. Jeffries, J. McCorriston
{"title":"Straight Talk: Two Academics—One White, One African American, Discuss Publicly What Many Only Talk About Privately","authors":"J. Jeffries, J. McCorriston","doi":"10.1007/s12111-021-09551-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-021-09551-5","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42334,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African American Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":"494 - 506"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48120162","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-25DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190280024-0100
African Americans in Cincinnati have played a vital role in the history of the “Queen City.” Struggles for racial equality, social justice, and economic opportunities have taken place in the city’s streets, homes, churches, schools, governments, and workplaces, and these efforts been woven into every fabric of Cincinnati’s rich historical tapestry. However, until recently, the role of African Americans in the region’s history remained largely neglected by most scholars and writers. Without question, African Americans in Cincinnati have played a vital role in the history of the Queen City.” Their struggles for racial equality, social justice, and economic opportunities have taken place and continue to take place in the city’s streets, homes, churches, schools, governments and workplaces. The trials and tribulations started a few years after Ohio became a state in 1802 with the enactment of the Black Laws (Codes) and the subsequent decades of urban violence, open discrimination, and legal segregation, continued into well into the 1950s. However, during these decades, despite the oppressive social climate, African American Cincinnatians made great strides in the fields of education, politics, and business. But the struggles continue today in areas such as police and community relations, access to quality public education, and urban renewal (gentrification).
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Pub Date : 2021-08-23DOI: 10.1007/s12111-021-09550-6
C. Vrtis
{"title":"Proletarian Plays for a Proletarian Audience: Langston Hughes and Harvest","authors":"C. Vrtis","doi":"10.1007/s12111-021-09550-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-021-09550-6","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42334,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African American Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":"475 - 493"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s12111-021-09550-6","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49504464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-31DOI: 10.1007/s12111-021-09548-0
Wanda V. Parham-Payne
{"title":"Hollywood’s Social Construction of Innocence: Entertainment Media’s Deviant Portrayal of Black Children","authors":"Wanda V. Parham-Payne","doi":"10.1007/s12111-021-09548-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-021-09548-0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42334,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African American Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":"460 - 474"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s12111-021-09548-0","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45890492","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-29DOI: 10.1007/s12111-021-09547-1
M. P. Dawkins, J. H. Braddock II, Felecia Theune, Shelby Gilbert
{"title":"The Status of Black Studies at Public Institutions After the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Academic Scandal","authors":"M. P. Dawkins, J. H. Braddock II, Felecia Theune, Shelby Gilbert","doi":"10.1007/s12111-021-09547-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-021-09547-1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42334,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African American Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":"441 - 459"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1007/s12111-021-09547-1","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45984326","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-28DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190280024-0097
J. Street
Huey Percy Newton (b. 1942–d. 1989) is a singular figure in African American history. Born in Monroe, Louisiana to Armelia Johnson and Walter Newton, he joined the Great Migration as a child when his family relocated to Oakland, California. He graduated from Oakland Technical High School in 1959, but forever claimed that school failed him, notably in the fact that he graduated without learning to read. Alongside self-directed learning, he then studied at Merritt College in Oakland, one of the city’s hotbeds of political discussion and activism. After joining, and becoming disillusioned by, a sequence of campus organizations, in October 1966 he formed the Black Panther Party (BPP) with his friend and fellow student Bobby Seale, who credits Newton as the principal architect of the BPP’s political philosophy and the driving force behind its early activism. The BPP initially focused on protesting police brutality in Oakland, most importantly through a sequence of patrols of police officers, which involved armed Panthers observing police activities in Oakland, informing local citizens of their legal rights during any arrest procedure and ensuring that the police conducted their duties lawfully and respectfully; and the May 1967 protest at the California State Capitol, one of the central events of the 1960s (although Newton was absent from the latter due to probation restrictions). On 28 October 1967 he was charged with the murder of Oakland police officer John Frey. The subsequent trial transformed the BPP and Newton into international phenomena. Despite a fervent “Free Huey” campaign and a bravura defense from his attorney, Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter. He served two years in prison, being released after his appeal revealed that the presiding judge of his original trial twice incorrectly instructed the jury and allowed disputed evidence to be presented to the jury. Two further retrials led to deadlocked juries. Returning in August 1970 to a transformed BPP, Newton struggled to cope with the fame and expectations placed upon him. Just as important was an extensive FBI campaign of disinformation, surveillance, infiltration, and occasional violence. Newton’s long-term use of cocaine did little to help. In 1974 he fled the United States for Cuba, fearing prosecution for the murder of a teenager, Kathleen Smith. He returned in 1977 to face the charges, which were eventually dropped. Following the collapse of the BPP amid accusations of financial impropriety, Newton essentially disappeared from public life. He was shot and killed in West Oakland by Tyrone Robinson, a local gang member, following an altercation over a drug deal.
{"title":"Huey P. Newton","authors":"J. Street","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780190280024-0097","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780190280024-0097","url":null,"abstract":"Huey Percy Newton (b. 1942–d. 1989) is a singular figure in African American history. Born in Monroe, Louisiana to Armelia Johnson and Walter Newton, he joined the Great Migration as a child when his family relocated to Oakland, California. He graduated from Oakland Technical High School in 1959, but forever claimed that school failed him, notably in the fact that he graduated without learning to read. Alongside self-directed learning, he then studied at Merritt College in Oakland, one of the city’s hotbeds of political discussion and activism. After joining, and becoming disillusioned by, a sequence of campus organizations, in October 1966 he formed the Black Panther Party (BPP) with his friend and fellow student Bobby Seale, who credits Newton as the principal architect of the BPP’s political philosophy and the driving force behind its early activism. The BPP initially focused on protesting police brutality in Oakland, most importantly through a sequence of patrols of police officers, which involved armed Panthers observing police activities in Oakland, informing local citizens of their legal rights during any arrest procedure and ensuring that the police conducted their duties lawfully and respectfully; and the May 1967 protest at the California State Capitol, one of the central events of the 1960s (although Newton was absent from the latter due to probation restrictions). On 28 October 1967 he was charged with the murder of Oakland police officer John Frey. The subsequent trial transformed the BPP and Newton into international phenomena. Despite a fervent “Free Huey” campaign and a bravura defense from his attorney, Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter. He served two years in prison, being released after his appeal revealed that the presiding judge of his original trial twice incorrectly instructed the jury and allowed disputed evidence to be presented to the jury. Two further retrials led to deadlocked juries. Returning in August 1970 to a transformed BPP, Newton struggled to cope with the fame and expectations placed upon him. Just as important was an extensive FBI campaign of disinformation, surveillance, infiltration, and occasional violence. Newton’s long-term use of cocaine did little to help. In 1974 he fled the United States for Cuba, fearing prosecution for the murder of a teenager, Kathleen Smith. He returned in 1977 to face the charges, which were eventually dropped. Following the collapse of the BPP amid accusations of financial impropriety, Newton essentially disappeared from public life. He was shot and killed in West Oakland by Tyrone Robinson, a local gang member, following an altercation over a drug deal.","PeriodicalId":42334,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African American Studies","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81209914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-28DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190280024-0098
Many intellectuals describe Paul Robeson as one of the nation’s greatest musicians, scholars, actors, athletes, and activists of the 20th century. Born on 9 April 1898, in Princeton, New Jersey, Robeson was the youngest of five children born to William Drew Robeson, a runway enslaved African American who went on to graduate from Lincoln University, a historical black college located in Pennsylvania, and Maria Louisa Bustill, a biracial Quaker who was also from Pennsylvania and came from a family of abolitionists. Without question, Robeson’s fame as an athlete on the football field, on the theater stage, in the concert hall, in films, as an activist, and as a leader for social change and justice has been documented in a variety of ways. His being blacklisted and the seizure of his passport by the US government for his anti-colonialism stance and articulation for certain forms of socialism during the 1940s and 1950s has also received much attention from scholars. But most folks do not know about his humble beginnings. For instance, in 1910 the Robeson family moved to Somerville, New Jersey, a relatively large town located between Westfield and Princeton, New Jersey. This is where Paul’s father, Reverend William Drew Robeson, served as pastor of the St. Thomas AME Zion Church until his untimely death in 1918. As a youngster, Paul was a very bright student who attended a local all-Black elementary school, where he graduated at the head of the class. Upon his graduation, his father, although very proud of him, seemed to not show any great enthusiasm. Many years later Robeson recalled, “I guess . . . it was only what he expected of me,” and that he “was never satisfied with a school mark of 95 when 100 was possible.” This attitude, Robeson, continued, was not because his “Pop” wanted perfection. It was rather a sign of his belief in the concept of “personal integrity,” which included the idea of “maximum human fulfillment.” Thus, Robeson proclaimed that “success in life was not to be measured in terms of money and personal advancement, but rather the goal must be the richest and highest development of one’s own potential.” These words embodied and directed the rest of the life of Paul Robeson until his death in 1976, at the age of seventy-seven. More importantly, Robeson’s philosophical framework and political activism can be divided into four main areas: Religion; Anti-colonialism and Pan-Africanism; Music and Theater Performances; and Human Rights.
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Pub Date : 2021-07-28DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190280024-0099
Soul! was a publicly funded cultural affairs television program that aired for five seasons on Public Broadcasting Service affiliates in the United States from 1968 to 1973. Its first season aired on New York public television, and after that it was distributed nationally via the Public Broadcasting Service. A showcase for Black arts, culture, and politics, Soul! was closely associated with the producer and host Ellis Haizlip, a Black gay man, who emphasized a vision of “soul” culture that was eclectic, inclusive, and aligned with the radical political energies of the Black Power movement. Soul! provided a powerful platform for Black musicians and other artists and public figures at a time when their access to national TV was severely constrained. It also employed Black women in significant on- and off-camera roles and helped vault the poet Nikki Giovanni to national prominence. Filmed live in a small New York studio, Soul! included an in-studio audience within its representational frame, giving viewers an opportunity to see audiences reacting to guests. These guests ranged from the gospel singer Marion Williams to the soul singer Al Green; from the dancer George Faison to the spoken-word group The Last Poets; and from the activist and entertainer Harry Belafonte to Black Panthers leader Kathleen Cleaver. Other notable Soul! guests included Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, writer and activist James Baldwin, singer-actor Novella Nelson, and musicians including Labelle, Earth, Wind and Fire, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Horace Silver, Gladys Knight and the Pips, and Valerie Ashford and Nick Simpson. As a Black-produced TV show aimed explicitly at Black audiences, Soul!’s trajectory was always precarious. Early funding for the show came from New York public broadcasting and the Ford Foundation, liberal institutions eager to support Black media in the wake of uprisings following Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. However, backlash to the Black Power movement—as represented by the election of “law and order” candidate Richard Nixon in the 1968 presidential election—translated into attempts to silence Black public media. Despite evidence that it resonated powerfully with Black viewers, the show was cancelled in 1973. Soul! inspired innumerable writers, performers, and technicians to seek opportunities in television. It set a mark for television that sought to entertain and educate, keeping an eye on diversity within the Black collective.
的灵魂!是一个公共资助的文化事务电视节目,从1968年到1973年在美国公共广播公司的分支机构播出了五季。它的第一季在纽约公共电视台播出,之后通过公共广播服务在全国范围内播出。黑人艺术、文化和政治的展示,灵魂!与制作人兼主持人埃利斯·海兹利普(Ellis Haizlip)关系密切。海兹利普是一名黑人同性恋,他强调一种“灵魂”文化的愿景,这种文化是折衷的、包容的,并与黑人权力运动的激进政治能量相一致。的灵魂!为黑人音乐家、其他艺术家和公众人物提供了一个强大的平台,当时他们进入国家电视台的机会受到严重限制。它还聘请黑人女性在镜头内外扮演重要角色,并帮助诗人尼基·乔瓦尼(Nikki Giovanni)成为全国知名人物。在纽约的一个小工作室现场拍摄,《灵魂!》在其代表性框架内包括一个演播室内的观众,让观众有机会看到观众对客人的反应。这些嘉宾包括福音歌手马里昂·威廉姆斯(Marion Williams)和灵魂歌手艾尔·格林(Al Green);从舞蹈家乔治·费森到口语组合“最后的诗人”;从活动家和艺人哈里·贝拉方特到黑豹党领袖凯瑟琳·克利弗。另一个值得注意的灵魂!嘉宾包括“伊斯兰民族”领袖路易斯·法拉肯、作家兼活动家詹姆斯·鲍德温、歌手兼演员诺维拉·尼尔森,以及包括拉贝尔、地球、风与火、拉桑·罗兰·柯克、贺拉斯·西尔弗、格拉迪斯·奈特和皮普、瓦莱丽·阿什福德和尼克·辛普森在内的音乐家。作为一部黑人制作的电视节目,《灵魂!》他的轨迹总是不稳定的。该剧的早期资金来自纽约公共广播公司和福特基金会(Ford Foundation),这两个自由机构在马丁·路德·金(Martin Luther King Jr.)博士被暗杀后的起义之后,急于支持黑人媒体。然而,对黑人权力运动的抵制——以“法律与秩序”候选人理查德·尼克松在1968年总统选举中当选为代表——转化为试图让黑人公共媒体沉默。尽管有证据表明它与黑人观众产生了强烈的共鸣,但这部剧还是在1973年被取消了。的灵魂!激励了无数作家、演员和技术人员在电视领域寻找机会。它为寻求娱乐和教育,关注黑人群体内部多样性的电视节目树立了一个标志。
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Pub Date : 2021-07-28DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190280024-0096
Audley Moore (b. 1898–d. 1997) was born in New Iberia, Louisiana, to St. Cyr and Ella Moore and had a relatively happy girlhood in New Orleans until the death of both parents left her and her sisters, Eloise and Loretta, orphaned. Her activist life began shortly after when she joined Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in New Orleans in 1922. Moore’s fervor for Black Nationalism led her to migrate to Harlem—the location of UNIA headquarters—in the late 1920s. When she arrived, the UNIA had dissipated, but the Communist Party had taken its place as a group successfully organizing the local Black community. Moore joined the Communist Party and worked within it to organize the Black working class. By 1935, she was a lead recruiter and organizer for the Upper Harlem Branch of the Party. Her work at the grassroots level led to citywide, Party-backed appointments including managing communist candidate Ben Davis’s successful campaign for a New York City Council seat in 1944. During and after World War II, she worked with a range of Black leftist organizations including the National Negro Congress, the Civil Rights Congress, and the National Council of Negro Women. When 1950s anticommunist hysteria targeted communists and progressives alike, Moore left the Party and struck out on her own. In the second half of the 20th century Moore sowed the seeds of Black Nationalism across the United States. Moore fostered gender-conscious Black Nationalism and started the modern reparations movement through her New Orleans–based group, the Universal Association of Ethiopian Women (UAEW). She also nurtured Black Nationalism and reparations activity through Black Power–era organizations such as the Revolutionary Action Movement, the Republic of New Africa, and the Black Panther Party. From the 1970s to the 1990s, Moore served as a mother and mentor of the radical Black liberation movement, taking on the honorific “Queen Mother.” She was a sought-after teacher and theoretician who traveled globally. For example, Moore was the keynote speaker at the All-Africa Women’s Conference in Tanzania 1972 and a personal guest of Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere and Guinean President Sekou Touré in subsequent years. She was also member of other Black Nationalist and Pan-Africanist groups such as the All-African People’s Party and the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations (N’COBRA), among others. She passed away in Brooklyn, New York, on 2 May 1997.
{"title":"Audley Moore","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780190280024-0096","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780190280024-0096","url":null,"abstract":"Audley Moore (b. 1898–d. 1997) was born in New Iberia, Louisiana, to St. Cyr and Ella Moore and had a relatively happy girlhood in New Orleans until the death of both parents left her and her sisters, Eloise and Loretta, orphaned. Her activist life began shortly after when she joined Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in New Orleans in 1922. Moore’s fervor for Black Nationalism led her to migrate to Harlem—the location of UNIA headquarters—in the late 1920s. When she arrived, the UNIA had dissipated, but the Communist Party had taken its place as a group successfully organizing the local Black community. Moore joined the Communist Party and worked within it to organize the Black working class. By 1935, she was a lead recruiter and organizer for the Upper Harlem Branch of the Party. Her work at the grassroots level led to citywide, Party-backed appointments including managing communist candidate Ben Davis’s successful campaign for a New York City Council seat in 1944. During and after World War II, she worked with a range of Black leftist organizations including the National Negro Congress, the Civil Rights Congress, and the National Council of Negro Women. When 1950s anticommunist hysteria targeted communists and progressives alike, Moore left the Party and struck out on her own. In the second half of the 20th century Moore sowed the seeds of Black Nationalism across the United States. Moore fostered gender-conscious Black Nationalism and started the modern reparations movement through her New Orleans–based group, the Universal Association of Ethiopian Women (UAEW). She also nurtured Black Nationalism and reparations activity through Black Power–era organizations such as the Revolutionary Action Movement, the Republic of New Africa, and the Black Panther Party. From the 1970s to the 1990s, Moore served as a mother and mentor of the radical Black liberation movement, taking on the honorific “Queen Mother.” She was a sought-after teacher and theoretician who traveled globally. For example, Moore was the keynote speaker at the All-Africa Women’s Conference in Tanzania 1972 and a personal guest of Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere and Guinean President Sekou Touré in subsequent years. She was also member of other Black Nationalist and Pan-Africanist groups such as the All-African People’s Party and the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations (N’COBRA), among others. She passed away in Brooklyn, New York, on 2 May 1997.","PeriodicalId":42334,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African American Studies","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91195264","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-28DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190280024-0093
According to most scholars whose primary focus is on this topic, minstrel shows were one of the most disgraceful yet complex chapters in the history of American musicals. Popularized during the early to mid-19th century, minstrelsy incorporated and emphasized the prevailing racism, racial stereotypes, and white supremacy mentality that had permeated almost every aspect of American society since the mid-1600s. More specifically, minstrel shows transferred and translated concepts of race and racism into a form of leisure activity in which ridiculous and obscene Black American images, such as “Sambo” or “Zip Coon,” who were slow witted “plantation darky” and ignorant free Black Americans, were used to justify racial segregation, political oppression, and at times, uncontrolled racial violence. Despite the ongoing debate within the academy, most scholars contend that the first series of minstrel shows emerged during the 1820s, reached their zenith soon after the Civil War ended, and remained relatively popular well into the early 1900s. As America’s first form of popular entertainment, during its origins minstrel shows were performed by white men, mostly of Irish descent, who blackened their faces with burnt cork, cooled ashes, or dirt and began to ridicule and depict a distorted view of African American life on southern plantations through both songs and dances. Additionally, Black Americans were normally shown as naive buffoons or uncontrollable children who danced their way through and expressed a fondness for the system of slavery. At the same, this musical genre also helped to launch the careers of many well-known entertainers of the era, both African Americans and non-African Americans, such as James Bland, Stephen Foster, Al Jolson, and Bert Williams. In the end, the culture that embraced this type of “popular entertainment” was either wholly enchanted by such racially charged images or took these images as the truth about the history and experience of all African Americans. Additional scholars such as Eric Lott and Robert Toll contend that the origins, development, and legacy of minstrelsy, especially after the mid-1840s, in some ways, was a response to the economic depression of the 1830s and early 1840s, as an attempt to reassure the dominate white society that their societal status and political dominance would continue for decades to come. In some ways, these notions are still alive today. Finally, many studies on the topic of minstrelsy can be divided into historical periods such as: (1) early writings (1930s–1950s); (2) the revisionist era (1960s and 1970s); and the contemporary era (1980s to the present).
{"title":"Blackface Minstrelsy","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/obo/9780190280024-0093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/obo/9780190280024-0093","url":null,"abstract":"According to most scholars whose primary focus is on this topic, minstrel shows were one of the most disgraceful yet complex chapters in the history of American musicals. Popularized during the early to mid-19th century, minstrelsy incorporated and emphasized the prevailing racism, racial stereotypes, and white supremacy mentality that had permeated almost every aspect of American society since the mid-1600s. More specifically, minstrel shows transferred and translated concepts of race and racism into a form of leisure activity in which ridiculous and obscene Black American images, such as “Sambo” or “Zip Coon,” who were slow witted “plantation darky” and ignorant free Black Americans, were used to justify racial segregation, political oppression, and at times, uncontrolled racial violence. Despite the ongoing debate within the academy, most scholars contend that the first series of minstrel shows emerged during the 1820s, reached their zenith soon after the Civil War ended, and remained relatively popular well into the early 1900s. As America’s first form of popular entertainment, during its origins minstrel shows were performed by white men, mostly of Irish descent, who blackened their faces with burnt cork, cooled ashes, or dirt and began to ridicule and depict a distorted view of African American life on southern plantations through both songs and dances. Additionally, Black Americans were normally shown as naive buffoons or uncontrollable children who danced their way through and expressed a fondness for the system of slavery. At the same, this musical genre also helped to launch the careers of many well-known entertainers of the era, both African Americans and non-African Americans, such as James Bland, Stephen Foster, Al Jolson, and Bert Williams. In the end, the culture that embraced this type of “popular entertainment” was either wholly enchanted by such racially charged images or took these images as the truth about the history and experience of all African Americans. Additional scholars such as Eric Lott and Robert Toll contend that the origins, development, and legacy of minstrelsy, especially after the mid-1840s, in some ways, was a response to the economic depression of the 1830s and early 1840s, as an attempt to reassure the dominate white society that their societal status and political dominance would continue for decades to come. In some ways, these notions are still alive today. Finally, many studies on the topic of minstrelsy can be divided into historical periods such as: (1) early writings (1930s–1950s); (2) the revisionist era (1960s and 1970s); and the contemporary era (1980s to the present).","PeriodicalId":42334,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African American Studies","volume":"55 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86141381","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}