African American History _ Week 3

Week 3 – Black Culture – 1865-1905

To counterbalance the grim aspects of this week’s materials, I want to share with you a few images and examples of black people who not only survived these harsh times but managed to thrive. Yes, there were African Americans who became doctors, lawyers, business owners, scholars, and writers.  How did the more prosperous African Americans look during this time period?  Fortunately, we have a website with photographs of Victorian men and women of color.  Photography became very popular in the 1880s and 1890s, and most people could afford to go to a studio for a formal portrait.  Although they mimicked the styles of wealthy white people, these Victorian African Americans looked beautiful and stylish in their own right.  Developing their own "fashion" and "black identity" would occur more from the 1920s onward.

How much could African Americans use words and music to express ideas that were important to them, and how much did their production of music and words have to conform to what white Americans thought of black Americans?  With the end of the Civil War, whites continued to demean black people through laws, customs, and material objects and songs that could be described under the term “Jim Crow”?  What was Jim Crow?  How did the white people’s view of black people influence the way black people both saw and defined themselves? 

The National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, has a good collection of Jim Crow artefacts, most notably materials on “black face” and “minstrelsy,” where white people entertained audiences by pretending to be black from the 1830s onward. The first “talkie” movie (“The Jazz Singer,” 1927) featured the story of a white Jewish man becoming a star by performing in blackface.  The 1942 movie “Holiday Inn” had popular actor Bing Crosby performing in black face.  The hit “Amos ‘n Andy” radio show ran from the late 1920s to 1951 and used white actors to portray black men in a negative way.  Even today, the lure of wearing black face seems to hit white people with astonishing frequency.

For the most part, in the late 19th and early 20th century, black people did not try to make money from appealing to white audiences. Most white people considered black music, dance, and writing to be too low class to be noticed. One stand-out was poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), who wrote both in "Negro" vernacular and in "standard" English.  White people preferred his vernacular works in part because these poems and stories confirmed their notions of the simplicity or backwardness of African Americans.  In his short life, Dunbar wrote about and lived the problem of "double-consciousness," an idea first formally described by W.E.B. Du Bois in his 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk:  

"After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder" (Chapter 1).

As the 20th century proceeded, black entertainers and artists began to consider more seriously how they could make a living within the worlds of film, records, and radio broadcasts.  Prior to 1905, however, the cultural production by black Americans occurred in a realm largely segregated from white notice. As new technologies widened the scope of popular culture, white people appropriated and defined black culture as a way to demean African Americans.  The cost of producing films, records, and radio shows also prohibited many black people from extending their own authentic culture into the American social sphere. Along with the rise of new technologies in the early 20th century, the notions of white racial supremacy gained even further traction, not only in the United States but in Europe, achieving ever more “acceptability” as racists continued to use pseudo-science to promote their ideas. In Week 4, we will see how African American culture and arts helped to inspire what was called “The New Negro,” and to build resistance to how white people constrained and defined black lives. 

For this section on “culture” please read/watch the following:

1.   “Reconstruction: America After the Civil War” presents the story of Reconstruction (1865-1877). Narrated by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., this film is a lucid portrayal of African Americans transition from slavery to freedom and the obstacles they faced in their quest to be treated equally. View the film to gain insights into this transformative period and the role of federal agencies such as the Freedmen’s Bureau in the transition to freedom.

https://www.pbs.org/video/reconstruction-part-1-hour-1-n0g1em/

 

2.    Victorian Men and Women of Color .  Note how the men and women are dressed.

3. In the second half of the 19th century, the notion of “Jim Crow” took hold as a way for whites to define and publicly control black people.  Take a look at this brief description of Jim Crow laws, customs, and imagery:  https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/origins.htm

4. “Minstrelsy” and Black Face:  https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/blackface-birth-american-stereotype

5. Paul Laurence Dunbar Biography:  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/paul-laurence-dunbar

6. Vernacular poem by Dunbar:  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44198/a-negro-love-song

7. Standard American English poem by Dunbar:  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50317/invitation-to-love

8. The rise of African American music in the late 19th century had its roots in slave spirituals, African rhythms, the early forms of jazz found in places like New Orleans, and the Romantic music of the late 19th century.  Composer Scott Joplin began to write ragtime piano pieces that contained both early jazz syncopation and  European influences:   The Easy Winners . 

9. The Fisk Jubilee Singers, started in 1871 to provide much needed funds for Fisk University, continue to this day to promote African American music of the 19th century:   Fisk Jubilee Singers . 

10. The Blues were also taking root as a musical form in the Mississippi Delta but also throughout the South. Blues music became one of the pillars of rock ‘n roll music from the 1950s to the present time. Here are some of the earliest recordings of the blues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W12zibhfWO0&list=RDW12zibhfWO0&start_radio=1

11.  The development of black music also had its roots in the multi-ethnic culture of New Orleans:   New Orleans jazz in 1900 (2.30 minutes) . 

12. One composer from this time period was Nathaniel Dett who combined African rhythms and classical music in a variety of musical formats.  Here is his 1909“Juba Dance” -  Nathaniel Dett's "Juba Dance"  A “Juba Dance” was a form of dancing performed by slaves with West African roots. Here’s a recreation of what that dance was like:  Juba Dance .

13.  Popular from the late 19th to the early 20th century was the Cake Walk, a dance that had developed when enslaved people watched white people dance. Enslaved people would engage in competitions as entertainment for the white people with the award for best dancing being a cake. The dances remained popular after slavery ended in 1865. Here are a couple of version of cakewalks:  From the Library of Congress:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQVLuR7jj8Q .  From a 1903 silent movie of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” (the piano music was added later):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCsptiarrzw

 

 

 

Week 3 Terrorism:  Lynching to “Control” African Americans

Watch the documentary on Reconstruction in the Learning Resources Area to begin your investigations into this topic.

As the post-Reconstruction laws and regulations restricted the lives of Southern blacks more and more, the violence against African Americans also became worse.  Before we get into the use of physical violence upon African Americans, please take a look at this description of what life was like in “Jim Crow” America.  Many of the laws that were imposed in the South were also present in the North to a somewhat lesser extent. For example, black people were barred from working in most companies around the country except as janitors or cooks. Jim Crow:   https://www.crf-usa.org/black-history-month/a-brief-history-of-jim-crow#:~:text=It%20came%20to%20mean%20any,losing%20their%20jobs%20to%20blacks.  

Ida B. Wells (1868-1931) was the most famous crusader against lynching. Besides the wanton murder of black men, women, and children,black schools, churches, and places of business were targets for bombing or arson, especially if whites perceived these organizations to be successful or competition. As you review Wells' texts, see if you can discover what reasons were given for lynching.

Lynching – briefly stated . . .

· A black person was kidnapped

· Given no recourse to police protection

· Not charged in a court of law

· Not given a trial

· Had his/her body mutilated, burned, and/or hung from a tree or pole

· The whites who perpetrated and participated in the lynching were not charged with murder

· Police were often complicit with those who were lynching

· Photographs of lynchings were used as postcards in the U.S. mail

· Congress and state legislatures did nothing to stop the practice

· Newspapers did little to either cover lynching or to decry the practice

· If black people complained, they were likely to be the next target for lynching

Lynching was, of course, not legal, and yet it was widely accepted by many whites as just punishment outside the courts of law.  Ida B. Wells uncovered the horrors of the practice and continued throughout her life to crusade against the wanton destruction of black bodies. 

In 2015 the Equal Justice Initiative, a group in Montgomery, Alabama, created the first memorial for those who were lynched.  Their report on lynching gives the most up-to-date figures on how many people suffered under this scourge, and where lynching was most prevalent in the United States. The EJI also supports modern equal justice reform through the actions of the police, the courts, and prison sentencing for African Americans. 

Bryan Stevenson is the lawyer who founded EJI, and the book and movie “Just Mercy” are about some of his earlier cases to overturn false convictions of black men.

The U.S. Congress refused to take up anti-lynching laws until very recently. It was not until 2018 that the Senate passed (unanimously) anti-lynching legislation, the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act; the House of Representatives, however, took no action, so the bill wasn’t passed until two years later. On February 26, 2020, the House passed a revised version, the Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act, by a vote of 410–4.  On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery was jogging when three white men (at least) accosted him and ran him over.  On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  These deaths, as well as the murders by police and citizens of unarmed black men, have led to the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, founded in February 2013.

The history of lynching serves as a reminder of how violent American racism has been in the past, opening the question whether that violence will continue to destroy lives and to subvert the rule of law. The American tradition of not respecting the integrity and rights of the black body did not end in 1865 and has not ended in 2020.

For this topic, please read the following materials in the Learning Resources area:

1.  Video on “Reconstruction”

2.  Biography of Ida B. Wells

3. Southern Horrors:  Lynch Law and All Its Phases (by Wells)

4. The Red Record:  Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States

5. Rev. D.A. Graham: “Some Facts about Southern Lynching”

6. Equal Justice Initiative

Optional:  “Without Sanctuary,” the collection of 81 images of lynching used for postcards in the U.S. mail is not for sensitive people.  TRIGGER WARNING.  Do not look at the images if family or children are around.  These heartbreaking primary texts-images are significant because they show the absolute acceptance by American society’s dominant institutions of lynching.   https://withoutsanctuary.org/ ’

 

Week 3 – Focus on Education – 1865-1905

Education of the Young After the Civil War

Go to Course Content, Learning Materials:  Watch the video on Reconstruction

Read the following and look at the other resources listed below:

Education was a great point of contention, starting off with a bang during and after the Civil War when formerly enslaved people flocked to informal schools set up for them, often by white teachers who came from the North to give black people of all ages the ability to read and write..  Prior to the Civil War, public schools, which had flourished elsewhere in the United States, had not been established in Southern states. Despite the push in Reconstruction to have integrated schools, the former slave states created public schools that were segregated, and black schools were given much fewer resources (tax dollars) than the white schools.

However, poor children all over the United States often were not educated due to poverty.  Instead, they worked long hours in fields, factories, and mines. In the 19th century, most children of all races left school after the 8th grade to go to work, if they had not left prior to that time. In fact, by 1900, only four states in the South required that children attend school at all. The issues surrounding the education of black children were addressed by the scholar Carter G. Woodson in his famous book,  The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933) .  Here, however, is the central argument that Woodson was making about education following the Civil War:

From Chapter 2:  "The idea of educating the Negroes after the Civil War was largely a prompting of philanthropy. Their white neighbors failed to assume this responsibility. These black people had been liberated as a result of a sectional conflict out of which their former owners had emerged as victims. From this class, then, the freedmen could not expect much sympathy or cooperation in the effort to prepare themselves to figure as citizens of a modern republic."

“Inasmuch as most Negroes lived in the agricultural South, moreover, and only a few of them at first acquired small farms there was little in their life which any one of thought could not have easily understood. The poverty which afflicted them for a generation after Emancipation held them down to the lowest order of society, nominally free but economically enslaved. The participation of the freedmen in government for a few years during the period known as the Reconstruction had little bearing on their situation except that they did join with the uneducated poor whites in bringing about certain much-desired social reforms, especially in giving the South its first plan of democratic education in providing for a school system at public expense” (9).

Prior to the Civil War white people’s attitudes across the United States toward enslaved people and as well as those African Americans who were not enslaved were not conducive to the transition of black people into the full rights of American citizenship. After the Civil War, no matter the education and attainments of African Americans, white people either saw black people as “simple” or as “violent.”  As American University professor Ibram X. Kendi writes: “For years, northern racists had agreed, almost religiously, that enslaved Africans were like brutes.  They disagreed, among themselves, about the capacity of Black people for freedom, independence, and civilization.  This racist northern debate – segregationists adamant about Black brutes’ incapacity, assimilationists like [William Lloyd] Garrison and Villard adamant about Black brutes’ capacity – became the conversation in the wake of emancipation.  Hardly anyone in a position of authority – whether in the economic elite, the political elite, the cultural elite, or the intellectual elite – brought antiracist ideas of equal Black people into this conversation” (223-224). 

In other words, white people did not feel black people were capable of being “human” enough to be taught how to effectively handle freedom and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Although given complete citizenship rights by passage in Congress and the non-slave states of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, the generally held view was that African Americans had to EARN those rights. But the standards by which such rights could be bestowed were never clear.  By 1895, black leaders had pretty much given up trying to demand equal treatment under the law or the right to vote.  See, for example, in the Learning Resources area, the 1895 speech by Booker T. Washington, “The Atlanta Compromise.”

Although most African Americans in the U.S. South were denied an education, the post-war era saw the creation of many colleges established to educate young blacks. For a brief overview and history of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), please read the information at:

A New Era: The Rise of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries, by Andrew Wright.  Alma Mater: The History of American Colleges and Universities, March 2014.   https://edblogs.columbia.edu/histx3570-001-2014-1/2014/03/24/a-new-era-the-rise-of-historically-black-colleges-and-universities-hbcus-in-the-late-19th-and-early-20th-centuries/

The two great “reformers” of African American education in the post-Civil War years were W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington.  In the Week Three Learning Resourcesarea, please read the following:

1. The Education of Former Slaves (primary texts from the Library of Congress)

2. The biography of W.E.B. Du Bois

3. The biography of Booker T. Washington

4. Booker T. Washington Deliver the 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech.

5. Who Created “The Talented Tenth”?

6. Washington, The Future of the American Negro, Chapter 2

7. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk,” Chapters 3 & 6.