Janet L. Abu-Lughod
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195328752
- eISBN:
- 9780199944057
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195328752.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
American society has been long plagued by cycles of racial violence, most dramatically in the 1960s when hundreds of ghetto uprisings erupted across American cities. Though the larger, underlying ...
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American society has been long plagued by cycles of racial violence, most dramatically in the 1960s when hundreds of ghetto uprisings erupted across American cities. Though the larger, underlying causes of contentious race relations have remained the same, the lethality, intensity, and outcomes of these urban rebellions have varied widely. What accounts for these differences? And what lessons can be learned that might reduce the destructive effects of riots and move race relations forward? This detailed study is the first attempt to compare six major race riots that occurred in the three largest American urban areas during the course of the twentieth century: in Chicago in 1919 and 1968; in New York in 1935/1943 and 1964; and in Los Angeles in 1965 and 1992. The book weaves together detailed narratives of each riot, placing them in their changing historical contexts and showing how urban space, political regimes, and economic conditions—not simply an abstract “race conflict”—have structured the nature and extent of urban rebellions. The book draws upon archival research, primary sources, case studies, and personal observations to reconstruct events—especially for the 1964 Harlem-Bedford Stuyvesant uprising and Chicago's 1968 riots where no documented studies are available. By focusing on the similarities and differences in each city, identifying the unique and persisting issues, and evaluating the ways political leaders, law enforcement, and the local political culture have either defused or exacerbated urban violence, this book points the way toward alleviating long-standing ethnic and racial tensions.Less
American society has been long plagued by cycles of racial violence, most dramatically in the 1960s when hundreds of ghetto uprisings erupted across American cities. Though the larger, underlying causes of contentious race relations have remained the same, the lethality, intensity, and outcomes of these urban rebellions have varied widely. What accounts for these differences? And what lessons can be learned that might reduce the destructive effects of riots and move race relations forward? This detailed study is the first attempt to compare six major race riots that occurred in the three largest American urban areas during the course of the twentieth century: in Chicago in 1919 and 1968; in New York in 1935/1943 and 1964; and in Los Angeles in 1965 and 1992. The book weaves together detailed narratives of each riot, placing them in their changing historical contexts and showing how urban space, political regimes, and economic conditions—not simply an abstract “race conflict”—have structured the nature and extent of urban rebellions. The book draws upon archival research, primary sources, case studies, and personal observations to reconstruct events—especially for the 1964 Harlem-Bedford Stuyvesant uprising and Chicago's 1968 riots where no documented studies are available. By focusing on the similarities and differences in each city, identifying the unique and persisting issues, and evaluating the ways political leaders, law enforcement, and the local political culture have either defused or exacerbated urban violence, this book points the way toward alleviating long-standing ethnic and racial tensions.
Sandra Gunning
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195099904
- eISBN:
- 9780199855100
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195099904.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
In this chapter, the author presents a comparative study of two largely ignored black novels that focus on the suppressed presence of black women within the economy of racial violence. Looking at the ...
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In this chapter, the author presents a comparative study of two largely ignored black novels that focus on the suppressed presence of black women within the economy of racial violence. Looking at the work of Ida B. Wells, David Bryant Fulton, and Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, one can see that in some black writing on rape there was a self-conscious refiguration of domestic discourse that began from the point of rape's unspeakability rather than the violated black female body itself. The three focused on issues surrounding white violence. Wells' decision to become an anti-lynching activist was motivated by her own high sense of virtue and morality. Her 1892 pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases mentions that “a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.” As a tribute to Wells, Fulton's Hanover: or the Persecution of the Lowly (1900) retells the story of the 1898 Wilmington riot as seen and experienced by black women. Hopkins' Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South (1900) tenders a unique commentary on Fulton's idealized attempt to counteract the negation of black femininity within the context of racial violence. The literature discussed in this chapter uses the narration of black female experiences of white racial violence to problematize more general issues of black female self-construction and black communal conflict.Less
In this chapter, the author presents a comparative study of two largely ignored black novels that focus on the suppressed presence of black women within the economy of racial violence. Looking at the work of Ida B. Wells, David Bryant Fulton, and Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, one can see that in some black writing on rape there was a self-conscious refiguration of domestic discourse that began from the point of rape's unspeakability rather than the violated black female body itself. The three focused on issues surrounding white violence. Wells' decision to become an anti-lynching activist was motivated by her own high sense of virtue and morality. Her 1892 pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases mentions that “a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.” As a tribute to Wells, Fulton's Hanover: or the Persecution of the Lowly (1900) retells the story of the 1898 Wilmington riot as seen and experienced by black women. Hopkins' Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South (1900) tenders a unique commentary on Fulton's idealized attempt to counteract the negation of black femininity within the context of racial violence. The literature discussed in this chapter uses the narration of black female experiences of white racial violence to problematize more general issues of black female self-construction and black communal conflict.
Ivan Evans
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719079047
- eISBN:
- 9781781702208
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719079047.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This introductory chapter begins with a brief discussion of how South Africa and the United States of America, two countries with notorious histories of racial violence, attempted to formally deal ...
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This introductory chapter begins with a brief discussion of how South Africa and the United States of America, two countries with notorious histories of racial violence, attempted to formally deal with their violent pasts at roughly the same time. It then notes that, to date, no major comparative work has considered interpersonal violence as a distinctive component of the broad field of ‘racial repression’. By focusing on unofficial violence in the early stages of segregation in both countries, this study hopes to stimulate questions about a neglected phenomenon that tells us much about the development of distinctive forms and ‘styles’ of white supremacy.Less
This introductory chapter begins with a brief discussion of how South Africa and the United States of America, two countries with notorious histories of racial violence, attempted to formally deal with their violent pasts at roughly the same time. It then notes that, to date, no major comparative work has considered interpersonal violence as a distinctive component of the broad field of ‘racial repression’. By focusing on unofficial violence in the early stages of segregation in both countries, this study hopes to stimulate questions about a neglected phenomenon that tells us much about the development of distinctive forms and ‘styles’ of white supremacy.
Sandra Gunning
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195099904
- eISBN:
- 9780199855100
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195099904.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
In the late nineteenth century, the stereotype of the black male as sexual beast functioned for white supremacists as an externalized symbol of social chaos against which all whites would unite for ...
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In the late nineteenth century, the stereotype of the black male as sexual beast functioned for white supremacists as an externalized symbol of social chaos against which all whites would unite for the purpose of national renewal. The emergence of this stereotype in American culture and literature during and after Reconstruction was related to the growth of white-on-black violence, as white lynch mobs acted in “defence” of white womanhood, the white family, and white nationalism. This book investigates American literary encounters with the conditions, processes, and consequences of such violence through the representation of not just the black rapist stereotype, but of other crucial stereotypes in mediating moments of white social crisis: “lascivious” black womanhood; avenging white masculinity; and passive white femininity. The author argues that these figures together signify the tangle of race and gender representation emerging from turn-of-the-century American literature. The book brings together Charles W. Chestnutt, Kate Chopin, Thomas Dixon, David Bryant Fulton, Pauline Hopkins, Mark Twain, and Ida B. Wells: famous, infamous, or long-neglected figures who produced novels, essays, stories, and pamphlets in the volatile period of the 1890s to the early 1900s, and who contributed to the continual renegotiation and redefinition of the terms and boundaries of a national dialogue on racial violence.Less
In the late nineteenth century, the stereotype of the black male as sexual beast functioned for white supremacists as an externalized symbol of social chaos against which all whites would unite for the purpose of national renewal. The emergence of this stereotype in American culture and literature during and after Reconstruction was related to the growth of white-on-black violence, as white lynch mobs acted in “defence” of white womanhood, the white family, and white nationalism. This book investigates American literary encounters with the conditions, processes, and consequences of such violence through the representation of not just the black rapist stereotype, but of other crucial stereotypes in mediating moments of white social crisis: “lascivious” black womanhood; avenging white masculinity; and passive white femininity. The author argues that these figures together signify the tangle of race and gender representation emerging from turn-of-the-century American literature. The book brings together Charles W. Chestnutt, Kate Chopin, Thomas Dixon, David Bryant Fulton, Pauline Hopkins, Mark Twain, and Ida B. Wells: famous, infamous, or long-neglected figures who produced novels, essays, stories, and pamphlets in the volatile period of the 1890s to the early 1900s, and who contributed to the continual renegotiation and redefinition of the terms and boundaries of a national dialogue on racial violence.
Ivan Evans
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719079047
- eISBN:
- 9781781702208
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719079047.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
In the aftermath of the Anglo-Boer War, whites in South Africa pursued two strategies that distinguished state formation from the path followed in the USA: they constructed a centralized state, and ...
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In the aftermath of the Anglo-Boer War, whites in South Africa pursued two strategies that distinguished state formation from the path followed in the USA: they constructed a centralized state, and authorized state officials to intervene extensively into the economy. In response to mounting pressure from employers and white workers, successive governments from 1910 onwards embarked on a campaign to modernize and boost the interventionist powers of the state. They did this chiefly by empowering the state to control the turbulent industrial arena and the field known as ‘Native Affairs’, both of which were still ambiguous and uncertain in the decade after 1910. The combined drift of these trends reinforced a state-oriented perspective within the white population generally. In South Africa, all roads led to the central state. Employers turned to the state to administer a labour-allocation system sufficiently flexible to meet their competing labour demands; white workers pressured the state to actively eliminate the ‘poor white problem’; and the segregationist state garnered greater powers for itself to modernize and strengthen the racial order. The early consolidation of a broadly statist ideology and the establishment of an interventionist state are central to the differentiae specificae of racial violence in South Africa: the absence of communal violence amidst high levels of private violence against blacks.Less
In the aftermath of the Anglo-Boer War, whites in South Africa pursued two strategies that distinguished state formation from the path followed in the USA: they constructed a centralized state, and authorized state officials to intervene extensively into the economy. In response to mounting pressure from employers and white workers, successive governments from 1910 onwards embarked on a campaign to modernize and boost the interventionist powers of the state. They did this chiefly by empowering the state to control the turbulent industrial arena and the field known as ‘Native Affairs’, both of which were still ambiguous and uncertain in the decade after 1910. The combined drift of these trends reinforced a state-oriented perspective within the white population generally. In South Africa, all roads led to the central state. Employers turned to the state to administer a labour-allocation system sufficiently flexible to meet their competing labour demands; white workers pressured the state to actively eliminate the ‘poor white problem’; and the segregationist state garnered greater powers for itself to modernize and strengthen the racial order. The early consolidation of a broadly statist ideology and the establishment of an interventionist state are central to the differentiae specificae of racial violence in South Africa: the absence of communal violence amidst high levels of private violence against blacks.
Ivan Evans
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719079047
- eISBN:
- 9781781702208
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719079047.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
What impact did the legal system in South Africa have on racial violence? This chapter argues that the impact of the courts registered in two ways. Firstly, the paternalist sensibilities and a ...
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What impact did the legal system in South Africa have on racial violence? This chapter argues that the impact of the courts registered in two ways. Firstly, the paternalist sensibilities and a commitment to the ‘rule of law’ within the bench firmly shut the door on public and communal violence against blacks. Although the Supreme Court largely overlooked the lethal ‘pogrom’ that striking mine workers unleashed against innocent blacks during the 1922 strike, sentencing to death just one of the men who murdered innocent black bystanders, South Africa's legal system was strongly opposed to the quasi-legal ideology of ‘repressive justice’ which prevailed in the Southern states. Secondly, courts in South Africa were quite willing to accommodate private racial violence, which, whether in the form of serious assaults or murder, became an ingrained feature of race relations in South Africa.Less
What impact did the legal system in South Africa have on racial violence? This chapter argues that the impact of the courts registered in two ways. Firstly, the paternalist sensibilities and a commitment to the ‘rule of law’ within the bench firmly shut the door on public and communal violence against blacks. Although the Supreme Court largely overlooked the lethal ‘pogrom’ that striking mine workers unleashed against innocent blacks during the 1922 strike, sentencing to death just one of the men who murdered innocent black bystanders, South Africa's legal system was strongly opposed to the quasi-legal ideology of ‘repressive justice’ which prevailed in the Southern states. Secondly, courts in South Africa were quite willing to accommodate private racial violence, which, whether in the form of serious assaults or murder, became an ingrained feature of race relations in South Africa.
Ivan Evans
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719079047
- eISBN:
- 9781781702208
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719079047.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This concluding chapter draws out a number of implications that flow from the preceding chapters. The first section explores the differential contribution of dominant actors to racial violence, ...
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This concluding chapter draws out a number of implications that flow from the preceding chapters. The first section explores the differential contribution of dominant actors to racial violence, drawing attention to certain structural conditions that either promote or constrain tendencies towards unofficial racial violence. The second section underscores the importance of a transcendent ideology and argues that systemic cultures of violence invoke predispositions which make reiterated violence not only acceptable but also righteous. A final section returns to the central role that the state played in the two cultures of violence.Less
This concluding chapter draws out a number of implications that flow from the preceding chapters. The first section explores the differential contribution of dominant actors to racial violence, drawing attention to certain structural conditions that either promote or constrain tendencies towards unofficial racial violence. The second section underscores the importance of a transcendent ideology and argues that systemic cultures of violence invoke predispositions which make reiterated violence not only acceptable but also righteous. A final section returns to the central role that the state played in the two cultures of violence.
Ivan Evans
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719079047
- eISBN:
- 9781781702208
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719079047.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
The basic pattern of racial violence in the South was largely determined by the attempts of landowners and commercial farmers to gain mastery over a world turned upside down by the end of slavery. ...
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The basic pattern of racial violence in the South was largely determined by the attempts of landowners and commercial farmers to gain mastery over a world turned upside down by the end of slavery. Emancipation raised two dire threats that struck at the heart of the former slave society: the emergence of a free market in labour and the plantocracy's lost grip over land. Landowners across the South mobilized against these twin threats, employing all mechanisms at their disposal to regain their former dominance. This chapter argues that landowners' quest for political and economic control forms the indispensable point of reference for any discussion of extra-legal racial violence, providing the terrain for even plebeian whites to participate in the lynch culture of the New South.Less
The basic pattern of racial violence in the South was largely determined by the attempts of landowners and commercial farmers to gain mastery over a world turned upside down by the end of slavery. Emancipation raised two dire threats that struck at the heart of the former slave society: the emergence of a free market in labour and the plantocracy's lost grip over land. Landowners across the South mobilized against these twin threats, employing all mechanisms at their disposal to regain their former dominance. This chapter argues that landowners' quest for political and economic control forms the indispensable point of reference for any discussion of extra-legal racial violence, providing the terrain for even plebeian whites to participate in the lynch culture of the New South.
Preston H. Smith
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816637027
- eISBN:
- 9781452945811
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816637027.003.0007
- Subject:
- Political Science, Public Policy
This chapter examines the crisis of black civic leadership in Chicago over its failure to stop whites’ violence against black citizens seeking housing in white neighborhoods. Housing-based racial ...
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This chapter examines the crisis of black civic leadership in Chicago over its failure to stop whites’ violence against black citizens seeking housing in white neighborhoods. Housing-based racial violence, which coexisted with and reinforced the city’s slum clearance and public housing policy decisions, gives further credence to the view of black elites that a racial lens was the only legitimate one for analyzing and evaluating housing policy in the city and that racial democracy was the only legitimate political goal. The chapter then explores the growth of the militant approach to suppress racial violence, comparing it to the more moderate approaches of white-led race relations agencies and the cautious leaders of the National Urban League.Less
This chapter examines the crisis of black civic leadership in Chicago over its failure to stop whites’ violence against black citizens seeking housing in white neighborhoods. Housing-based racial violence, which coexisted with and reinforced the city’s slum clearance and public housing policy decisions, gives further credence to the view of black elites that a racial lens was the only legitimate one for analyzing and evaluating housing policy in the city and that racial democracy was the only legitimate political goal. The chapter then explores the growth of the militant approach to suppress racial violence, comparing it to the more moderate approaches of white-led race relations agencies and the cautious leaders of the National Urban League.
Kristina DuRocher
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813130019
- eISBN:
- 9780813135571
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813130019.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Social History
Indoctrinated by their parents and the community to believe in white supremacy, many white children in the Jim Crow South saw incidents of racial violence as natural and inherent to the racial order ...
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Indoctrinated by their parents and the community to believe in white supremacy, many white children in the Jim Crow South saw incidents of racial violence as natural and inherent to the racial order of the times. They had come to accept that any violation of the dictates of segregation required punishment, primarily through physical brutality. Many children readily embraced their predetermined role in maintaining segregation as they matured, but there were others who, faced with the realities of racial violence, began to recognize the personal and social repercussions of the racial lessons they learned from an early age. Some of these children would later grow up to write their autobiographies, many pointing to a single traumatic event or several disturbing episodes of racial violence that changed their conceptions of self and racial identity and helped them to resist racial inequality. Children also played a central role in the campaign against lynchings. Images of white families involving their children in lynchings as part of their social ritual became a powerful propaganda tool for the antilynching movement, which sought to bring to national attention how white southerners perpetuate harm by exposing their children to what they viewed as horrific acts of violence.Less
Indoctrinated by their parents and the community to believe in white supremacy, many white children in the Jim Crow South saw incidents of racial violence as natural and inherent to the racial order of the times. They had come to accept that any violation of the dictates of segregation required punishment, primarily through physical brutality. Many children readily embraced their predetermined role in maintaining segregation as they matured, but there were others who, faced with the realities of racial violence, began to recognize the personal and social repercussions of the racial lessons they learned from an early age. Some of these children would later grow up to write their autobiographies, many pointing to a single traumatic event or several disturbing episodes of racial violence that changed their conceptions of self and racial identity and helped them to resist racial inequality. Children also played a central role in the campaign against lynchings. Images of white families involving their children in lynchings as part of their social ritual became a powerful propaganda tool for the antilynching movement, which sought to bring to national attention how white southerners perpetuate harm by exposing their children to what they viewed as horrific acts of violence.
Jeannine Bell
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814791448
- eISBN:
- 9780814760222
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814791448.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Criminal Law and Criminology
Despite increasing racial tolerance and national diversity, neighborhood segregation remains a very real problem in cities across America. Scholars, government officials, and the general public have ...
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Despite increasing racial tolerance and national diversity, neighborhood segregation remains a very real problem in cities across America. Scholars, government officials, and the general public have long attempted to understand why segregation persists despite efforts to combat it, traditionally focusing on the issue of “white flight,” or the idea that white residents will move to other areas if their neighborhood becomes integrated. This book expands upon these understandings by investigating a little-examined but surprisingly prevalent problem of “move-in violence,” the anti-integration violence directed by white residents at minorities who move into their neighborhoods. Apprehensive about their new neighbors and worried about declining property values, these residents resort to extra-legal violence and intimidation tactics, often using vandalism and verbal harassment to combat what they view as a violation of their territory. This is the first book to seriously examine the role violence plays in maintaining housing segregation, illustrating how intimidation and fear are employed to force minorities back into separate neighborhoods and prevent meaningful integration. The book provides a moving examination of how neighborhood racial violence is enabled today and how it harms not only the victims, but entire communities.The book not only enhances our understanding of how prevalent segregation and this type of hate-crime remain, but also offers insightful analysis of a complex mix of remedies that can work to address this difficult problem.Less
Despite increasing racial tolerance and national diversity, neighborhood segregation remains a very real problem in cities across America. Scholars, government officials, and the general public have long attempted to understand why segregation persists despite efforts to combat it, traditionally focusing on the issue of “white flight,” or the idea that white residents will move to other areas if their neighborhood becomes integrated. This book expands upon these understandings by investigating a little-examined but surprisingly prevalent problem of “move-in violence,” the anti-integration violence directed by white residents at minorities who move into their neighborhoods. Apprehensive about their new neighbors and worried about declining property values, these residents resort to extra-legal violence and intimidation tactics, often using vandalism and verbal harassment to combat what they view as a violation of their territory. This is the first book to seriously examine the role violence plays in maintaining housing segregation, illustrating how intimidation and fear are employed to force minorities back into separate neighborhoods and prevent meaningful integration. The book provides a moving examination of how neighborhood racial violence is enabled today and how it harms not only the victims, but entire communities.The book not only enhances our understanding of how prevalent segregation and this type of hate-crime remain, but also offers insightful analysis of a complex mix of remedies that can work to address this difficult problem.
Edward González-Tennant
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780813056784
- eISBN:
- 9780813053448
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813056784.003.0003
- Subject:
- Archaeology, Historical Archaeology
In Chapter 3 González-Tennant explores ways intersectionality helps explain the deep connections between past and present forms of racial violence. Intersectionality frames social inequality as the ...
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In Chapter 3 González-Tennant explores ways intersectionality helps explain the deep connections between past and present forms of racial violence. Intersectionality frames social inequality as the result of intersecting and uneven power relations. While intersectionality is central to critical race theory and Black feminism, its adoption by historical archaeologists remains limited. Intersectionality is useful for an archaeology of race riots because it provides a different lens for examining race and society. The perspective of intersectionality also speaks directly to more than a century of scholarship examining lynchings and race riots. A brief introduction to the literature demonstrates two alarming trends: the treatment of lynchings and race riots as separate phenomena and the inability or disinterest of previous research to satisfactorily connect past racial violence to modern social inequality. González-Tennant’s approach to researching the connections between past violence and modern inequality draws on works from a range of closely related disciplines to illuminate these connections.Less
In Chapter 3 González-Tennant explores ways intersectionality helps explain the deep connections between past and present forms of racial violence. Intersectionality frames social inequality as the result of intersecting and uneven power relations. While intersectionality is central to critical race theory and Black feminism, its adoption by historical archaeologists remains limited. Intersectionality is useful for an archaeology of race riots because it provides a different lens for examining race and society. The perspective of intersectionality also speaks directly to more than a century of scholarship examining lynchings and race riots. A brief introduction to the literature demonstrates two alarming trends: the treatment of lynchings and race riots as separate phenomena and the inability or disinterest of previous research to satisfactorily connect past racial violence to modern social inequality. González-Tennant’s approach to researching the connections between past violence and modern inequality draws on works from a range of closely related disciplines to illuminate these connections.
D'Weston Haywood
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469643397
- eISBN:
- 9781469643410
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469643397.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter reinterprets the Great Migration as a call to manhood for black men led by the Crisis and, in particular, the Chicago Defender. Their promotion of the migration along these lines gave ...
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This chapter reinterprets the Great Migration as a call to manhood for black men led by the Crisis and, in particular, the Chicago Defender. Their promotion of the migration along these lines gave rise to the modern black press, as well as the personal quests of W. E. B. DuBois, founder of the Crisis, and Robert Abbott, founder of the Defender, to achieve their own manhood through newspaper publishing. Yet, unlike DuBois, Abbott deployed sensationalism in order to amplify his paper’s particular call to manhood, politicizing and en-gendering the migration through riveting rhetoric that asserted that urbanity was the new maker and marker of manhood over the emasculating south’s older models of manhood connected to land ownership and self-produced commodities. The Defender’s construction of an urban-based black manhood helped set the tone for emerging New Negro sensibilities. Additionally, the Defender’s use of a gendered sensationalism helped establish black newspapers’ role in framing racial advancement within masculine terms throughout the twentieth century black freedom struggle.Less
This chapter reinterprets the Great Migration as a call to manhood for black men led by the Crisis and, in particular, the Chicago Defender. Their promotion of the migration along these lines gave rise to the modern black press, as well as the personal quests of W. E. B. DuBois, founder of the Crisis, and Robert Abbott, founder of the Defender, to achieve their own manhood through newspaper publishing. Yet, unlike DuBois, Abbott deployed sensationalism in order to amplify his paper’s particular call to manhood, politicizing and en-gendering the migration through riveting rhetoric that asserted that urbanity was the new maker and marker of manhood over the emasculating south’s older models of manhood connected to land ownership and self-produced commodities. The Defender’s construction of an urban-based black manhood helped set the tone for emerging New Negro sensibilities. Additionally, the Defender’s use of a gendered sensationalism helped establish black newspapers’ role in framing racial advancement within masculine terms throughout the twentieth century black freedom struggle.
Elaine Frantz Parsons
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469625423
- eISBN:
- 9781469625447
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469625423.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
The reconstruction-era Ku-Klux Klan emerged as a solution to the problem of southern white defeat and black empowerment. Through Klan terror, white southern men tried both to reestablish their local ...
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The reconstruction-era Ku-Klux Klan emerged as a solution to the problem of southern white defeat and black empowerment. Through Klan terror, white southern men tried both to reestablish their local control of freedpeople and to position themselves as playing a role in the national future. Klan attacks targeted the confident and ambitious. They undermined black southerners’ claims to manhood, womanhood, and social and political competence. Ku-Klux intended for these attacks not only to kill or injure, but also to humiliate victims. Yet, since victims had some control over their response to attacks, and were usually the only ones able to publically describe the attack, they had an opportunity to undermine the messages their attackers hoped to convey. Reconstruction-era Ku-Klux worked to reestablish antebellum relationships of oppression, but they understood themselves as modern: Klan costumes drew on contemporary, northern ideas and tropes from the minstrel stage and urban bureaucratic life. Many northerners recognized this borrowing, found the Klan fascinating, and wrote about them in newspapers and other popular texts. As a terrorist movement, the Klan depended on the circulation of such texts both to spread fear among Republican southerners and to recruit new members. Many Klan attacks built upon preexisting local conflicts. Labelling an act of violence as “Klan” violence, however, abstracted it from its local context, defining it as translocal and political. It also invited state and federal governments to become involved in suppressing it. Klan violence, ironically, served to integrate rural southern communities into a broader national culture.Less
The reconstruction-era Ku-Klux Klan emerged as a solution to the problem of southern white defeat and black empowerment. Through Klan terror, white southern men tried both to reestablish their local control of freedpeople and to position themselves as playing a role in the national future. Klan attacks targeted the confident and ambitious. They undermined black southerners’ claims to manhood, womanhood, and social and political competence. Ku-Klux intended for these attacks not only to kill or injure, but also to humiliate victims. Yet, since victims had some control over their response to attacks, and were usually the only ones able to publically describe the attack, they had an opportunity to undermine the messages their attackers hoped to convey. Reconstruction-era Ku-Klux worked to reestablish antebellum relationships of oppression, but they understood themselves as modern: Klan costumes drew on contemporary, northern ideas and tropes from the minstrel stage and urban bureaucratic life. Many northerners recognized this borrowing, found the Klan fascinating, and wrote about them in newspapers and other popular texts. As a terrorist movement, the Klan depended on the circulation of such texts both to spread fear among Republican southerners and to recruit new members. Many Klan attacks built upon preexisting local conflicts. Labelling an act of violence as “Klan” violence, however, abstracted it from its local context, defining it as translocal and political. It also invited state and federal governments to become involved in suppressing it. Klan violence, ironically, served to integrate rural southern communities into a broader national culture.
Elaine Frantz Parsons
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469625423
- eISBN:
- 9781469625447
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469625423.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Klan attacks took on distinct cultural forms. Ku-Klux borrowed their costume and violent performance not only from local culture, but also from popular cultural tropes in national circulation and ...
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Klan attacks took on distinct cultural forms. Ku-Klux borrowed their costume and violent performance not only from local culture, but also from popular cultural tropes in national circulation and heavily featured in minstrelsy, burlesque, circus, and carnivals. In deliberately mimicking these cultural forms, they put themselves in conversation with the northern, urban centers where so much of the naturally circulating popular culture was produced. Many of the images Ku-Klux borrowed were already weighted with a host of meanings about race, gender, and social order. Ku-Klux imported these meanings into their attacks, which they frequently used to reinforce racist cultural narratives: depicting black victims as comically overembodied and lacking in integrity. Klan victims responded not only to the violence of their attacks but also to the cultural meanings embedded in them. Depending on their circumstances and strategy, they could try to save themselves suffering by performing the minstrel roles they understood to be expected. Or they could refuse to inhabit those roles, and instead use the attack itself, and their later narration of it, to challenge the assumptions inherent in the popular cultural tropes the Ku-Klux were mobilizing.Less
Klan attacks took on distinct cultural forms. Ku-Klux borrowed their costume and violent performance not only from local culture, but also from popular cultural tropes in national circulation and heavily featured in minstrelsy, burlesque, circus, and carnivals. In deliberately mimicking these cultural forms, they put themselves in conversation with the northern, urban centers where so much of the naturally circulating popular culture was produced. Many of the images Ku-Klux borrowed were already weighted with a host of meanings about race, gender, and social order. Ku-Klux imported these meanings into their attacks, which they frequently used to reinforce racist cultural narratives: depicting black victims as comically overembodied and lacking in integrity. Klan victims responded not only to the violence of their attacks but also to the cultural meanings embedded in them. Depending on their circumstances and strategy, they could try to save themselves suffering by performing the minstrel roles they understood to be expected. Or they could refuse to inhabit those roles, and instead use the attack itself, and their later narration of it, to challenge the assumptions inherent in the popular cultural tropes the Ku-Klux were mobilizing.
Lori A. Flores
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780300196962
- eISBN:
- 9780300216387
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300196962.003.0007
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
This chapter examines the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee's (UFWOC) 1970 strike in the Salinas Valley and the various groups of UFWOC allies and detractors involved. It first considers the ...
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This chapter examines the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee's (UFWOC) 1970 strike in the Salinas Valley and the various groups of UFWOC allies and detractors involved. It first considers the circumstances that led to the strike before discussing the strike in more detail. In particular, it analyzes the battle between Cesar Chavez's supporters, including farmworkers, and opponents as hundreds of incidents of violence erupted between the UFWOC and Teamsters Union during the strike's initial weeks. It also explores the various tactics employed by growers in response to the strike, the racial violence that erupted, the involvement of women such as Ethel Kennedy and Coretta Scott King, and the unprecedented cooperation seen between Mexican Americans and Mexicans.Less
This chapter examines the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee's (UFWOC) 1970 strike in the Salinas Valley and the various groups of UFWOC allies and detractors involved. It first considers the circumstances that led to the strike before discussing the strike in more detail. In particular, it analyzes the battle between Cesar Chavez's supporters, including farmworkers, and opponents as hundreds of incidents of violence erupted between the UFWOC and Teamsters Union during the strike's initial weeks. It also explores the various tactics employed by growers in response to the strike, the racial violence that erupted, the involvement of women such as Ethel Kennedy and Coretta Scott King, and the unprecedented cooperation seen between Mexican Americans and Mexicans.
Ivan Evans
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719079047
- eISBN:
- 9781781702208
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719079047.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This book deals with the inherent violence of race relations in two important countries that remain iconic expressions of white supremacy in the twentieth century. It does not just reconstruct the ...
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This book deals with the inherent violence of race relations in two important countries that remain iconic expressions of white supremacy in the twentieth century. It does not just reconstruct the era of violence, but contrasts the lynch culture of the American South to the bureaucratic culture of violence in South Africa. By contrasting mobs of rope-wielding white Southerners to the gun-toting policemen and administrators who formally defended white supremacy in South Africa, the book employs racial killing as an optic for examining the distinctive logic of the racial state in the two contexts. Combining the historian's eye for detail with the sociologist's search for overarching claims, it explores the systemic connections amongst three substantive areas to explain why contrasting traditions of racial violence took such firm root in the American South and South Africa.Less
This book deals with the inherent violence of race relations in two important countries that remain iconic expressions of white supremacy in the twentieth century. It does not just reconstruct the era of violence, but contrasts the lynch culture of the American South to the bureaucratic culture of violence in South Africa. By contrasting mobs of rope-wielding white Southerners to the gun-toting policemen and administrators who formally defended white supremacy in South Africa, the book employs racial killing as an optic for examining the distinctive logic of the racial state in the two contexts. Combining the historian's eye for detail with the sociologist's search for overarching claims, it explores the systemic connections amongst three substantive areas to explain why contrasting traditions of racial violence took such firm root in the American South and South Africa.
Melissa N. Stein
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816673025
- eISBN:
- 9781452952437
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816673025.003.0005
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
Chapter four argues that emasculation was central to scientific and popular discourse on lynching as well as its practice. For three decades, prominent U.S. physicians recommended surgical castration ...
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Chapter four argues that emasculation was central to scientific and popular discourse on lynching as well as its practice. For three decades, prominent U.S. physicians recommended surgical castration as an alternative to lynch violence. They lent scientific support for the "black rapist" trope, but positioned themselves as progressive reformers offering a medical solution.Less
Chapter four argues that emasculation was central to scientific and popular discourse on lynching as well as its practice. For three decades, prominent U.S. physicians recommended surgical castration as an alternative to lynch violence. They lent scientific support for the "black rapist" trope, but positioned themselves as progressive reformers offering a medical solution.
Elaine Frantz Parsons
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469625423
- eISBN:
- 9781469625447
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469625423.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Journalists and political leaders outside Union County responded to and represented its violence, and how Union County elites controlled their violence would be understood and appropriated by ...
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Journalists and political leaders outside Union County responded to and represented its violence, and how Union County elites controlled their violence would be understood and appropriated by outsiders. Labeling violence as “Ku-Klux,” and therefore as a fundamentally extra-local conflict, had powerful practical consequences: both Republicans and Democrats in Union County showed an initial reluctance to apply the label. By late 1870, however, both sides were deliberately using the term. Political leaders and the state and national press both showed great interest in Union events, sending a bizarre array of representatives from the outside, including detectives, gold miners, a couple dozen armed Bowery Boys, a former filibuster leader, and three U.S. Congressmen and their entourage, into the county to assess and intervene in events in the county.Less
Journalists and political leaders outside Union County responded to and represented its violence, and how Union County elites controlled their violence would be understood and appropriated by outsiders. Labeling violence as “Ku-Klux,” and therefore as a fundamentally extra-local conflict, had powerful practical consequences: both Republicans and Democrats in Union County showed an initial reluctance to apply the label. By late 1870, however, both sides were deliberately using the term. Political leaders and the state and national press both showed great interest in Union events, sending a bizarre array of representatives from the outside, including detectives, gold miners, a couple dozen armed Bowery Boys, a former filibuster leader, and three U.S. Congressmen and their entourage, into the county to assess and intervene in events in the county.
Harvard Sitkoff
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813125831
- eISBN:
- 9780813135526
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813125831.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter discusses the growth of power of Negroes and racial violence that occurred sometime during World War II. This may be because the government depended a lot on the cooperation of the ...
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This chapter discusses the growth of power of Negroes and racial violence that occurred sometime during World War II. This may be because the government depended a lot on the cooperation of the Negroes during World War II. It is noted however, that discrimination in the army and the lack of black combat units was still present, and these became the two most bitterly resented aspects of American racism during the war. By the mid-1940s the number of racial incidents slowly decreased, which convinced many people of the value of moderation. The growth of Negro political power also stimulated hope for change.Less
This chapter discusses the growth of power of Negroes and racial violence that occurred sometime during World War II. This may be because the government depended a lot on the cooperation of the Negroes during World War II. It is noted however, that discrimination in the army and the lack of black combat units was still present, and these became the two most bitterly resented aspects of American racism during the war. By the mid-1940s the number of racial incidents slowly decreased, which convinced many people of the value of moderation. The growth of Negro political power also stimulated hope for change.
