Jumping The Color Line

Author : Susie Trenka
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2021-02-02
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780861969784

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Jumping the Color Line by Susie Trenka Pdf

From the first synchronized sound films of the late 1920s through the end of World War II, African American music and dance styles were ubiquitous in films. Black performers, however, were marginalized, mostly limited to appearing in "specialty acts" and various types of short films, whereas stardom was reserved for Whites. Jumping the Color Line discusses vernacular jazz dance in film as a focal point of American race relations. Looking at intersections of race, gender, and class, the book examines how the racialized and gendered body in film performs, challenges, and negotiates identities and stereotypes. Arguing for the transformative and subversive potential of jazz dance performance onscreen, the six chapters address a variety of films and performers, including many that have received little attention to date. Topics include Hollywood's first Black female star (Nina Mae McKinney), male tap dance "class acts" in Black-cast short films of the early 1930s, the film career of Black tap soloist Jeni LeGon, the role of dance in the Soundies jukebox shorts of the 1940s, cinematic images of the Lindy hop, and a series of teen films from the early 1940s that appealed primarily to young White fans of swing culture. With a majority of examples taken from marginal film forms, such as shorts and B movies, the book highlights their role in disseminating alternative images of racial and gender identities as embodied by dancers – images that were at least partly at odds with those typically found in major Hollywood productions.

Author : Sarah-Jane Mathieu
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2010-11-29
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0807899399

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North of the Color Line by Sarah-Jane Mathieu Pdf

North of the Color Line examines life in Canada for the estimated 5,000 blacks, both African Americans and West Indians, who immigrated to Canada after the end of Reconstruction in the United States. Through the experiences of black railway workers and their union, the Order of Sleeping Car Porters, Sarah-Jane Mathieu connects social, political, labor, immigration, and black diaspora history during the Jim Crow era. By World War I, sleeping car portering had become the exclusive province of black men. White railwaymen protested the presence of the black workers and insisted on a segregated workforce. Using the firsthand accounts of former sleeping car porters, Mathieu shows that porters often found themselves leading racial uplift organizations, galvanizing their communities, and becoming the bedrock of civil rights activism. Examining the spread of segregation laws and practices in Canada, whose citizens often imagined themselves as devoid of racism, Mathieu historicizes Canadian racial attitudes, and explores how black migrants brought their own sensibilities about race to Canada, participating in and changing political discourse there.

Author : Frank W. Sweet
Publisher : Backintyme
Page : 557 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : History
ISBN : 9780939479238

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Legal History of the Color Line by Frank W. Sweet Pdf

Annotation. This analysis of the nearly 300 appealed court cases that decided the "race" of individual Americans may be the most thorough study of the legal history of the U.S. color line yet published.

Author : Charles Waddell Chestnutt
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 197 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2013-01-03
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781625583420

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Stories of the Color Line by Charles Waddell Chestnutt Pdf

Chesnutt's stories were more complex than those of many of his contemporaries. He wrote about characters dealing with difficult issues of mixed race, "passing," illegitimacy, racial identities, and social place throughout his career. The issues were especially pressing during the social volatility of Reconstruction and late 19th-century southern society.

Author : Siobhan B. Somerville
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Culture in motion pictures
ISBN : 0822324431

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Queering the Color Line by Siobhan B. Somerville Pdf

The interconnected constructions of race and sexuality at the turn of the century.

Author : J. A. Rogers
Publisher : Wesleyan University Press
Page : 252 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2012-01-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780819575517

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Nature Knows No Color-Line by J. A. Rogers Pdf

The classic refutation of scientific racism from the renowned African American journalist and author of Africa’s Gift to America. In Nature Knows No Color-Line, originally published in 1952, historian Joel Augustus Rogers examines the origins of racial hierarchy and the color problem. Rogers was a humanist who believed that there were no scientifically evident racial divisions—all humans belong to one “race.” He believed that color prejudice generally evolved from issues of domination and power between two physiologically different groups. According to Rogers, color prejudice was then used a rationale for domination, subjugation and warfare. Societies developed myths and prejudices in order to pursue their own interests at the expense of other groups. This book argues that many instances of the contributions of black people had been left out of the history books, and gives many examples. “Most contemporary college students have never heard of J.A Rogers nor are they aware of his long journalistic career and pioneering archival research. Rogers committed his life to fighting against racism and he had a major influence on black print culture through his attempts to improve race relations in the United States and challenge white supremacist tracts aimed at disparaging the history and contributions of people of African descent to world civilizations.” —Thabiti Asukile, “Black International Journalism, Archival Research and Black Print Culture,” The Journal of African American History

Author : George Hutchinson
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 624 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2009-07-01
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780674038929

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In Search of Nella Larsen by George Hutchinson Pdf

Born to a Danish seamstress and a black West Indian cook in one of the Western Hemisphere's most infamous vice districts, Nella Larsen (1891-1964) lived her life in the shadows of America's racial divide. She wrote about that life, was briefly celebrated in her time, then was lost to later generations--only to be rediscovered and hailed by many as the best black novelist of her generation. In his search for Nella Larsen, the "mystery woman of the Harlem Renaissance," George Hutchinson exposes the truths and half-truths surrounding this central figure of modern literary studies, as well as the complex reality they mask and mirror. His book is a cultural biography of the color line as it was lived by one person who truly embodied all of its ambiguities and complexities. Author of a landmark study of the Harlem Renaissance, Hutchinson here produces the definitive account of a life long obscured by misinterpretations, fabrications, and omissions. He brings Larsen to life as an often tormented modernist, from the trauma of her childhood to her emergence as a star of the Harlem Renaissance. Showing the links between her experiences and her writings, Hutchinson illuminates the singularity of her achievement and shatters previous notions of her position in the modernist landscape. Revealing the suppressions and misunderstandings that accompany the effort to separate black from white, his book addresses the vast consequences for all Americans of color-line culture's fundamental rule: race trumps family.

Author : Beth Tompkins Bates
Publisher : UNC Press Books
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2012-09-24
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780807837450

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The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford by Beth Tompkins Bates Pdf

In the 1920s, Henry Ford hired thousands of African American men for his open-shop system of auto manufacturing. This move was a rejection of the notion that better jobs were for white men only. In The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford, Beth Tompkins Bates explains how black Detroiters, newly arrived from the South, seized the economic opportunities offered by Ford in the hope of gaining greater economic security. As these workers came to realize that Ford's anti-union "American Plan" did not allow them full access to the American Dream, their loyalty eroded, and they sought empowerment by pursuing a broad activist agenda. This, in turn, led them to play a pivotal role in the United Auto Workers' challenge to Ford's interests. In order to fully understand this complex shift, Bates traces allegiances among Detroit's African American community as reflected in its opposition to the Ku Klux Klan, challenges to unfair housing practices, and demands for increased and effective political participation. This groundbreaking history demonstrates how by World War II Henry Ford and his company had helped kindle the civil rights movement in Detroit without intending to do so.

Author : Leslie Bow
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 2010-04-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780814787106

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Partly Colored by Leslie Bow Pdf

Arkansas, 1943. The Deep South during the heart of Jim Crow-era segregation. A Japanese-American person boards a bus, and immediately is faced with a dilemma. Not white. Not black. Where to sit? By elucidating the experience of interstitial ethnic groups such as Mexican, Asian, and Native Americans—groups that are held to be neither black nor white—Leslie Bow explores how the color line accommodated—or refused to accommodate—“other” ethnicities within a binary racial system. Analyzing pre- and post-1954 American literature, film, autobiography, government documents, ethnography, photographs, and popular culture, Bow investigates the ways in which racially “in-between” people and communities were brought to heel within the South’s prevailing cultural logic, while locating the interstitial as a site of cultural anxiety and negotiation. Spanning the pre- to the post- segregation eras, Partly Colored traces the compelling history of “third race” individuals in the U.S. South, and in the process forces us to contend with the multiracial panorama that constitutes American culture and history.

Author : Mark Gevisser
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2009-03-31
Category : History
ISBN : 0230620205

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A Legacy of Liberation by Mark Gevisser Pdf

A gripping social history of South Africa's past and future and beautifully narrated by one of Africa's most esteemed journalists, From Struggle to Liberation sheds light on the future of the nation under a new regime. With unprecedented access to Thabo Mbeki and the top brass in the African National Congress, Mark Gevisser weaves a nuanced portrait of the black experience under apartheid. Revelations about the current president and the politics that continue to shape South Africa include: - Thabo Mbeki's difficult relationship with his own political activist and largely absent father Govan Mbeki, who was imprisoned on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela. - How the death of his son Kwanda in the diamond mines and the murder of his brother Jama directly affected his leadership and will continue to shape the governance of Africa for years to come. - The reasons behind Mbeki's puzzling refusal to admit that the HIV virus causes AIDS, which in South Africa claims 800 lives per day, and his support of corrupt governments such as Zimbabwe's. - Inside rivalry between Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, the populist leader destined to take over as president in 2009. This accessible account of a monumental period in world history is the definitive look at contemporary South Africa.

Author : Gregory Howard Williams
Publisher : Penguin
Page : 314 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 1996-02-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0452275334

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Life on the Color Line by Gregory Howard Williams Pdf

“Heartbreaking and uplifting… a searing book about race and prejudice in America… brims with insights that only someone who has lived on both sides of the racial divide could gain.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer “A triumph of storytelling as well as a triumph of spirit.”—Alex Kotlowitz, award-winning author of There Are No Children Here As a child in 1950s segregated Virginia, Gregory Howard Williams grew up believing he was white. But when the family business failed and his parents’ marriage fell apart, Williams discovered that his dark-skinned father, who had been passing as Italian-American, was half black. The family split up, and Greg, his younger brother, and their father moved to Muncie, Indiana, where the young boys learned the truth about their heritage. Overnight, Greg Williams became black. In this extraordinary and powerful memoir, Williams recounts his remarkable journey along the color line and illuminates the contrasts between the black and white worlds: one of privilege, opportunity and comfort, the other of deprivation, repression, and struggle. He tells of the hostility and prejudice he encountered all too often, from both blacks and whites, and the surprising moments of encouragement and acceptance he found from each. Life on the Color Line is a uniquely important book. It is a wonderfully inspiring testament of purpose, perseverance, and human triumph. Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

Author : Peter Claver Fine
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 216 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2021-01-14
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781474299541

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The Design of Race by Peter Claver Fine Pdf

Peter Fine's innovative study traces the development of a mass visual culture in the United States, focusing on how new visual technologies played a part in embedding racialized ideas about African Americans, and how whiteness was privileged within modernist ideals of visual form. Fine considers the visual and material manifestations of this process through the history of three important technologies of the art of mechanical reproduction – typography, lithography, and photography, and then moves on to consider how racialized representation has been configured and contested within contemporary film and television, fine art and digital design.

Author : American Folklife Center
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 138 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Folklore
ISBN : IND:30000107288460

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Folklife Center News by American Folklife Center Pdf

Author : Mary Miley
Publisher : Severn House/ORIM
Page : 254 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2016-12-01
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781780108209

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Renting Silence by Mary Miley Pdf

In 1920s Hollywood, Mary Pickford’s script girl is out to solve a murder with “a little sparkle [and] some wily Prohibition-era shenanigans . . . a great read” (Booklist). Former vaudevillian Jessie Beckett has found work as a script girl—with a sideline in sleuthing—at Pickford-Fairbanks Studios, run by the silent film stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. When actress Ruby Glynn is wrongly convicted of murder, Pickford asks Jessie to help clear her friend’s name. But it won’t be easy. The victim was found stabbed in her bedroom with Ruby lying unconscious on the floor, holding a bloody knife. Jessie’s investigation sends her back through the Midwest vaudeville circuit, where she encounters old friends, new dangers, and her sometime-beau David seemingly involved in some shady dealings. Now it’ll take all her wits and ingenuity to find the killer without accidentally playing her own death scene. “With a well-developed and surprising plot twist, an appealing, resourceful amateur detective, and fascinating period details, this entertaining historical will delight fans of Old Hollywood.” —Library Journal

Author : Mark Cantor
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 2077 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2023-04-19
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781476646428

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The Soundies by Mark Cantor Pdf

The 1940s saw a brief audacious experiment in mass entertainment: a jukebox with a screen. Patrons could insert a dime, then listen to and watch such popular entertainers as Nat "King" Cole, Gene Krupa, Cab Calloway or Les Paul. A number of companies offered these tuneful delights, but the most successful was the Mills Novelty Company and its three-minute musical shorts called Soundies. This book is a complete filmography of 1,880 Soundies: the musicians heard and seen on screen, recording and filming dates, arrangers, soloists, dancers, entertainment trade reviews and more. Additional filmographies cover more than 80 subjects produced by other companies. There are 125 photos taken on film sets, along with advertising images and production documents. More than 75 interviews narrate the firsthand experiences and recollections of Soundies directors and participants. Forty years before MTV, the Soundies were there for those who loved the popular music of the 1940s. This was truly "music for the eyes."