Jim Crow's Counterculture

Jim Crow's Counterculture PDF Author: R. A. Lawson
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 080713810X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
In the late nineteenth century, black musicians in the lower Mississippi Valley, chafing under the social, legal, and economic restrictions of Jim Crow, responded with a new musical form -- the blues. In Jim Crow's Counterculture, R. A. Lawson offers a cultural history of blues musicians in the segregation era, explaining how by both accommodating and resisting Jim Crow life, blues musicians created a counterculture to incubate and nurture ideas of black individuality and citizenship. These individuals, Lawson shows, collectively demonstrate the African American struggle during the early twentieth century. Derived from the music of the black working class and popularized by commercially successful songwriter W. C. Handy, early blues provided a counterpoint to white supremacy by focusing on an anti-work ethic that promoted a culture of individual escapism -- even hedonism -- and by celebrating the very culture of sex, drugs, and violence that whites feared. According to Lawson, blues musicians such as Charley Patton and Muddy Waters drew on traditions of southern black music, including call and response forms, but they didn't merely sing of a folk past. Instead, musicians saw blues as a way out of economic subservience. Lawson chronicles the major historical developments that changed the Jim Crow South and thus the attitudes of the working-class blacks who labored in that society. The Great Migration, the Great Depression and New Deal, and two World Wars, he explains, shaped a new consciousness among southern blacks as they moved north, fought overseas, and gained better-paid employment. The "me"-centered mentality of the early blues musicians increasingly became "we"-centered as these musicians sought to enter mainstream American life by promoting hard work and patriotism. Originally drawing the attention of only a few folklorists and music promoters, popular black musicians in the 1940s such as Huddie Ledbetter and Big Bill Broonzy played music that increasingly reached across racial lines, and in the process gained what segregationists had attempted to deny them: the identity of American citizenship. By uncovering the stories of artists who expressed much in their music but left little record in traditional historical sources, Jim Crow's Counterculture offers a fresh perspective on the historical experiences of black Americans and provides a new understanding of the blues: a shared music that offered a message of personal freedom to repressed citizens.

Jim Crow's Counterculture

Jim Crow's Counterculture PDF Author: R. A. Lawson
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 080713810X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the late nineteenth century, black musicians in the lower Mississippi Valley, chafing under the social, legal, and economic restrictions of Jim Crow, responded with a new musical form -- the blues. In Jim Crow's Counterculture, R. A. Lawson offers a cultural history of blues musicians in the segregation era, explaining how by both accommodating and resisting Jim Crow life, blues musicians created a counterculture to incubate and nurture ideas of black individuality and citizenship. These individuals, Lawson shows, collectively demonstrate the African American struggle during the early twentieth century. Derived from the music of the black working class and popularized by commercially successful songwriter W. C. Handy, early blues provided a counterpoint to white supremacy by focusing on an anti-work ethic that promoted a culture of individual escapism -- even hedonism -- and by celebrating the very culture of sex, drugs, and violence that whites feared. According to Lawson, blues musicians such as Charley Patton and Muddy Waters drew on traditions of southern black music, including call and response forms, but they didn't merely sing of a folk past. Instead, musicians saw blues as a way out of economic subservience. Lawson chronicles the major historical developments that changed the Jim Crow South and thus the attitudes of the working-class blacks who labored in that society. The Great Migration, the Great Depression and New Deal, and two World Wars, he explains, shaped a new consciousness among southern blacks as they moved north, fought overseas, and gained better-paid employment. The "me"-centered mentality of the early blues musicians increasingly became "we"-centered as these musicians sought to enter mainstream American life by promoting hard work and patriotism. Originally drawing the attention of only a few folklorists and music promoters, popular black musicians in the 1940s such as Huddie Ledbetter and Big Bill Broonzy played music that increasingly reached across racial lines, and in the process gained what segregationists had attempted to deny them: the identity of American citizenship. By uncovering the stories of artists who expressed much in their music but left little record in traditional historical sources, Jim Crow's Counterculture offers a fresh perspective on the historical experiences of black Americans and provides a new understanding of the blues: a shared music that offered a message of personal freedom to repressed citizens.

The World of Jim Crow America [2 volumes]

The World of Jim Crow America [2 volumes] PDF Author: Steven A. Reich
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 627

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Book Description
This two-volume set is a thematically-arranged encyclopedia covering the social, political, and material culture of America during the Jim Crow Era. What was daily life really like for ordinary African American people in Jim Crow America, the hundred-year period of enforced legal segregation that began immediately after the Civil War and continued until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965? What did they eat, wear, believe, and think? How did they raise their children? How did they interact with government? What did they value? What did they do for fun? This Daily Life encyclopedia explores the lives of average people through the examination of social, cultural, and material history. Supported by the most current research, the multivolume set examines social history topics—including family, political, religious, and economic life—as it illuminates elements of a society's emotional life, interactions, opinions, views, beliefs, intimate relationships, and connections between individuals and the greater world. It is broken up into topical sections, each dealing with a different aspect of cultural life. Each section opens with an introductory essay, followed by A–Z entries on various aspects of that topic.

Overground Railroad

Overground Railroad PDF Author: Candacy A. Taylor
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1683356578
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
This historical exploration of the Green Book offers “a fascinating [and] sweeping story of black travel within Jim Crow America across four decades” (The New York Times Book Review). Published from 1936 to 1966, the Green Book was hailed as the “black travel guide to America.” At that time, it was very dangerous and difficult for African-Americans to travel because they couldn’t eat, sleep, or buy gas at most white-owned businesses. The Green Book listed hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and other businesses that were safe for black travelers. It was a resourceful and innovative solution to a horrific problem. It took courage to be listed in the Green Book, and Overground Railroad celebrates the stories of those who put their names in the book and stood up against segregation. Author Candacy A. Taylor shows the history of the Green Book, how we arrived at our present historical moment, and how far we still have to go when it comes to race relations in America. A New York Times Notable Book of 2020

Elizabeth Catlett: Art for Social Justice

Elizabeth Catlett: Art for Social Justice PDF Author: Klare Scarborough
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0988999951
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 66

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Book Description


Rough Tactics

Rough Tactics PDF Author: Mark A. Johnson
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496832868
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
In Rough Tactics: Black Performance in Political Spectacles, 1877–1932, author Mark A. Johnson examines three notable cases of Black participation in the spectacles of politics: the 1885–1898 local-option prohibition contests of Atlanta and Macon, Georgia; the United Confederate Veterans conflict with the Musicians’ Union prior to the 1903 UCV Reunion in New Orleans; and the 1909 Memphis mayoral election featuring Edward Hull Crump and W. C. Handy. Through these case studies, Johnson explains how white politicians and Black performers wielded and manipulated racist stereotypes and Lost Cause mythology to achieve their respective goals. Ultimately, Johnson portrays the vibrant, exuberant political culture of the New South and the roles played by both Black and white southerners. During the nadir of race relations in the United States South from 1877 to 1932, African Americans faced segregation, disfranchisement, and lynching. Among many forms of resistance, African Americans used their musical and theatrical talents to challenge white supremacy, attain economic opportunity, and transcend segregation. In Rough Tactics, Johnson argues that African Americans, especially performers, retooled negative stereotypes and segregation laws to their advantage. From 1877 to 1932, African Americans spoke at public rallies, generated enthusiasm with music, linked party politics to the memory of the Civil War, honored favorable candidates, and openly humiliated their opposition.

Time in the Blues

Time in the Blues PDF Author: Julia Simon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190666552
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Immediate and spontaneous, the blues focuses on the present moment, creating an experience of time for performer and listener. Time in the Blues offers an interdisciplinary analysis of the forms of temporality produced by and reflected in the blues within the historical context of Jim Crow segregation, sharecropping, racist violence, and migration.

Freedom's Coming

Freedom's Coming PDF Author: Paul Harvey
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469606429
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
In a sweeping analysis of religion in the post-Civil War and twentieth-century South, Freedom's Coming puts race and culture at the center, describing southern Protestant cultures as both priestly and prophetic: as southern formal theology sanctified dominant political and social hierarchies, evangelical belief and practice subtly undermined them. The seeds of subversion, Paul Harvey argues, were embedded in the passionate individualism, exuberant expressive forms, and profound faith of believers in the region. Harvey explains how black and white religious folk within and outside of mainstream religious groups formed a southern "evangelical counterculture" of Christian interracialism that challenged the theologically grounded racism pervasive among white southerners and ultimately helped to end Jim Crow in the South. Moving from the folk theology of segregation to the women who organized the Montgomery bus boycott, from the hymn-inspired freedom songs of the 1960s to the influence of black Pentecostal preachers on Elvis Presley, Harvey deploys cultural history in fresh and innovative ways and fills a decades-old need for a comprehensive history of Protestant religion and its relationship to the central question of race in the South for the postbellum and twentieth-century period.

Yoknapatawpha Blues

Yoknapatawpha Blues PDF Author: Tim A. Ryan
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 080716027X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
During the 1920s and 1930s, Mississippi produced two of the most significant influences upon twentieth-century culture: the modernist fiction of William Faulkner and the recorded blues songs of African American musicians like Charley Patton, Geeshie Wiley, and Robert Johnson. In Yoknapatawpha Blues, the first book examining both Faulkner and the music of the south, Tim A. Ryan identifies provocative parallels of theme and subject in diverse regional genres and texts. Placing Faulkner's literary texts and prewar country blues song lyrics on equal footing, Ryan illuminates the meanings of both in new and unexpected ways. He provides close analysis of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 in Faulkner's "Old Man" and Patton's "High Water Everywhere"; racial violence in the story "That Evening Sun" and Wiley's "Last Kind Words Blues"; and male sexual dysfunction in Sanctuary and Johnson's "Dead Shrimp Blues." This interdisciplinary study reveals how the characters of Yoknapatawpha County and the protagonists in blues songs similarly strive to assert themselves in a threatening and oppressive world. By emphasizing the modernism found in blues music and the echoes of black vernacular culture in Faulkner's writing, Yoknapatawpha Blues links elucidates the impact of both Faulkner's fiction and roots music on the culture of the modern South, and of the nation.

After August

After August PDF Author: Patrick Maley
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813943027
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
Critics have long suggested that August Wilson, who called blues "the best literature we have as black Americans," appropriated blues music for his plays. After August insists instead that Wilson’s work is direct blues expression. Patrick Maley argues that Wilson was not a dramatist importing blues music into his plays; he was a bluesman, expressing a blues ethos through drama. Reading Wilson’s American Century Cycle alongside the cultural history of blues music, as well as Wilson’s less discussed work—his interviews, the polemic speech "The Ground on Which I Stand," and his memoir play How I Learned What I Learned—Maley shows how Wilson’s plays deploy the blues technique of call-and-response, attempting to initiate a dialogue with his audience about how to be black in America. After August further contends that understanding Wilson as a bluesman demands a reinvestigation of his forebears and successors in American drama, many of whom echo his deep investment in social identity crafting. Wilson’s dramaturgical pursuit of culturally sustainable black identity sheds light on Tennessee Williams’s exploration of oppressive limits on masculine sexuality and Eugene O’Neill’s treatment of psychologically corrosive whiteness. Today, the contemporary African American playwrights Katori Hall and Tarell Alvin McCraney repeat and revise Wilson’s methods, exploring the fraught and fertile terrain of racial, gender, and sexual identity. After August makes a significant contribution to the scholarship on Wilson and his undeniable impact on American drama.

Hot Stuff

Hot Stuff PDF Author: Alice Echols
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393338916
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
Alice Echols reveals the ways in which disco transformed popular music, propelling it into new sonic territory and influencing rap, techno, and trance. She probes the complex relationship between disco and the era's major movements: gay liberation, feminism, and African American rights. You won't say "disco sucks" as disco thumps back to life in this pulsating look at the culture and politics that gave rise to the music.