scholarly journals Defying Jim Crow: African American community development and the struggle for racial equality in New Orleans 1900-1960

2015 ◽  
Vol 52 (12) ◽  
pp. 52-6567-52-6567
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Community Development ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Racial Equality ◽  
African American Community

From the Bamboula to the Baby Dolls

Walking Raddy ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 89-108
Author(s):  
Jennifer Atkins
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
West African ◽  
African American Community ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
African Dance ◽  
Twentieth Century Music ◽  
West African Dance ◽  
Baby Doll

Baby Dolls embodied the rambunctious, ambulatory dance practices of New Orleans' African-American community, playing with ragtime dancing, a style in conversation with early twentieth century music. Baby Doll dancing referenced their contemporary situation, empowering them through ribald street jaunts full of dynamism, while also relating to other cultural practices like jazz funerals and connecting them to a historical legacy that traced back to Congo Square (and earlier). Essential to Congo Square, where the Bamboula dance featured prominently, was that West African dance aesthetics persevered but also blended with sociocultural ideas influenced by its New Orleans context. Improvisation was key. Dancing, whether in Congo Square or ragtime style, highlighted spontaneity and a spirited—even competitive—style that cultivated agency while acknowledging a communal presence. These moments (and movement) were vibrant, illuminating Baby Dolls as innovators within a rich, cultural tradition that left troubles behind as liveliness surged through their dancing processions.

The “Hollow Prospect” of Integration

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward G. Goetz
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Community Development ◽  
Black Power ◽  
The Other ◽  
African American Community ◽  
Fair Housing ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The One ◽  
The U.S

This chapter describes the tension between integration and community development from the 1940s through the end of the 1960s. It describes the conflict within the African-American community between efforts to achieve integration on the one hand and building power and capacity within the community on the other. It describes the emergence and evolution of the fair housing movement in the U.S. Finally, the ways in which this conflict played out during the civil rights and Black Power eras is highlighted.

Negro Heroines

2020 ◽  
pp. 48-76
Author(s):  
Khary Oronde Polk
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Yellow Fever ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
African American Community ◽  
Citizenship Rights ◽  
Cuban American ◽  
Women Volunteers ◽  
The Law

This chapter examines the role Black women volunteers played as immune nurses in the Spanish-Cuban-American War. To enlist black women’s care labor in the Cuban conflict, army physicians relied on the myth of the plantation nurse, a figure whose biological and thus racial immunity from yellow fever recalled forms of gendered subordination and sacrifice ritualized in U.S. slavery. Black leaders like Namahyoka Curtis helped to recruit immune nurses in New Orleans in the hope that their performances of patriotic service would secure greater citizenship rights for the greater African American community. The experiences of the nurses before, during, and after the conflict offer a counter historiography of the war, and shows how Black women self-consciously presented themselves as matrons of respectability whose labor and sacrifice entitled them to fair and equal treatment under the law.

Origin Stories 1941–1947

2020 ◽  
pp. 39-70
Author(s):  
Kevin Whitehead
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Early Research ◽  
African American Community ◽  
Direct Influence ◽  
George Gershwin ◽  
Origin Stories ◽  
Stormy Weather ◽  
Rhapsody In Blue

This chapter examines 1940s jazz films that depict the early days of jazz and its spread from the African American community to white musicians and audiences. These films are placed in the context of early research into the music’s origins, and of the 1940s dixieland revival. Two films feature child prodigies. Parallels between the plots of 1942’s Syncopation and 1947’s New Orleans are highlighted, and the ways they depict the closing of New Orleans’ Storyville prostitution district are compared. The George Gershwin biopic Rhapsody in Blue erases the direct influence of African American musicians on Gershwin’s development as composer. The 1943 black musical Stormy Weather is briefly discussed, noting its portrayal of ragtime-to-jazz bandleader James Reese Europe.

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