Tag Archives: Race

Number 64 (2018)DOI 10.18422/64-04, , , , ,

04
Stage Rights: Performing Masculinity in the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

by Hollie A. Teague

Scholars and history buffs have been experiencing a renewed interest in the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, which resulted in the deaths of as many as three hundred people and destroyed the wealthiest black community in America. This article is not intended to recite well-told histories of the ‘riot,’ or to reveal newly found information. Rather, this work is an attempt to layer into the analysis of the Tulsa Race Riot sociological considerations of gender, with a specific focus on how white men and black men performed their interpretations of masculinity. Attempting to defend and/or lay claim to the benefits of traditional American manhood, white and black male Tulsans engaged in a direct competition steeped in race, class, and gender. So far, studies have focused mostly on race and class. A gender analysis reveals a nuanced yet powerful display of the acquisition, acceptance, and assertion of historic notions of race, authority, strength, and manhood in the Jim Crow South.

Continue reading →
Number 64 (2018)DOI 10.18422/64-01, , , ,

01
Martin Luther King, Jr. and America’s Fourth Revolution: The Poor People’s Campaign at Fifty

by James Freeman and Peter Kolozi

This essay traces the development of King’s thought and organizational strategies as he came to realize the successes of the first half of the 1960’s civil rights campaigns would not come to fruition unless he was able to mobilize a broader movement built on class as well as racial equality. These efforts culminated in the Poor People’s Campaign in June 1968. King, from 1965 until 1968, struggled to engineer the nation’s willingness to “address” racial inequality into a willingness to realize the injustice, oppression, and anti-democratic nature of poverty as well. A consideration of how King’s class-conscious thought evolved, its vision and ultimate failure in the summer of 1968, have importance today. To understand the history, strategy, and potential of his faith, theory and conviction to challenge capitalism and embrace class as a social movement category is to re-engage King’s consciousness and do justice to his legacy. We conclude with a brief consideration of King’s legacy in the context of contemporary struggles for equality.

Continue reading →
Number 59 (2015)DOI 10.18422/59-05, , ,

05
Commemoration, Race, and World War II: History and Civil Rights at the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site

by Renée Ater

History and civil rights are intertwined at the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site at Moton Field in Tuskegee, Alabama. Moton Field was a training flight facility for African American pilot candidates in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, operating from 1941–45. Through the extant buildings and interpretive exhibits, the National Park Service commemorates the Tuskegee Airmen’s contributions to World War II, recognizing the first African American military aviators and their struggle for civil rights during the 1940s.

Continue reading →
Number 54 (2010)DOI 10.18422/54-04, , ,

04
Race and Place: Hollywood’s Vision of Urban Youth in Los Angeles Film

by David E. James and Marika Piday-Warren

This paper examines films about youth of the late 1980s and 1990s in Los Angeles. While focusing on the analytical categories of space and race, the paper underscores the importance of historicizing and contextualizing the genre. Thus, it stresses the significance of successive waves of different ethnic immigration and argues that these created distinct enclaves, many of them internally homogenous in terms of race and class. The distinct enclaves both prepared the ground for the formation of the polynucleated and decentered modern megalopolis and influenced Hollywood’s vision of urban youth.

Continue reading →
Number 53 (2009)DOI 10.18422/53-02, ,

02
Abraham Lincoln’s Attitudes on Slavery and Race

by Jörg Nagler

The life of Abraham Lincoln coincided with dramatic societal transformations that shaped the future of the United States. In the center of these developments stood the question whether that nation could continue to grow with the system of slavery or not. Inherently linked to an issue that almost dissolved the nation was the problem of racism and the future of race relations after emancipation. To examine Lincoln’s attitudes on slavery and race opens a window for us to look at his own struggles concerning these issues, but at the same time at the political and cultural contentions at large of a nation that he helped to save as President during the American Civil War. His legacy as the Great Emancipator, liberating over four million slaves, has generated a controversial debate on Lincoln’s position towards race and racism.

Continue reading →
Number 51 (2008)DOI 10.18422/51-05, , ,

05
The Reflection of Race and Law in African American Literature

by Peter Schneck

Since the law has been crucial in defining and delineating the dimensions of African American experience both in slavery and in freedom, the encounter with the American legal system and its representatives has left a strong imprint on African American cultural and literary memory and expression. The article sketches out a few aspects and features which characterize the reflection of law and race in African American culture and literature.

Continue reading →