Class Notes from 2/14/19

Here are my class notes from today!
2/14/19
  1. Historical frame
    1. 1877-1918
      1. “Nadir”
        1. Lowpoint of rights for African-American people
    2. Spectacle lynching 1890’s
      1. Commodified in some ways
      2. Public and meant to make an example
        1. Not just punishment
      3. Refer to lynching chart
      4. Lynchings happen outside of justice system
        1. Distinction between murders vs execution vs lynching
      5. Why is it in the 1890s that African-American began to be lynched in so many disportionate numbers?
        1. Voter disenfranchisement
          1. Starting with 1890s, white policymakers and voters
            1. Have to segregate African Americans from voting because they will take over in numbers
            2. Black majority in the south
            3. Whites do not want to lose their supremacy over others
        2. Poll Tax Receipt
          1. You had to pay a couple dollars before you could vote
          2. Example on screen is $1
            1. It kept poor people from voting
          3. Grandfather clause
            1. If your grandfather owned land in 1863, then you were exempt
              1. White poor people get a passby
              2. Suppresses African-Americans because they were most likely enslaved
        3. De Jure -or- De facto
          1. Limiting African-American mobility
          2. Segregation produces racial difference
            1. Creates a hierarchy
        4. Rise of popular culture focused on segregation
          1. Baseball cards mocking African-Americans
            1. Showing them being unable to participate in activities upper middle class/wealthy white people do
              1. Heaving racialized
                1. Phenotypic traits of race exaggerated to show racial difference
                2. Having these characters doing things to make the claim that they are not like white people
        5. Aunt Jemima’s ad
          1. Exaggerated features that stand out
      6. All of these things together to create cultural formation or discursive formation
        1. Cultural ideas are never just produced in one place
        2. Every place that white americans went in 1890s it is telling them that African-Americans are inferior
      7. Masculinity and Lynching
        1. Manliness Issue
          1. Narrative that “American men are getting ‘soft’” idea circulating
            1. That they have lost something of the vigor and toughness
            2. Teddy Roosevelt
              1. Men need to go our and ride horses and kill animals
            3. First professional football game
              1. 1892 in Pittsburgh
            4. Lynching is tied up in questions of masculinity, fear of sexual access or lack of to white women’s bodies, and so on
    3. Focusing on Readings
      1. Amy Woods
        1. Page 74 quote
          1. Copy n paste
        2. Masculinity
          1. “Capable man”
        3. Immortalizing the act
          1. Page 76
            1. Sense of remembrance
            2. United whiteness that is orderly
            3. Power, pride, respect, status
            4. Propaganda as it a posed image
          2. Page 75
            1. Lynching photographs, in this sense, served to normalize and make socially acceptable, even aesthetically acceptable, the utter brutality of a lynching.
        4. Economic, sexual, cultural competition posed by African-Americans
          1. Lynching photos act to normalize lynching and the act of it
        5. Postcards to send to family and friends to show they participated
          1. Deepness of racism runs deep
          2. Peoples parents support it as well
            1. For them to be proud
          3. Fear causes people to want to be in the majority
        6. Three kind of photos of lynching
          1. Page 77-78
            1. “Over and over again, three types of images emerge: the lynching victims hanging body, disheveled and limp, alone in the frame; large crowds of spectators, taken from a distance; and, perhaps the most horrid, proud white men grouped around their lifeless victim”
          2. Hanging body
            1. Showing inferiority
          3. Crowd at distance
            1. Togetherness and pride
          4. Men with victim
            1. Showing unified South
          5. Racial hierarchy is clear through the circulation of the photograph
      2. Ida Wells
        1. Becomes an activist in 1892
          1. Three Black men open a grocery store that competes with white business
            1. They are lynched--one of them is her friend
          2. Astounded b the complacency of the white community during this time
        2. The risk she took to say this
          1. She is a Black women herself writing this in 1892
            1. She had to leave before she got lynched herself
      3. Discussion Questions to ponder:
        1. How is the notion of “civilization” related to her critique of lynching and its place in U.S. culture?
        2. How does Wells engage with masculinity and particularly white men?
          1. One thing we have talked about was that southern white men were doing this when masculinity was fraught and at risk and lynching we affirming masculinity
          2. Page 34-35
            1. Three excuses that white men used at this time to justify lynchings
              1. African-Americans are killing white men/other people
              2. African-Americans are planning a rebellion
              3. African-Americans are being killed to revenge what they did to the white women
          3. Asking why the white man is so complacent with what is going on in the South
            1. White men are justified because they are protecting white women and white establishment
              1. White chivalry
          4. Page 37-38
            1. “True chivalry respects all women”
            2. If you want to claim to be chivalrous, you have to be chivalrous to all women
            3. About a certain kind of manners and respect/politeness towards women and that kind of decorum
              1. Masculine duty to respect and protect women
            4. She is turning it on its head
              1. Let's talk about how you treat the women in your life
        3. View of South as a whole
          1. Calling white southern men cowards
        4. How do they change their excuses over time?
          1. Fear of Black domination
          2. The Black man’s Sexual appetite? Shouldn't it have been there all along if that is your argument? How did it just develop over 25 years?
          3. Questioning the white man’s credibility and their judgement?
            1. People can say all these things but are they really true? What accusations are true?
              1. Blindly following the status-quo
            2. Rhetorical strategy of her argument
              1. It directs a person to think are we doing this for the white reasons?
              2. Is this thought provoking for white men in the South?
                1. I think it is getting the African-American population starting to think about these things
                2. Her audience is definitely not Southern men
              3. “Nobody in this section of the country believes the old threadbare lie that Negro men rape white women.”
                1. Southern Horrors  Ida B. Wells
        5. Section with the names of victims of lynching
          1. You are forced to think about who they are
            1. Their families, children, mothers, brothers, etc
          2. Countering the culture that she is writing in
            1. They are not animals, they are human beings
              1. These are real people
              2. Giving them identity
          3. It is powerful and shows her seeking justice
        6. What does justice look like for Ida Wells?
          1. What does she want out of America?
            1. Acknowledgement of African-Americans as human beings- Black humanity
            2. Stop lying and come right out and saw how you really feel
              1. Strong hatred that runs deep
              2. White racism and rage
              3. Last page of Chapter 1 (page 39)
                  1. “The Negro might not have known…. Without form of law”
                  2. Civilization and its critique
                    1. We are thousands of years past when this should have been happening. USA is modern and claims to be the ‘pinnacle of civilization’
                      1. You have a problem that no one is willing to give a reasonable explanation
                    2. These are archaic acts
                      1. Can you remain silent and active?
                        1. We get outraged about injustice all over the world but when it happens in our own community, we do nothing about it.
                      2. What should we take from this book?
                        1. Call for action is still evident

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