bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Community-Based, Civic Unionism during the Height of the Civil Rights Era
Authors: Phillips Lisa
Published: May 2017

This concluding chapter examines the changed role labor unions, especially those on the left end of the political spectrum, took during the civil rights era—having gone from leading the fight for racial equality to immersing the contest for better jobs into the larger civil rights movement that was underway. The NAACP, the CIO, the NNLC, and District 65/DPO may have agreed on the basic fundamentals of racial equality but they certainly did not agree on how to achieve it. Local 65's version of community-based, civic unionism, one that was designed to confront the discriminatory manifestations of the capitalist, “for-profit” system, was subsumed into the larger civil rights-era struggles. The overt capitalist critique all but vanished, and for low-wage workers, that critique was what rendered their existence as part of the never ending supply of cheap labor visible.
Media Capital
Authors: Wallace Aurora
Published: May 2017

In a declaration of the ascendance of the American media industry, nineteenth-century press barons in New York City helped to invent the skyscraper, a quintessentially American icon of progress and aspiration. Early newspaper buildings in the country's media capital were designed to communicate both commercial and civic ideals, provide public space and prescribe discourse, and speak to class and mass in equal measure. This book illustrates how the media have continued to use the city as a space in which to inscribe and assert their power. With a unique focus on corporate headquarters as embodiments of the values of the press and as signposts for understanding media culture, this book demonstrates the mutually supporting relationship between the media and urban space. It considers how architecture contributed to the power of the press, the nature of the reading public, the commercialization of media, and corporate branding in the media industry. Tracing the rise and concentration of the media industry in New York City from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, the book analyzes physical and discursive space, as well as labor, technology, and aesthetics, to understand the entwined development of the mass media and late capitalism.
News Capital
Authors: Wallace Aurora
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the first two papers of the penny press of the 1830s, the New York Sun and the New York Herald, through their transition from tiny four-sheet bulletins printed out of cramped rookeries to important urban institutions with increasingly immodest architectural ambitions, giving new city inhabitants signposts on the landscape that recalled both a recognizable old world and reassurances of the new. The city and the newspapers shared a common set of values—industrial capitalism, specialization of labor, geographic concentration, and an intricate and specialized economic structure—that materialized in the form that media architecture began to adopt. The parallel development of the city and the newspaper industry shows their forms coming to mirror each other in the segmentation of neighborhoods and news sections.
Baseball in Nikkei America
Authors: Regalado Samuel O.
Published: May 2017

This chapter explains the significance of baseball among the Nikkei, or the Japanese diaspora, in the United States. Throughout the history of their people in the United States, the national pastime resonated strongly among the Japanese from the time that its sojourners, the Issei, came to America to that of the Yonsei, the fourth generation. And, much more than a recreational activity, the game commanded respect as it grew to become part of their heritage. Baseball, as they organized and played it, also crossed geographical and generation boundaries. Rooted in the land of their forefathers, the Nikkei resurrected it in the American communities where they landed. “Their baseball” was metropolitan and rural and employed as a means to network with kin in other regions, and also shaped and demonstrated the Japanese American identity in profound ways.
Barbed Wire Baseball
Authors: Regalado Samuel O.
Published: May 2017

This chapter describes the uncertain fate of the Nikkei baseball community at the onset of World War II. During this time the Nikkei community was the portrait of a dual existence: an isolated enclave that struggled to find balance between the Japanese spirit drawn from its past and an unconditional duty to display its loyalty to the United States. Japanese American baseball in this period exemplified the Nikkei conundrum. Designed to give its youth an opportunity to play the national pastime in a secure and controlled environment, leaders of their leagues rarely omitted any display that spoke to American patriotism. Yet, apart from a few teams and players, the entire structure of Nikkei baseball existed in virtual isolation from the very group with whom they hoped to someday fuse.
The Little Goat
Authors: Welsh Mary Sue
Published: May 2017

This chapter details events after Edna Phillips' acceptance as a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Phillips did not hear another word about her audition for over a month. Then, toward the end of February 1930, she got a call from the office of Arthur Judson, manager of the Philadelphia Orchestra, telling her to report to his office immediately after her Curtis Symphony Orchestra rehearsal. Upon arriving at the Packard Building she was immediately shown into the office of Judson, who did not seem at all pleased to see her. Frowning, the imposing impresario motioned for her to step into his office and pointed to a contract on his desk. “Sign here,” he commanded. “You're taking Vincent Fanelli's (the principal harpist) place”.
Keeping Up with the Speed Kings
Authors: Welsh Mary Sue
Published: May 2017

This chapter describes the decision of Edna's mother to move to Philadelphia to support her daughter's new career. She rented a small townhouse at 1910 Panama Street for the two of them and her youngest daughter, Peggy, who was attending Beaver College (known today as Arcadia University), just northwest of Philadelphia in the suburb of Glenside. The chapter also details Edna's first rehearsal with the orchestra on September 29, 1930. She knew that she might face resistance from some of the men of the orchestra, but the wave of hostility that came at her was a shock. It was so palpable it felt like a slap. Later she discovered that the men were angry about more than just the fact that a woman had invaded their private domain. They were also upset that Vincent Fanelli had been replaced so precipitously after he developed a problem in his right hand.
On to Fantasia
Authors: Welsh Mary Sue
Published: May 2017

This chapter details Eugene Ormandy's assumption of the role as co-conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra in the fall of 1936. According to Phillips, if Ormandy, who was to lead the orchestra for twenty-two weeks that season while Stokowski would be there for only six, felt overwhelmed, he didn't show it. Outwardly unbowed by Stoki's renown or the excellence of the players, he picked up the reins in a direct, unassuming, but very professional manner. Willing to work terrifically hard, he combined an impeccable sense of intonation with a powerful memory that enabled him to memorize scores in record time. His evident abilities calmed the fears of those in the orchestra who worried that he might not be up to the job, and the players responded well to his leadership, at least for a while.
War Stories
Authors: Welsh Mary Sue
Published: May 2017

This chapter details events in the life Edna Phillips during World War II. In the summer of 1942, Sam Rosenbaum entered the army as a major. Not long before Sam left, Phillips received a call from maestro Eugene Ormandy. Lynne Wainwright, her replacement as first harpist in the orchestra, had suddenly resigned her position, leaving Ormandy with little time to find a replacement. Would Phillips consider coming back to the orchestra? Surprised by the call, she hesitated. Sam, however, knew that a lonely life lay ahead for Edna with him overseas and urged her to accept Ormandy's offer. However, there was one problem Sam had not foreseen, and that was Eugene Ormandy. Very soon after Sam left, the maestro began, in Phillips's words, “to lay siege” to her, sending passionate looks in her direction during rehearsals, offering her special favors, and generally embarrassing her with his ill-disguised ardor. It was obvious to the whole orchestra what he was up to.
The Mexamerican
Authors: Rondinone Troy
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses the background of Gaspar “Indio” Ortega. Perhaps the oldest aphorism of boxing is that poverty breeds pugilists. This is certainly the case for Ortega. His story begins in the dusty border town of Tijuana, which sits perched on the edge of the wealthiest nation in the world. From atop the hill above his neighborhood of Colonia Morelos, Tijuana, a young Gaspar Benitez at midcentury could gaze out across the border and over the sprawling farmlands beyond and wonder what life was like in Los Estados Unidos. Gaspar developed an interest in boxing in his teens. In 1950 he turned pro; he was fourteen years old. In 1953 Indio met American manager Nick Corby who would change his life forever.
Changing Times
Authors: Rondinone Troy
Published: May 2017

This chapter details events following ABC's announcement in December 1963 that it would be taking boxing off the air. What would fill the TV boxing void? In February 1964, an obvious choice got official recognition. Football would be taking boxing's place. According to an ABC spokesman, starting September 25, just after boxing left, the network would begin playing a series of five NFL games on Friday nights. Gaspar Ortega would spend 1964 carrying out an epic campaign to become the busiest boxer in history. The motto, “anywhere, anyplace,” became his creed. He mainly fought along the border in Mexico, but he also trotted the globe. He fought Stan Harrington twice more in Honolulu. He battled Willie Ross at the Castaways Hotel in Vegas. He took on undefeated welter contender François Pavilla in Paris and lost, but he made it to the base of the Eiffel Tower, a wide-eyed tourist amidst the visiting throngs. On September 11, 1964, ABC aired the last Friday Night Fight.
Lord, It Just Won’t Stop!
Authors: Comentale Edward P.
Published: May 2017

This chapter shows that the blues performer—a persistent template for musical identity in America—has entered the modern scene only under threat of having his or her individuality destroyed, as emancipation is immediately troubled by both the wild sensorium of modern life and the more direct threats of Jim Crow. But instead of romanticizing the blues musician as hapless victim or romantic drifter, this chapter depicts the blues performer as a proto-modernist, an avant-garde performer, whose song adopts and adapts the formal structures of the Delta economy and its evolving landscape, using them to sustain their own career and to provide a new set of stances and attitudes for a working public caught in the grip of industrial change. The final part of the chapter shows how these processes were extended by the production and circulation of “race records.”
( )
Authors: Comentale Edward P.
Published: May 2017

This chapter concerns the formal silence that pervades pop music in the late modern era, which both allows for greater experimentation in music and preserves, in the face of complete commercial appropriation, the utopian possibility of some more subtle form of engagement with modernity. It argues that Buddy Holly's music represents the moment when popular music became “pop music,” and moreover that both John Cage and Holly pursued silence to the point of freeing song (and specifically lyrical song) from the expressive demands of identity and tradition. The chapter then draws from Jacques Derrida's Speech and Phenomena to show that Holly's vocals work via a process of “indication” rather than “expression” and thus point toward the very world that they fail to name or include. Finally, this chapter links Holly's music—and pop music in general—to the Pop Art movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Animating Gandhi
Authors: Davé Shilpa S.
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses how the Indian American character is the accent or the suburban “sidekick” character to the dominant narratives of young, white masculinity that are prevalent in American culture. The representation and use of the historical figure Mohandas Gandhi in the MTV animated series Clone High revisits and challenges American representations of Asian Americans and South Asian Americans as model minorities. The use of the historical leader Gandhi as a teenage “geek” sidekick without recognition of how Gandhi fits into South Asian history and influences South Asian American communities shows how American stereotypes dwarf any other representation of South Asians or South Asian Americans in the United States.
Indian Gurus in the American Marketplace
Authors: Davé Shilpa S.
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores how, in the comedic parodies The Guru (2002) and The Love Guru (2008), new-age spirituality is used as an Indian accent to reflect on the strange, foreign practices of Indians and at the same time to show the American desire for difference. It discusses how the role of the Indian guru is predicated on stereotypical cultural performances for American consumption. The performance of brownface by Mike Myers as Guru Pitka in The Love Guru repeats stereotypes Peter Sellers created fifty years earlier. British Indian actor Jimi Mistry in The Guru, on the other hand, offers a response and a critique to racialized performances of brown voice and brownface when he plays an Indian actor attempting to do brownface performances to cater to the expectations of his American admirers.
Troubled Waters
Authors: Doering James M.
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines how the rationale for the Philharmonic's new direction in management was not hard to follow. It came from the Philharmonic's slumping performance in the 1950s, the bad press, and perhaps most importantly a public fear that profit—or the incentive for profit—had trumped artistic quality. During Judson's time with the organization, the Philharmonic had been transformed from a local entity to one of the world's most renowned orchestras. Despite the debates that ebbed and flowed about artistic continuity and quality, Judson had repeatedly demonstrated his dedication to the Philharmonic. Yet in the end, the potential for unseemliness in his conflicting interests became too strong to ignore.
“The cry of the Negro should not be remember the Maine, but remember the hanging of Bush”
Authors: Cha-Jua Sundiata Keita
Published: May 2017

This chapter analyzes lynching scholars' treatment of African American resistance, and traces African American responses to that racially inspired mob murder in central Illinois in the early years of the Jim Crow era. Academic interest in slavery, especially in slave resistance, escalated after the civil rights and Black Power movements. Moreover, race riots became a major topic of scholarly inquiry only after the 1960s urban insurrections. Scholarly attention to lynching has followed a similar pattern as historians' interest coincided with the 1980s-era resurgence in private racial violence. Consequently, lynching only emerged as a key concern among historians in the 1980s. By the late 1990s, lynching had become a significant area of historical research.
Conclusion
Authors: Goodier Susan
Published: May 2017

This chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. It argues that the anti-suffrage women in New York State were not mentally deranged or even women who simply followed the lead of their husbands or male relatives. Virtually all of them sincerely believed that suffrage was wrong for women, or that women generally needed more time to develop political capability. While their contentions were themselves idealistic, even outdated, anti-suffragists won enough of the battles to help prevent the granting of voting rights to women for seventy-two years. Anti-suffragists were vitally important to the suffrage movement for they provided an opportunity for suffragists to clarify their arguments and hone their political techniques, even influencing shifts in the ways suffragists presented their argument.
Protecting the High-Minded Actor and the High-Minded Manager in Equal Part
Authors: Holmes Sean P.
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the long-term implications of the unionization of the legitimate theater. It begins with an analysis of the debate that took place within the Actors' Equity Association (AEA) in the early 1920s over where in labor's many-mansioned house its members should reside. Equity leaders distanced themselves not only from the radicalism of the left but also from the “pure-and-simple” craft unionism that was the bedrock of the American Federation of Labor, equating it with wage scales that were set without regard for merit and a closed-shop tradition that restricted access to unionized trades. What they embraced as an alternative was a peculiarly theatrical brand of occupational unionism that emphasized the occupational identity of the actor, as opposed to bread-and-butter issues like wages and hours, and tied union power to control over those within the occupation. The chapter then explains how the AEA secured its position as a permanent feature of the theatrical landscape at a time when, in all but a handful of industries, organized labor was in retreat. It locates the explanation in the dynamics of the theatrical economy, arguing that the industry's increasing reliance on outside capital meant the big producers could ill afford interruptions to production and had much to gain from cooperating with a union that had promised to deliver a compliant theatrical workforce. The final section documents the efforts of the AEA to deliver on its founders' pledge that it would “protect the high-minded actor and the high-minded manager in equal part.”
Conservative Transcendentalist or Modernist Firebrand?
Authors: Paul David C.
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on Charles E. Ives's self-promotional activities during the period from 1921 to 1934. Its point of departure is an analysis of Essays Before a Sonata, published by Ives as a prose prolegomenon to his Piano Sonata No. 2, “Concord, Mass., 1840–60” in 1920. The chapter begins with a discussion of the literary context of Essays Before a Sonata and the inspirations for “Concord” Sonata. It then considers Ives's involvement with the Franco-American Society as well as his ambition in planning and executing the distribution of Essays, the “Concord” Sonata, and 114 Songs. It also examines how Ives staked his claim as the inventor of musical techniques that were on the cutting edge of musical modernism as opposed to transcendentalism. Finally, it concludes with an assessment of the unpublished autobiographical Memos.
The Festival of the Kings in La Tola
Authors: Rahier Jean Muteba
Published: May 2017

The situation, the population, and the history of the village of La Tola differ quite strikingly from those of Santo Domingo. These differences explain the singularities of the Play in each one of the two villages. This chapter underlines the characteristics of La Tola that are indispensable for the interpretation of the Toleño Play and for its comparison to that of the Santo Domingeños. The lesser intensity of the Play in La Tola also makes its interpretation somewhat easier. Additionally, some of the previous ethnographic information about the Santo Domingeño context is also valid for the village of La Tola. The chapter discusses La Tola's socioeconomic sectors; outmigration from La Tola; the geography of the village; the preparation period of the Play; and the Play in La Tola in the 1970s and in January 1990.
Mine-Mill and Social Change
Authors: Lorence James J.
Published: May 2017

This chapter illustrates how Clinton Jencks began searching for the residences of local union leaders on his first day in Silver City. As Jencks scoured the towns and canyons in search of union officers, it became clear to him that these communities were rigidly segregated by race. Mexican Americans in Grant County suffered dual discrimination. First, there existed rigid social and educational discrimination within the community. Second, Latino/a workers faced sharp inequality in the workplace, where skilled jobs were denied them on the basis of race. Thus, from an early date he was certain that the key to success in organizing for Mine-Mill would be an effort that coupled economic freedom with a drive to gain racial equality and promote social justice.
A Reflection on the Committed Life
Authors: Lorence James J.
Published: May 2017

This concluding chapter explains how Clinton E. Jencks was a man who struggled with compulsive behaviors that dogged him throughout his life. Not the least of his burdens was the reality that he was essentially a modest man who necessarily lived with the dramatic story of his own life in the movement for social justice. Given his consistent reticence about excessive focus on his personal achievements, it falls to others to document Jencks' substantial record of unselfish service to the human community. Like most people, he had a dark private side, but it was his bright public image that marked his relations with a variety of communities, whether labor activists, Mexican American progressives, Hollywood cultural workers, hard-rock miners, or academics in the radical caucus.
Interview with Todd Haynes
Authors: White Rob
Published: May 2017

Distillation of three phone interviews conducted by the author on November 3 and 22, 2011, and April 17, 2012.

ROB WHITE:What is your family background?TODD HAYNES:My mom, Sherry Lynne Haynes, came from a middle-class Jewish family in Los Angeles. Her father, Arnold Semler, whom I called Bompi, and mother, Blessing, whom I called Monna, were a very supportive aspect of my upbringing. Bompi had worked in Warner Bros., starting as a messenger boy, becoming head of set construction. He was a union organizer and was close to many of the blacklisted figures in midcentury Hollywood. He left the studio in the later 1940s and set up a private business with his brother, making radio-communications devices for the military. He became very successful in the 1950s and ’60s. Monna studied harp and piano, and then when she was about fifty started painting in an abstract expressionist style. She was very progressive, went into psychoanalysis in the 1950s, and ...
Paradoxes of Patriarchy
Authors: Banerjee Pallavi
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the paradoxes of patriarchy by drawing on the experiences of South Asian immigrant women in ethnic labor markets. Most South Asian women who work in the South Asian labor market in the United States are engaged in low-wage work within the ethnic labor market, employed by male-owned businesses and with little separation between the private and public spheres. The women and their families often live in same ethnic enclaves where they work. This chapter considers whether South Asian immigrant women's entry into a structurally stratified ethnic labor market creates a paradox in their lives. More specifically, it explores whether employment increases the women's bargaining power within the household and whether the close proximity between work and home facilitates working longer hours for little pay. The chapter reveals the paradoxes of immigration and gendered labor in ethnic enclaves. While the ethnic markets' familial/patrilineal structure creates social capital and a safe space for the South Asian women, it also makes them vulnerable to exploitation in terms of reduced wages and increased work hours.
Changing Expectations
Authors: Chin Margaret M.
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the evolving Chinese ethnic economy and the changing job market in New York City, as well as the strategies employed by Chinese immigrant women to find and keep jobs after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. It begins with a discussion of New York's Chinatown community to illustrate how ethnic enclaves and ethnic labor markets become mobility traps, where workers are exploited on a daily basis. It then presents data from two sets of interviews with thirty women and ten men residing in Chinatown during periods of economic downturn. The first phase of interviewing was conducted during the summer of 2002, while the second phase took place during the winter of 2008–2009. All of the women and three of the men had previously worked in the garment industry. The findings show that, unlike many New York City neighborhoods and economic sectors, the Chinatown enclave never recovered from the post–9/11 economic recession. The chapter also considers the ongoing role of community-based organizations in providing programs that support new workers.
Formalizing the Informal
Authors: Guevarra Anna Romina , Lledo Lolita Andrada
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the informal economy of Filipina care workers in southern California, with particular emphasis on their pragmatic and survival consciousness that enables them to perform skilled work and at the same time negotiate the meaning of this work for themselves as well as the material and familial realities of their lives. Cultivating this pragmatic and survival consciousness among Filipino caregivers is central to the work of the Pilipino Workers Center (PWC), a low-wage, worker-based, grassroots social justice organization that primarily serves Los Angeles's low-income Filipino community. The chapter discusses the PWC's campaign called Caregivers Organizing for Unity, Respect, and Genuine Empowerment (COURAGE), which seeks to address the many needs of the Filipino caregivers. It also considers the Homecare Workers Cooperative (the COURAGE Co-Op) that aims to offer its employees (primarily low-income Filipino immigrant caregivers) living wages and health benefits, improve working conditions, bring home-care workers out of isolation, and connect them to a larger community.
Reviving the Opposition
Authors: Fuentecilla Jose V.
Published: May 2017

This chapter details events following the arrival of Benigno S. Aquino, Jr. to the United States. Aquino, better known by his nickname “Ninoy,” arrived in Dallas, Texas, on May 8, 1980, for heart bypass surgery. He had spent the preceding seven years and seven months in a military prison in the Philippines. Caught in the dragnet of martial law mass arrests in 1982, he was among the first political prisoners to be rounded up. At thirty-four years of age, he was the youngest senator elected to the national Congress, the lone opposition Liberal Party candidate amid the election sweep of the incumbent Nacionalista Party of President Marcos. During the next four years, Aquino stood in the Senate as the severest critic of Marcos. While Aquino was in jail, he had a heart attack. Concerned with the consequences for his regime should Aquino die incarcerated, Marcos temporarily released him for medical treatment abroad. His arrival in the United States galvanized the Filipino opposition movement.
Celebrations
Authors: Lambert Philip
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on Wilder's last decade. His catalog of original compositions for instrumental groups, large and small, continued to grow, as did his collection of distinguished contributions to the popular-song genre. His interest in writing for the stage persisted as well. Still more pivotal was a new attitude of reflection and historical contemplation, both personal and professional, and a commitment to preserve his thoughts for posterity. He had always been a writer, but his yield had often been restricted by the dimensions of a postcard or a page of hotel stationery. In the early 1970s, he began to expand his literary medium and his scope in the direction of a comprehensive memoir. He found that he had a lot of stories to tell and insights to share, not only about himself but also about the music that stood at the core of his artistic consciousness.
We Believe
Authors: Bass Amy
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the diasporic quality of Red Sox Nation and the effects of winning two World Series on its (formerly “angst-ridden”) citizenry. For Boston Red Sox fans, the definition of home has always been blurry. Red Sox fans have always been part of a diasporic New England community more imagined than real, but maintaining a strong identity. Even in its most parochial eras, the Red Sox have reached far beyond Fenway Park, rendering “Boston” as home for people in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, parts of Connecticut, and the rest of Massachusetts. In the 2004 championship season, the Red Sox surpassed the New York Yankees as Major League Baseball's most profitable road attraction. This chapter considers how the creation of Red Sox Nation turned the team into a national phenomenon, “enjoying a community that is rooted to whatever space it occupies at any given moment.”
A Philadelphia Nocturne
Authors: Tanier Mike
Published: May 2017

In this chapter, the author shares his journey, traversing different paths that take us from Broad Street to Locust Street, from Pattison Avenue to City Line Avenue, all the way to Bethlehem. His story reveals a kaleidoscopic nocturne, “the story of Philadelphia after sunset, of the fan life that on-field cameras cannot capture.” It is the portrait of a massive, eclectic community and some of its many sporting passions. The author compares the attitudes of Philly sports fans during the day and at night, claiming that he has walked among these fans for forty years, witnessed their soft side, the night face they rarely show the world. The author concludes by describing the city of Philadelphia from evening to dawn.
Radicalism Imagined
Authors: Shaffer Kirwin R.
Published: May 2017

This chapter looks at the prolific supply of cultural productions by anarchists in Puerto Rico, including novels, plays, poetry, and short stories. In particular, the chapter focuses on two overriding themes: gender and the role of violence or violent imagery in bringing forth a new era. Many leftists who joined the Partido Socialista (PS) or took more mainstream approaches to the island's politics likewise followed anarchist-inspired interpretations of these themes. The focus on cultural productions illustrates that the left wing of the PS and the anarchists understood their reality and their visions for a future Puerto Rico in similar terms. These friendly relations between anarchists and PS members continued throughout much of the 1910s.
Politics of the Bayamón Bloc and the Partido Socialista
Authors: Shaffer Kirwin R.
Published: May 2017

This chapter continues examining the relationships between anarchists and their sometime-allies, sometime-antagonists in the emerging Partido Socialista (PS) in the 1910s. Here, the chapter considers the agitations arising from the radical bloc in the city of Bayamón. The Bayamón anarchists continued their agitation throughout the 1910s, sometimes working with Socialists but also becoming less conciliatory and more rigid in their quest for an anarchist social revolution. By 1918, anarchists centered in the city took an increasingly hard line against all aspects of the PS—especially concerning the relevance of electoral politics for the future of Puerto Rican workers, the appropriate responses to militarism, and the new military draft for the Great War that some PS leaders such as the elected Socialist senator Santiago Iglesias supported.
El Comunista
Authors: Shaffer Kirwin R.
Published: May 2017

This chapter investigates these Bayamón anarchists in 1920 and early 1921, through the newspaper El Comunista. The paper became the longest-running, most financially successful anarchist newspaper in the island's history. El Comunista stridently attacked U.S. militarism and interventionism in the Caribbean Basin, offered a qualified opposition to calls for Puerto Rican independence, and found growing distribution throughout and financial backing from Spanish-speaking anarchist groups in the United States. The distribution, support for the Bolsheviks, and fervent attacks on U.S. policies led the Wilson administration in Washington to target the Bayamón anarchists during the Red Scare. The resulting closure of the newspaper spelled the end to the most successful anarchist organization to emerge on the island.
Conclusion
Authors: Allegro Linda , Wood Andrew Grant
Published: May 2017

This chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. This volume sought to encourage the reshaping of communities and the redrawing of boundaries as we rethink the study of the Americas. Moving beyond nation-state constructs—those containers of citizenship and fixed borders—it offers new meanings of place and belonging. Tracking the contributions of farmworkers in Idaho, Nebraska, North Carolina, Iowa, and elsewhere, the case studies presented here examine the enormous obstacles and often violent conditions Latin American farmworkers endure in their work experiences in the United States. It also draws attention to the reprehensible notion of “deportability” that continues to instill fear in the hearts of those who live in the shadows. It argues that it is not “foreigners” and people of color who are depressing wages and costing jobs but corporate decision makers themselves who exploit the laboring classes in their zeal to maximize profits.
Introduction
Authors: Dahlquist Marina
Published: May 2017

This book explores the historiographic importance, narrative patterns, marketing, and cultural reception of the serial genre through a wider contextualization of the serial phenomenon and its fearless female heroines led by Pearl White, who plays the title character in The Perils of Pauline. It investigates the complexities of Pearl White's performance and the overall cultural power of serial queens in many markets at a critical historical juncture in the history of cinema. It examines how the serial film became part of a rethinking of production strategies, distribution and advertising patterns, and fan culture. It also considers the American film industry's expansion on the international market, fueled in large part by the profitable serial format, along with the serial craze's international impact. The book suggests that American serial films are an illustration of both globalization and an accompanying hegemonic practice of Hollywood cinema and the vicissitudes of glocalization.
Lincoln and the Negro
Authors: Bontemps Arna
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses the role of Abraham Lincoln in the fight against slavery in Illinois. Among the people who abhorred slavery were some who objected to having large numbers of Negroes for neighbors. Two types of anti-slavery sentiment arose, one based upon moral principles and the other upon economic principles. There were those who advocated abolition to elevate the Negro to citizenship and those who objected to slavery merely because it was an economic evil. This chapter considers the divided opinion on the problem of the freed Negro, led by the American Colonization Society, who disseminated propaganda against the Negro, and Lincoln, who was sympathetic toward the plan to colonize freed Negroes. It also examines how Lincoln, an astute politician, steered a course midway between the two points of view, and concludes with a look at his friendship with William de Fleurville of Springfield.
Business
Authors: Bontemps Arna
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on Illinois Negroes who were engaged in business. In 1837, three of the seventy-seven included in Chicago's population of 4,170 were business men. Among them were Lewis Isabel, Abram Hall, John Johnson, Ambrose Jackson, and John Jones. In 1860, there were 1,500 Negroes in the city, and thirty-two of them were involved in business. There were sixteen hairdressers, five barbers, four draymen, three butchers, one hotel keeper, one blacksmith, and one whitewasher. Negro business suffered in the “panic” years of 1867, 1873, and 1876, with many ventures failing. One of the successful Negro businessmen of the following years was Charles H. Smiley, who arrived in 1885, and became one of the city's foremost caterers. Chicago's first Negro millionaire was William Henry Lee, a publisher who owned F. C. Laird. In 1885 there were 110 businesses in Chicago owned and operated by Negroes in twenty-seven fields.
Work
Authors: Bontemps Arna
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on some of the occupations of the Negroes in Illinois after the Civil War. Even after the Civil War, colored persons were mostly confined to the field of domestic and personal service—as butler, coachman, maid, cook, housekeeper, valet, or janitor. Others who were gainfully employed were found in the occupations in agricultural work and at unskilled labor. The tasks at which Negroes were employed were a reflection of the limited opportunities afforded members of the race earlier in the South and of the fierce competition they met in the North when they attempted to find employment in fields other than those to which they were traditionally attached. This chapter examines the Negro's role in Illinois employment and the racial prejudice the race encountered in seeking to carve a place in the labor market.
Professions
Authors: Bontemps Arna
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses some of the professions practiced by the Negroes in Illinois during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In I. C. Harris's Colored Men's Professional and Business Directory of Chicago, published in 1885, one teacher, four physicians, and eight lawyers are documented. One of the physicians was a woman. There was no record of Negro dentists, librarians, or social service workers at the time. In 1942, colored librarians were employed at Wendell Phillips High School, Du Sable High School, and Medill High School, while several Negroes were part of the staff of the Chicago Public Library. This chapter considers Negro workers working in a variety of fields such as social service, including Dixie Brooks, Faith Jefferson Jones, and Bernice McIntosh; medicine, like Dr. Ida Nelson Rollins; and law, including those who belonged to the Cook County Bar Association.
Politics
Authors: Bontemps Arna
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses the participation of Illinois Negroes in politics, including elections. Having been given the right to vote by federal and state constitutions, Illinois Negroes began to organize for political action about five years after the close of the Civil War. Although George White had been appointed town crier of Chicago in 1837 and John Jones had been elected as a Cook County Commissioner in 1871, Cairo's Negro voters in 1873 demonstrated for the first time the effect of organization on a racial basis across the state. They rallied around and elected him as police magistrate, the second best office in the city. This chapter looks at the success of a number of Negroes in Illinois electoral politics as well as those who had been appointed to various political posts and others who wielded considerable political power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, from I. I. Bird and William Hale Thompson to Adelbert H. Roberts, Earl B. Dickerson, John “Mushmouth” Johnson, Daniel M. Jackson, and Marcus Garvey.
Literature
Authors: Bontemps Arna
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines Negro literature in Illinois, beginning with the literary societies, orators, and slave narratives of the nineteenth century. The Illinois Negroes' interest in literature had been recorded almost a decade before the Civil War by the organization of the Chicago Literary Society. Prior to 1861, there had been thirty-five works of Afro-American authorship published and sold in the United States; at the time of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 in Chicago more than 100 had been issued. This chapter considers the literary turn marked by the dialect poetry of Paul Lawrence Dunbar, James Edwin Campbell, and James David Corrothers, along with the free verse of Fenton Johnson. It also discusses the works of other Negro writers such as Frank Marshall Davis, Langston Hughes, and Arna Bontemp, as well as those of a number of white scholars, poets, and novelists from Illinois who had written sympathetically about African Americans.
Service-Learning in Prison Facilities
Authors: Hinck Shelly Schaefer , Hinck Edward A. , Withers Lesley A.
Published: May 2017

This chapter presents a powerful case for the transformative potential of service-learning initiatives in prisons. It shows how undergraduate and graduate service-learning projects provide important learning opportunities to imprisoned students in Michigan, and also transform the perspectives of the free students who participate in the projects. Prison activism, in conjunction with strong educational initiatives that foster deep understanding of how economics, race, and class interact to produce the prison-industrial complex (PIC), holds great promise for achieving long-term policy and institutional changes in national, state, and local communities. The chapter argues that activism, by itself, presumes the existence of an audience that is rational, compassionate, informed, and capable of developing an enlarged understanding of the systemic forces that produce and sustain the PIC.
America’s Cold War Empire
Authors: Johnson David K.
Published: May 2017

This chapter analyzes how a fear of homosexuals characterized American Cold War security concerns, leading to the establishment of policies, procedures, and personnel throughout the U.S. government to uncover and remove all suspected gays and lesbians from public service. This state-sponsored homophobic panic was exported to America's Western allies and international organizations such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. The chapter shows how U.S. officials pressured foreign officials and the heads of international organizations to adopt American-style security procedures and purge their agencies of anyone guilty of homosexual conduct. Fearing the loss of either American financial aid or contact with the U.S. intelligence-gathering apparatus, most sought to comply.
Gay Rights and Political Homophobia in Postcommunist Europe
Authors: O’Dwyer Conor
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores the European Union's impact on gay rights in the region, asking whether accession has fostered gay rights despite the hurdle of still widespread societal homophobia. To the extent that the EU does have a demonstrable effect in promoting legal rights for gays, the chapter examines whether such rights promotion spark a homophobic backlash in the broader political sphere, particularly that of political-party competition. Most empirical analyses of the politics of gay rights in postcommunist Europe to date have relied on country case studies. By and large, individual country studies have offered empirical support for arguments that both the communist legacy and EU conditionality have strongly imprinted themselves on the politics of gay rights.
The American Business of Italian Food
Authors: Cinotto Simone
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the layered worlds of the Italian food business and consumer marketplace in East Harlem. In order to understand the central role of food in the making of Italian American identity, it is necessary to look at how Italian American food entrepreneurs in New York sought to link food with ethnic identity. This chapter first discusses the history of American-made Italian food and food consumption among Italian migrants between 1890 and 1920, along with the development of the U.S. food industry at the turn of the twentieth century. It then looks at the emergence of a new generation of consumers and food businesses during the period 1920–1940. It also considers the marketing strategies of Italian food producers and the response of Italian American consumers in the interwar years in relation to ethnicity and modernity. It shows that the centrality of food created an entrepreneurial ethnic middle class based in the food trade, which nurtured—and in turn supported by—the symbolic connection between the consumption of Italian food and the construction of diasporic Italian identities.
Epilogue
Authors: Cinotto Simone
Published: May 2017

This epilogue examines how the distinctiveness of Italian food has been shaped by continuous transformations and adaptations to a changing Italian America and American culture since World War II. From domestic kitchens to luxurious restaurants, Italian immigrants framed a food culture that created a nation and shaped their self-representation as a group. However, Italian American food culture underwent various changes. The meanings of Italian American food were reworked in the neoliberal landscape of deindustrialization, globalization, and a postmodern culture in which “the self” was created through consumption and where cultural difference became just another commodity. A new group of middle-class Italian immigrants to New York City started to reshape Italian food in America by detaching it from its immigrant origins and relocating it within the “authentic” traditions of Italian regional cuisine. Despite all these changes, and even as the ground for Italian American identity has shifted, Italian American food continues to convey a lifestyle, a taste, and a history.
An Aesthetics of Aggression: German Fascist vs. Classical Hollywood Melodrama
Authors: Heins Laura
Published: May 2017

This chapter attempts to delineate the generic and aesthetic differences between film melodrama in Third Reich and classical Hollywood cinema, and to a lesser extent, between German and Italian Fascist film. Hollywood cinema's greater emphasis on the communicative codes of mise-en-scène, dynamic editing, and camera movement was countered in Nazi cinema with a greater stress on bodily displays and a theatrical acting style that subordinated the intimacy of the face in close-up to the authority of the actor's voice and scripted dialogue. Subtle formal and narrative differences in the Nazi melodrama also encouraged a more aggressive form of voyeurism than was common in the Hollywood melodrama. Instead of the masochistic aesthetic of many Hollywood melodramas, therefore, the Nazi melodrama distinguished itself by its formally encoded appeals to spectatorial sadism and by the masculinity of its pathos.
Breaking Out of the Bourgeois Home: Domestic Melodrama
Authors: Heins Laura
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the domestic melodrama and argues that it was used by the Nazis in a genre-contradictory manner to effect a departure from the nuclear family, in accordance with the antibourgeois antipathies of the regime's leadership. It contends that Nazi films, far from universally reinforcing traditional family structures, actually profit from an undermining of sexual taboos—the ultimate goal being an increased level of efficiency of production and reproduction. Seemingly prohibited desires actually formed the core of Nazi film melodramas; just as fascist Germany's “leading man” found the family largely unattractive, so did the imaginary of its cinema. Filmmakers in the Third Reich preferred to offer images of the dissolution of the family rather than images of harmonious familial units, and the domestic melodrama in particular reveals the highly conflicted attitude of Nazi ideology and policy regarding bourgeois morality, marriage, and motherhood.
Epilogue
Authors: Heins Laura
Published: May 2017

This concluding chapter reflects on the development of German melodrama in the aftermath of World War II. It traces a sense of disillusionment with the Nazi “deployment of sexuality” in films and how it had prepared the ground for the renewed postwar cultivation of domesticity and feminine nurturance in West Germany. The return to private life and to puritanical mores in the postwar era was partly a response to the attack on “bourgeois” sexual morality that had been carried out by the mass culture of the Third Reich. Turning against nudity and licentiousness in the early 1950s could be represented and understood as a turn against Nazism. Thus, this “reprivatization” and newly conservative culture left its mark on West German melodramas of the 1950s.