From the Department of Small Worlds & Great Art: From reading Peter and Hannah L.'s excellent timeline of African American portraiture, I learned about about Mary Turner, a pregnant, 19-year-old teenager who was lynched in 1918, as well as about African American artist Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, who responded by creating the beautiful sculpture Mary Tuner: A Silent Protest … [Read more...]
Invisible Woman
She was an architect of the civil-rights struggle—and the woman's movement. Why haven't you heard of her? Kathryn Schultz's recent New Yorker article on "The Many Lives of Pauli Murray" introduced me to Pauli Murray, a largely invisible woman who made a big impact. "This was Murray’s lifelong fate: to be both ahead of her time and behind the scenes." She was ahead of her … [Read more...]
Tips for Timelines
I started reading through your timelines and posting comments on our Hypothes.is group HarlemRen-s17, but I realized I was giving the same advice to every team. So it seemed to make better sense to offer comments here, for easy access for all. Now is the time to stop thinking as the creators of your timelines, and step back and evaluate them from a user's point of view. … [Read more...]
On Passing, Laboring, and “No More a Roving”
Nella Larsen's Passing ushers you into the world of an affluent, upper middle class, African American family that enjoys the luxuries of servants and elegant, fancy dress parties. Yet danger and threats of violence lurk even in this comfortable setting. The 1929 ad for the novel (left) highlights the threat of violent reprisals for light-skinned African Americans who dared to … [Read more...]
Get Out & Double Consciousness
Alissa Wilkinson, reviewing Jordan Peele's new horror film Get Out in Vox.com, says: Get Out is a movie about double consciousness, and it pulls off its goal with skill In the film’s final act, the racism subtext becomes text in a big way, which reveals what Get Out was after all along. The film taps into the phenomenon of double consciousness, which W.E.B. Du Bois wrote … [Read more...]