Chapter 3

This chapter has discussed the ways in which different attitudes to integration and separation have been central to post-war African American culture. A contemporary text that can be very useful as an interdisciplinary focus for a continued debate on this issue is the ﬁlm Do the Right Thing(Spike Lee, 1988). In particular, examine the self-conscious scenes in which Lee directs the audience to the language of racism and the other divisions of the city: Radio Raheem’s ‘love and hate’ speech; Buggin Out’s insistence about having ‘brothers’ on the wall of the Italian restaurant; Mookie’s ﬁnal confrontation with Sal and Smiley’s picture of King and Malcolm X. Lee’s form and structure are totally bound up with his content.
This approach can be usefully compared with the feminist work of Julie Dash and again her choice of narrative style: lyrical, mystical and re-articulating the ‘griot’ story-telling traditions through the new medium of ﬁlm. Another comparison is to Leslie Harris’s ﬁlm Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.
Watch the documentary BaadAssss Cinema (Isaac Julien, 2002) and ask yourself about the function of Blaxploitation cinema. How did it contribute to the changing attitudes towards African Americans? Did it merely add stereotypes to those already in existence?
African-American art has not been examined here, but many of the ideas put forward could be applied and related to the work of an artist like Romare Bearden (1911–88). MOMA’s collection is excellent and explores the Bearden collage The Block about one area of Harlem, NY. In particular his use of collage and photomontage can be related to our interests in story-telling and quilting traditions since as an artist he was fully aware of literary ﬁgures as well, and like Dash in ﬁlm, sought to create visual equivalence to their work. See American X-roads site on Quilting.
When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (Spike Lee, 2006) is a about the devastation of New Orleans, Louisiana in late August and early September 2005, due to the failure of the levees during Hurricane Katrina. Examine the film’s concerns with political negligence, community spirit, and African American identity. If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise (2010, HBO) is Lee’s follow-up to the first film. Look at how conditions have changed during the ten years since the disaster.

Examine the ways in which black communities developed resources to withstand the impact of either slavery or ‘Jim Crow’.
The issue of stereotyping in African American culture can be explored through the documentary Color Adjustment(Marlon Riggs, 1992), which is an excellent look at the way television has represented African Americans. It can be examined alongside other materials such as essays by Michele Wallace or bell hooks, or ﬁlms like Robert Townsend’s Hollywood Shufﬂeor Spike Lee’s Bamboozled.
Try to examine the traditions of ‘voice’ in African American culture through an analysis of a specific speech, e.g. ‘I Have a Dream’ by Martin Luther King or ‘A More Perfect Union’ by Barack Obama, looking at its combination of traditions, intertextual references and modes of address. You could also examine an early rap song such as Grandmaster Flash’s ‘The Message’ or a soul song like Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect’, for the diverse ways in which they project political points of view through form and content.
How has Barack Obama’s period in office as the first black President affected wider patterns of race relations in the country?
Examine the operation of the American criminal justice system in terms of race. What do the high levels of incarceration and continuing troubles with the police suggest about the position of African Americans in terms of the operation of the law?
Look at the coverage of urban race protests in the press and consider how accurately the images are used to represent the events taking place and the issues they reveal. Ferguson, Missouri (see DemocracyNow!) is a good example.

The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record – An excellent collection from the University of Virginia
The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition – Includes special online features, a collection of documentary sources, and helpful lists of online resources
The History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade - From the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool
White into Black: Seeing Race, Slavery, and Anti-Slavery in Antebellum America - Helpful guide from Sarah L. Burns, Indiana University, and Joshua Brown, The Graduate Center, CUNY
North American Slave Narratives – From the University of North Carolina
Freedmen and Southern Society Project – A range of online documents on the emancipation process, from the University of Maryland
African Americans - Biography, Autobiography and History – (Includes W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk and Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery)
The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow – Wide-ranging materials linked to the PBS series Brown v. Board of Education
The People, the Community, the Movement that Changed the World – Helpful collection on the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Martin Luther King Research and Education Institute – An excellent source on many different aspects of both Martin Luther King’s career and the wider Civil Rights Movement. Includes an extensive online encyclopedia and many full-text documents.
The African-American Mosaic Exhibition (Library of Congress) – A multi-disciplinary resource guide on colonisation, abolition, migration and the New Deal Works Progress Administration.
The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship ( Library of Congress) – A multidisciplinary exhibition on the African American quest for equality
Harlem: 1900-1940 – From Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
African American women writers of the nineteenth century - A searchable database of African American women's writing, supported by biographies.
Claiming Their Citizenship: African-American Women from 1624-2009 - From the National Women’s History Museum
Carrie Mae Weems. - Examines the art of this important African American artist. Each photograph is framed under a sheet of glass inscribed with a text written by the artist, evoking the layers of prejudice imposed on the depicted men and women. Weems's work offers a contemporary reading of a historical group of slavery images.
Black Lives Matter – A website created in 2012 as ‘an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise’