Encyclopedia of African-American culture and history : the Black experience in the Americas

498 Pages·2006·14.961 MB·English

by  Colin A Palmer

ncyclopedia
E
of
frican merican
A A
v
ulture istory
C H
and
Editorial Board
Editor in Chief
Colin A.Palmer
Dodge Professor ofHistory
Princeton University
Department ofHistory
Associate Editors Faith Smith
Lisa Gail Collins Associate Professor
Associate Professor ofArt History Brandeis University
on the Class of1951 Chair Department ofEnglish and
Vassar College American Literature and Chair
Department ofArt and the ofDepartment ofAfrican and
Program in Africana Studies Afro-American Studies
consultant for arts, media consultant for latin
and communications, music, american and caribbean
and elite culture biographical entries,
institutions, and historical
events; latin american and
Marcyliena Morgan caribbean themes and
comparative entries; and
Associate Professor of
religion
Communication
Stanford University
Communications Department JamesH.Sweet
consultant for language, Assistant Professor ofHistory
literacy, medicine⁄health⁄ University ofWisconsin–Madison
disease, environmental
Department ofHistory
racism, pop culture,
consultant for latin
education, social sciences,
american and caribbean
and identity
biographical entries,
institutions, and historical
Robert Reid-Pharr events; latin american and
caribbean themes and
Professor ofEnglish
comparative entries; and
Graduate Center,City University of sports
New York
English Department
consultant for literature
and literary studies,
sexuality, gender, race, and
social institutions
(cid:1)
second edition
he lack xperience
T B E
in the mericas
A
ncyclopedia
E
of
frican merican
A A
v
ulture istory
C H
and
published in association with
the schomburg center for research in black culture
Colin A. Palmer
Editor in Chief
5
Q-Z
volume
Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, Second Edition
Colin A. Palmer, Editor in Chief
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Encyclopedia of African-American culture and history : the Black experience in the
Americas / Colin A. Palmer, editor in chief.— 2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-02-865816-7 (set hardcover : alk. paper) —
ISBN 0-02-865817-5 (v. 1) — ISBN 0-02-865818-3 (v. 2) —
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1. African Americans—Encyclopedias. 2. African Americans—History—
Encyclopedias. 3. Blacks—America—Encyclopedias. 4. Blacks—America—
History—Encyclopedias. I. Palmer, Colin A., 1942-
E185.E54 2005
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(cid:1)
Q
uarles enjamin
Q , B a balanced historical narrative. His essays in the Mississippi
Valley Historical Review in 1945 and 1959 were the first
January 28, 1904 from a black historian to appear in a major historical jour-
nal.
November 16, 1996
❚ ❚ ❚
Quarles’s first scholarly article, “The Breach Between
Douglass and Garrison,” appeared in the Journal of Negro
The historian Benjamin Quarles was born in Boston, Mas-
History in 1938 and revealed his interest in race relations.
sachusetts. The son of a subway porter, Benjamin Quarles
Many of his subsequent studies explored the way in which
entered college at the age of twenty-three and received de-
blacks and whites have helped shape each other’s identity
grees from Shaw University (B.A., 1931) in North Caroli-
on individual and collective levels. In Lincoln and the
na, and the University of Wisconsin (M.A., 1933; Ph.D.,
Negro (1962) and Allies for Freedom: Blacks and John
1940). He taught at Shaw, served as dean at Dillard Uni-
Brown (1974), Quarles investigated the relationship be-
versity in New Orleans, and chaired the history depart-
tween blacks and two notable whites in American history.
ment at Morgan State University in Baltimore.
He focused on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
Quarles began his scholarly career at a time when rac-
particularly the collective contribution of African Ameri-
ist assumptions hampered research and writing on Afri-
cans in two dramatic events, in The Negro in the Civil War
can-American history. White historians questioned
(1953) and The Negro in the American Revolution (1961).
whether blacks could write history objectively, and they
InBlack Abolitionists (1969), he highlighted the participa-
believed that African-American history lacked sufficient
tion of blacks in the nation’s most important social reform
primary sources for serious research and writing. Quarles
movement.
proved both notions were false. Building on the pioneer-
ing research of Carter G. Woodson (1875–1950) and other Quarles shared with his contemporary John Hope
black historians of the previous generation, Quarles con- Franklin (b. 1915) an optimistic appraisal of racial prog-
firmed the existence of a rich documentary record of Afri- ress in American history. He brought his scholarship to
can-American life and culture. His early writings demon- the classroom through two textbooks, The Negro in the
strated both his careful research and his ability to present Making of America (1964) and The Negro American: A
■
1855
queen latifah (owens, dana elaine)
Documentary History (1967, written with Leslie H. Fishel 1997 she received the Entertainer of the Year Soul Train
Jr.), and he has advanced African-American history as a Lady of Soul award. In 1998 she costarred in the movies
contributing editor of Phylon and as associate editor of the Sphere with Dustin Hoffman and Samuel Jackson, Living
Journal of Negro History. On February 6, 1997, Morgan Out Loud, and The Bone Collector with Denzel Washing-
State University honored his legacy with a special event ton. She also released her fourth album, Order in the
called the Memorial Convocation Celebrating the Life and Court. In 1999—with the prompting of Rosie
Legacy of Benjamin Quarles. O’Donnell—she began hosting her own talk show. She
also released her autobiography, Ladies First: Revelations
of a Strong Woman.
See also Franklin, John Hope; Historians/Historiography
Queen Latifah was nominated for a Golden Globe
award and an Academy Award in 2003 for her role in the
film Chicago. She has won or has been nominated for
■ ■ Bibliography
many other awards for her roles in Chicago and another
McFeely, William F. “Introduction.” In The Negro in the Civil
blockbuster,Bringing Down the House, later starring in the
War, by Benjamin Quarles. New York: Da Capo, 1989, pp.
3–6. films Taxi (2004) and Beauty Shop (2005). Latifah was
honored as the Harvard Foundation’s Artist of the Year
Meier, August. “Introduction: Benjamin Quarles and the His-
toriography of Black America.” In Black Mosaic: Essays in in 2003.
Afro-American History and Historiography, by Benjamin
Quarles. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989,
See also Music in the United States; Rap
pp. 3–21.
michael f. hembree (1996)
■ ■ Bibliography
Latifah, Queen, with Karen Hunter. Ladies First: Revelations of
a Strong Woman. New York: Morrow, 1999.
ueen atifah
Q L
Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Con-
wens ana temporary America. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Universi-
(O , D
ty Press, 1994.
Elaine) rachel zellars (2001)
Updated by publisher 2005
March 18, 1970
❚ ❚ ❚
Born in East Orange, New Jersey, singer and actress Queen uerino anuel
Q , M
Latifah may be the most influential female MC to date. She
chose her name—an Arabic word meaning “sensitive and
July 28, 1851
delicate”—at age eight. As a teenager, she beatboxed as
February 14, 1923
part of the female group Ladies Fresh. In 1988 she released
❚ ❚ ❚
“Wrath of my Madness,” a song touting her strength and
ability as an able MC. Her first album, All Hail the Queen, Manuel Raimundo Querino was a teacher, an artist, an ab-
was released in 1989. Her second single, “Ladies First,” re- olitionist, a labor activist, and a historian. He was the first
ceived national attention for its assertive, woman-centered Afro-Brazilian to offer his perspective on Brazilian history
verses, and her Afrocentric image-filled video exposed her and the first Brazilian to publish a detailed analysis of
to MTV’s wide range of viewers. In 1991 she released Na- Afro-Brazilian contributions to Brazilian history, culture,
ture of a Sista and left Tommy Boy Records to join Mo- and development. During a period of national redefini-
town. tion, Querino boldly wrote, “In truth, it was the black who
In 1993 Queen Latifah found her greatest success to developed Brazil” (Querino, 1978).
date with Black Reign and won a Grammy for Best Rap During the second half of the nineteenth century,
Solo for “U.N.I.T.Y.” The album, dedicated to her late Brazil was characterized by its system of slavery and its sta-
brother, murdered during a car-jacking, achieved gold sta- tus as a Portuguese empire. Unlike most blacks at the time,
tus and helped secure her acting career. In the same year, Querino was born free. Born in Santo Amaro, Bahia,
she began her role as the straightforward yet humorous Querino was sent to live in the state capital, Salvador, after
“Kadijah” on the FOX network sitcom Living Single. In a cholera epidemic claimed the lives of his parents. There
1856 Encyclopedia ofAfrican(cid:1)American Culture andHistory
second edition
querino, manuel
he learned to read and write. At the age of seventeen, he about Afro-Brazilians. In 1909 Querino published Artistas
joined the army and fought against Paraguay in the War Bahianas and As artes da Bahia, both on Bahian culture
of the Triple Alliance (1864–1870). He returned to Salva- and art.Several collections of Querino’s essays were pub-
dor in 1871 and became heavily involved in several politi- lished after his death in 1923. A arte culinaria na Bahia was
cal activities, including working as an advocate for the la- published in 1951, Costumes Africanos no Brasil in 1938,
boring classes. In 1875 he organized the Bahian Workers and A raça Africana in 1955.Querino also wrote on other
Society League and published articles in labor newspapers subjects including Capoeira. Most noted by historians is
protesting low wages and political corruption. In 1878 he O colono prêto como fator da civilizaça˜o Brasileira, later
joined the Republican Club of Bahia and became an avid translated into English as The African Contribution to Bra-
supporter of republicanism. He also fought for the aboli- zilian Civilization. In this essay, Querino argues that Afri-
tion of slavery, calling for complete freedom for all slaves. cans came to Brazil not just as slaves but as skilled colo-
He was a member of the Bahian Liberation Society, but nists whose abilities enabled the Portuguese to survive in
he believed that total liberation for blacks in Brazil could unfamiliar and hostile territory. He writes of the relation-
only be achieved through education. ship between blacks and whites during colonization as the
beginning of a history of interdependence in which black
At the age of thirty, Querino attended the Academia
labor sustained the economic and cultural growth of the
de Belas Artes in Salvador, Bahia, where he studied archi-
new republic. To Querino, there would be no Brazil with-
tecture and design. He later became a teacher of design at
out its black citizens.
the Liceu de Artes e Ofícios and the Colégio dos Orfa˜os
Querino wrote that, “History and all its justice has to
de Sa˜o Joaquim. He was eventually hired as a designer for
respect and praise the valuable services which the black has
the provincial directory of public works. The year 1888
given to this nation for more than three centuries”
marked the end of slavery as a legal institution in Brazil,
(Querino, 1978). While he wrote of the horrors of slavery
and 1889 marked the creation of the Republic of the Unit-
and the continual resistance of slaves, he was the first his-
ed States of Brazil. During this time, Querino was elected
torian to portray slaves as colonists and collaborators with
to the city council, and in 1896 he became an official of
Portuguese colonizers. As a result of this work, the lives,
the Secretariat of Agriculture. He later became a founder
culture, and thoughts of Afro-Brazilians became a field of
of the Geographical and Historical Institute of Bahia.
academic study and a celebrated element of Brazilian his-
During the early twentieth century, Brazil was rede-
tory. Yet, in spite of his many accomplishments, Querino
fining itself, and this included changing its reputation
died in poverty.
abroad. Most pressing was the question of race. The new
Brazilian government began a campaign for “whitening”
See also Emancipation in Latin America and the Caribbe-
its population through the encouragement of European
an; Historians/Historiography
migration. Querino challenged this campaign by writing
about the significant role Afro-Brazilians played in Brazil’s
history. Querino felt that the government resources that
■ ■ Bibliography
were being used to attract Europeans to Brazil could better
Burns, E. Bradford. “Bibliographical Essay: Manuel Querino’s
be used to educate former slaves. Historians writing dur-
Interpretation of the African Contribution to Brazil.” Journal
ing this time emphasized Portuguese contributions to Bra- of Negro History 59, no. 1 (January 1974): 78–86.
zilian development with little mention of the history of Querino, Manuel Raimundo. O Colono Prêto como Fator da
Afro-Brazilians. Querino dedicated himself to balancing Civilizaça˜o Brasileira. Salvador, Brazil: Imprensa Oficial do
this disproportionate emphasis. He challenged Brazilians, Estado, 1918. Translated into English by E. Bradford Burns
asThe African Contribution to Brazilian Civilization. Tempe:
both black and white, to acknowledge the substantial in-
Arizona State University, Center for Latin American Studies,
volvement Afro-Brazilians had in the modernization of
1978.
Brazil.
Querino, Manuel Raimundo. A raça Africanae os seus costumes.
Querino’s professional history, political activities, and Salvador, Brazil: Livraria Progresso Editôra, 1955.
ideological views resulted in a series of published works jillean mccommons (2005)
Encyclopedia ofAfrican(cid:1)American Culture andHistory 1857
second edition
R
ace cientific
R , S David Hume’s Of National Characters (1748) and
Baron Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws (1748) both explained
heories of
T
how local climatic factors had produced the human “va-
❚ ❚ ❚ rieties” that Europeans encountered during imperialist
voyages. The influential classification system of Johann
Although physical differences among peoples had been
recognized by the ancients, those differences were invari- Friedrich Blumenbach, with its five continental types—
ably interpreted as local, not global. It was not until the Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay-
late seventeenth century that European scholars began see- an—would, at century’s end, provide an important typo-
ing physical variation in terms of continents, in other logical framework for empiricists who increasingly as-
words, contrasting “the African” with “the European.” signed race significance as a static, natural entity.
This was doubtless connected to the political economy of
Scientific theories of race in Europe and America dur-
the age, involving the slave trade and long sea voyages;
ing the first half of the nineteenth century were directly
when long voyages were taken over land, the peoples could
linked to speculations on the role of evolution in the de-
be seen to intergrade into one another. By the early nine-
velopment of plant and animal diversity. Monogenists as-
teenth century, race and subspecies had been roughly syn-
serted that all human races could be traced to the tradi-
onymized, and became the framework for any scientific
tional biblical story of Adam and Eve, but that a process
study of the human species. Scientific racism and the mar-
of “degeneration” left each distinct type at various stages
shaling of empirical data to support theories of racial infe-
of mental, moral, and physical development. Polygenists,
riority/superiority intensified during the early 1800s after
on the other hand, maintained that God created an Adam
the expansion of knowledge within the biological sciences
and Eve for each racial group and that immutable biologi-
enhanced the professional status of science in Europe and
cal differences among races belonging to individual species
America. By the late eighteenth century, however, Enlight-
resulted from these separate acts of creation.
enment philosophers had already laid a foundation for
later typologists with a series of natural history treatises Polygenism was popular in the South because it
that classified “races” according to environmental and seemed to provide a scientific rationalization for the prac-
geographic conditions. tice of slavery in the United States and imperialist expan-
■
1859
race, scientific theories of
sionism abroad. One northern adherent was Louis Agas- form the evolutionary process with social policies designed
siz, a Harvard naturalist, whose lectures during the 1840s to promote good “breeding” among the better “stocks.”
reinforced societal fears about the alleged deleterious evo- Charles B. Davenport pioneered the study of human ge-
lutionary effects of miscegenation, or race mixing, be- netics in the United States at the Eugenics Record Office
tween blacks and whites. Abolitionists, on the other hand, in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York. The
tended to gravitate to monogenism, which emphasized the American Eugenics Society was founded in the 1920s as
genealogical unity of all peoples. a mainstream scientific organization to promote the steril-
ization of “feebleminded” people and to restrict the immi-
Samuel George Morton, in Crania Americana (1839),
gration of poor Italians and Jews, entering America in
measured the skull volume of representatives of different
large numbers and living in urban slums. Davenport’s
races and assembled a scale of development that demon-
friend, a New York lawyer named Madison Grant, articu-
strated the superiority of Europeans. Josiah C. Nott and
lated these arguments in his 1916 best seller, The Passing
George R. Gliddon, two indefatigable champions of poly-
of the GreatRace, which was lauded in the journal Science
genism, built on Morton’s work. Their most famous pub-
and admired by politicians as diverse as Theodore Roose-
lication,Types of Mankind (1854), declared that zoological
velt and Adolf Hitler.
investigations proved that races constituted “permanent”
types, and ranked them in a predictable fashion. During the first half of the twentieth century, signifi-
The intellectual revolution brought on by Charles cant challenges to biological and genetic characterizations
Darwin’sOrigin of Species (1859) had little effect upon sci- of race stressed the importance of environmental and cul-
entific racism. By the early nineteenth century, pre- tural factors in human behavior. Franz Boas and other re-
Darwinian scholars were making associations between form-minded anthropologists criticized earlier scientific
non-Europeans and the apes, although not acknowledging research and pointed to overlapping physical variation,
actual biological connections between the human species while social scientists, such as W. E. B. Du Bois, and re-
and the ape species. Cuvier’s famous dissection of the formers, such as Anna Julia Cooper, provided stark analy-
“Hottentot Venus” (a southern African Khoe woman ses of the persistent socioeconomic conditions that main-
called Sarah Baartman, displayed in Europe in the early tained racial disparities in health, education, and general
1800s alive and after her death, and ultimately repatriated economic status. By the mid-twentieth century, a coalition
to South Africa in 2002) emphasized her apelike qualities, of cultural and physical anthropologists, empirical sociol-
although Cuvier was no evolutionist. The first generation ogists, and geneticists would also advance the biological
of post-Darwinian biologists, such as Thomas Huxley in data from population genetics that affirmed overlapping
England and Ernst Haeckel in Germany, were faced with genetic variation to undermine static portraits of race and
the absence of fossil materials connecting the human spe- intelligence depicted in many IQ studies.
cies to the apes. Their response was to link Europeans to The most powerful statement rejecting the biological
the apes through the nonwhite races, capitalizing on the model of race was articulated in the UNESCO Statement
preexisting creationist imagery. on Race in 1950, drafted principally by the anthropologist
Among racial typologists, the cephalic index devel- Ashley Montagu, and subsequently revised following a
oped by Anders Retzius (a measure of skull shape), and rightwing backlash. The “new physical anthropology” ar-
the facial angle developed by Petrus Camper (a measure ticulated by Sherwood Washburn in the 1950s would
of the profile), supplied important statistical dimensions focus on local populations rather than on artificial aggre-
for craniometric studies into the twentieth century. They gates, on adaptation rather than on classification, on evo-
commonly were invoked to reinforce the animality of lutionary dynamics rather than on static typologies, and
non-Europeans. Many physical anthropologists inferred on the diverse ways of being human rather than on the pa-
as well that high mortality rates among late nineteenth- rochial ranking of human groups.
century black Americans forecast imminent “extinction,”
There was, however, an inevitable reaction against
and that mental and physical distinctions (rather than the
these new scientific sensibilities. Physical anthropologist
economic and political disfranchisement that character-
Carleton Coon’s The Origin of Races (1962) was widely
ized the experience of blacks in post-Reconstruction
brandished against the civil rights movement by segrega-
America) explained the high disease rates.
tionists for its assertion that blacks had evolved 200,000
Darwin’s work also became a catalyst of hereditary years after whites. Psychologist Arthur Jensen (1969) as-
and genetic explanations of racial distinctions in the late serted that intelligence was a largely innate property,
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when eugenicists gauged accurately by IQ tests, and that the average differ-
launched aggressive campaigns for human action to trans- ences between black and white populations in America
1860 Encyclopedia ofAfrican(cid:1)American Culture andHistory
second edition