History and Memory in African-American Culture

332 Pages·1994·23.18 MB·English

by  Genevieve Fabre

History and Memory in
African-American Culture
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History and Memory in
African-American Culture
Edited by
GENEVIEVE FABRE
ROBERT O'MEALLY
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1994
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York Toronto
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Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Introduction © 1994 by Gencvievc Fabre and Robert O'Meally.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
History and memory in African-American culture / edited by Genevieve
Fabre, Robert O'Meally.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-19-508396-2; 0-19-508397-0 (pbk)
1. Afro-Americans—History. 2. Afro-Americans—Historiography.
3. Afro-American arts. 4. American literature—Afro-American
authors. I. Fabre, Genevieve. II. O'Meally, Robert G., 1948-
E185.H546 1994
973'.0496073—dc20 93-37582
Since this page cannot accommodate all the copyright notices, the
following page constitutes an extension of the copyright page.
987654321
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Permission to reprint the following selections is gratefully acknowledged:
"The Politics of Fiction, Anthropology, and the Folk: Zora Neale Hurston," by Hazel Carby,
from New Essays on "Their Eyes Were Watching God," ed. Michael Awkward © 1991 by Cam-
bridge University Press. Reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press.
" 'Of Plymouth Rock and Jamestown and Ellis Island'; Or, Ethnic Literature and Some Redefini-
tions of 'America,' " by Werner Sollors, from Immigrants in Two Democracies: French and
American Experience, ed. Donald Horowitz and Gerard Noiriel © 1992 by New York University
Press. Reprinted by permission of New York University Press.
"What One Cannot Remember Mistakenly," by Karen Fields © 1993 by Baylor University.
Reprinted by permission of Baylor University.
"Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire," by Pierre Nora © 1989 by the Regents
of the University of California. Reprinted from Representations, no. 26 (Spring 1989), pp. 7-25,
by permission of the publisher.
Permission to quote from the following is gratefully acknowledged:
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. Copyright © 1947, 1948, 1952 by Ralph Ellison. Reprinted by
permission of Random House, Inc.
Angle of Ascent, New and Selected Poems by Robert Haydcn. Copyright © 1975 by Livcright
Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.
Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940, by Him Mark Lai,
Genny Lim, and Judy Yng, Copyright 1980, History of Chinese Detained on Island Project.
Reprinted with the permission of University of Washington Press.
Selected Poems by Langston Hughes. Copyright 1926 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and renewed 1954
by Langston Hughes. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Beloved by Toni Morrison. Copyright © 1987 by Toni Morrison. Permission granted by Interna-
tional Creative Management, Inc.
"Joal" and Section III of "To New York" from The Collected Poetry of Leopold Sedar Senghor,
translated by Melvin Dixon. Copyright 1991 by The University Press of Virginia. Reprinted by
permission of the publisher.
Portions of "Dahomey" are reprinted from The Black Unicorn: Poems by Audre Lorde, by
permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Copyright © 1978 by Audre Lorde.
" 'Mystery Boy' Looks for Kin in Nashville" is reprinted from Angle of Ascent: New and Selected
Poems by Robert Hayden, by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation. Copyright © 1975,
1972, 1970, 1966 by Robert Hayden.
"Heritage" by Countee Cullen. Copyrights held by the Amistad Research Center, Tulane Univer-
sity, La. Administered by JJKR Associated, New York, N.Y.
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Acknowledgements
First of all, the editors and writers wish to thank Harvard University's
W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research for hosting our fa-
culty working group and for supporting our explorations in black history and
memory. Most especially we are grateful to the Institute's Randall Burkett,
whose leadership was indispensable to the seminar's progress.
We thank the Ford Foundation for its generous funding of the seminar. We
are particularly grateful for Sheila Biddle's supportive guidance.
Harvard was our seminar's home, but we also convened at the Center for
the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi at Oxford. We
are deeply indebted to the center's director, William Ferris, for his rich col-
leagueship. We are grateful for the welcome we received at Rust College in
Holly Springs, Mississippi, where we attended an unforgettable blues and
gospel festival.
We also met in New York City. We wish to extend our warmest thanks to
Howard Dodson, chief of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Cul-
ture of the New York Public Library. We offer thanks to James Hatch and
Camille Billops for introducing us to the Hatch Billops Collection; and to Julia
Hotton, who welcomed us at the Manhattan East Gallery.
For our final meeting, an international conference held at The Rockefeller
Foundation Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy, we thank The
Rockefeller Foundation and all of our hosts at the center.
For their assistance in preparing the manuscript, we thank Soo Ji Min and
Jeanne Marie Liggio, English majors at Barnard College. The project's friend
in its final stages has been Sanda Lwin, a graduate student in English at
Columbia University, whose skills as a researcher and writer helped make the
book a reality. We are grateful to Barnard and Columbia for their sponsorship
of these student workers.
Finally, we wish to thank Oxford's editors, Elizabeth McGuire, Elda Rotor,
and Henry Krawitz, for their steadfastness and their excellent professionalism,
and Patricia Perrier for the superb index.
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Contents
1. Introduction 3
Robert O'Meally and Genevieve Fabre
2. The Black Writer's Use of Memory 18
Melvin Dixon
3. The Politics of Fiction, Anthropology, and the Folk: Zora
Neale Hurston 28
Hazel Carby
4. W. E. B. Du Bois and the Struggle for American
Historical Memory 45
David W. Blight
5. African-American Commemorative Celebrations in the
Nineteenth Century 72
Genevieve Fabre
6. National Identity and Ethnic Diversity: "Of Plymouth Rock
and Jamestown and Ellis Island"; or, Ethnic Literature and
Some Redefinitions of America 92
Werner Sailors
7. International Beacons of African-American Memory:
Alexandre Dumas pere, Henry O. Tanner, and Josephine
Baker as Examples of Recognition 122
Michel Fabre
8. On the Wrong Side of the Fence: Racial Segregation in
American Cemeteries 130
Angelika Kriiger-Kahloula
9. What One Cannot Remember Mistakenly 150
Karen Fields
10. History-Telling and Time: An Example from Kentucky 164
Alessandro Portelli
11. Memory and Mass Culture 178
Susan Willis