Mercy, Mercy Me: African-American Culture and the American Sixties (Race and American Culture)

296 Pages·2001·2.74 MB·English

by  James C. Hall

Mercy, Mercy Me:
African-American
Culture and
The American Sixties
JAMES C. HALL
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Mercy, Mercy Me
Race and American Culture
Arnold Rampersad and Shelley Fisher Fishkin
General Editors
Love and Theft:Blackface Minstrelsy Race: The History of an Idea in
and the American Working Class America, New Edition
Eric Lott Thomas F. Gossett
The Dialect of Modernism: Race, Psychoanalysis and Black Novels: Desire
Language, and Twentieth-Century and the Protocols of Race
Literature Claudia Tate
Michael North
Black Hunger: Food and the Politics of
Bordering on the Body: The Racial U.S. Identity
Matrix of Modern Fiction and Culture Doris Witt
Laura Doyle
The New Red Negro: The Literary Left
“Who Set You Flowin’?”: The African- and African-American Poetry,
American Migration Narrative 1930–1946
Farah Jasmine Griffin James Edward Smethurst
“Doers of the Word”: African-American Neo-slave Narratives: Studies in the
Women Speakers and Writers in the Social Logic of a Literary Form
North (1830–1880) Ashraf H. A. Rushdy
Carla Peterson
Riddling the Sphinx: Race, the Writing of
Race, Rape, and Lynching: The Red History, and America’s Culture Wars
Record of American Literature, Maghan Keita
1890–1912
The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis,
Sandra Gunning
Assimilation, and Hidden Grief
Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, Anne Anlin Cheng
and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century
Mercy, Mercy Me: African-American
America
Culture and the American Sixties
Saidiya V. Hartman
James C. Hall
Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face
in American Culture
Susan Gubar
c y
M e r
,
c y
M e r
M e
AFRICAN-AMERICAN CULTURE
AND THE AMERICAN SIXTIES
J A M E S C. H A L L
1
2001
3
Oxford New York
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Copyright © 2001 by James C. Hall
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 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,
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without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hall, James C., 1960–
Mercy, mercy me : African-American culture and the American sixties / James C. Hall
p. cm. — (Race and American culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-509609-6
1. Afro-Americans—Intellectual life—20th century. 2. Afro-American arts—
History—20th century. 3. Afro-Americans—Social life and customs—20th century.
4. Modernism (Art)—United States—History—20th century. 5. Modernism
(Literature)—United States—History—20th century. 6. United States—History—1961–1969.
7. United States—Social life and customs—1945–1970. 8. United States—
Intellectual life—20th century. I. Title. II. Series.
E185.61 .H1972 2001
973'.0496073—dc21 00-055774
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
In memory of my dad,
Stanley Hall (1931–1992)
There is a moment in the history of every nation, when, proceeding
out of this brute youth, the perceptive powers reach their ripeness
and have not yet become microscopic: so that man, at that instant,
extends across the entire scale, and, with his feet still planted on the
immense forces of night, converses by his eyes and brain with solar
and stellar creation. That is the moment of adult health, the culmi-
nation of power.
ralph waldo emerson,Representative Men
Teach us, Forever Dead, there is no Dream but Deed, there is no
Deed but Memory.
The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois
Systematic healthy-mindedness, failing as it does to accord to sor-
row, pain, and death any positive and active attention whatever, is
formally less complete than systems that try at least to include these
elements in their scope.
william james,Varieties of Religious Experience
Mercy, mercy me,
Things ain’t what they used to be. . . .
marvin gaye
P
REFACE
To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it “the
way it really was.” It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up
at a moment of danger. . .
walter benjamin
I
n the 1960s a diverse group of African-American artists and intellectuals
forcefully asserted their vision of the limitations and restrictions of con-
temporary American life. Their concerns grew out of not only the fervor of
the civil rights revolution, but also a sense that American culture was sterile,
secular, and disturbingly immune to the tragic lessons of history. In re-
sponse, these artists—sometimes individually, sometimes collectively—re-
flected openly about the effects of this modern America on their sense of self
and community. This book explores the character of this antimodern senti-
ment and, further, its viability as an interpretive historical paradigm for un-
derstanding the shape and development of African-American culture in the
“Second Black Renaissance.”
This project is different from attempts at retelling the story of the Harlem
Renaissance of the 1920s. While comprehensive institutional histories are
necessary to our gaining a better understanding of African-American culture
and the 1960s, it seems unlikely that there can ever be a satisfactory retelling
that is as capacious as, say, David Levering Lewis’s When Harlem Was in Vogue.
The Second Black Renaissance—if that is the proper designation for the
outpouring of African-American creativity in the 1960s—was an incredibly
diffuse phenomenon both geographically and ideologically and may at bot-
tom be fundamentally inchoate. On the other hand, certain folkloric con-
ceptions as to the meaning of black creativity in the 1960s do seem to have
become authoritative. Too often I hear students (and colleagues) confidently
reflect either nostalgically or with a certain scorn about the character of
African-American culture in the 1960s. This version of the 1960s—oft re-
peated in certain diagnoses of all that is supposedly wrong with American
culture in the 1990s—too often lacks depth and distinction.
A reading of 1960s African-American cultural history through the lens of
“antimodernism” (not anti-literary modernism, but, rather, a protest against
P
VIII REFACE
or rejection of modernity) shifts attention from an understanding of the pe-
riod which places primacy upon the playing out of a series of social dramas
between “militants” and “liberals,” “radicals” and “compromisers,” “authen-
tic Blacks” and “Toms.” This book revises the picture of African-American
cultural accomplishment in the 1960s away from a vision of intra- and in-
tercultural war about the shape of correct cultural representation and to-
ward that of a dynamic challenge to the hegemony of a naive faith in pro-
gressive and good American life. The cultural actors described herein hold to
a complex politics of race and nation. They are cosmopolitan in outlook and
critical of a culture of congratulation. African-American antimodernists—
W.E.B. Du Bois, Robert Hayden, Paule Marshall, William Demby, John Col-
trane, Romare Bearden, and many others—make important contributions to
American culture by noting that culture’s limitations. In particular, they
highlight the close relationship between slavery and the construction of
American citizenship, “manifest destiny” and black “social death.” In general,
they document the destructive advances upon the self by consumer capital-
ism, technology, and ritualized violence. These artists lament, memorialize,
conjure, condemn, and celebrate. Ironically, they seek to provide hope
against hope, seeing in creative remembrance potential resistance to the be-
lief that “everything will be all right.”
i have manydebts to acknowledge. This work began in the very supportive
and engaging environment of the American Studies Program at the Univer-
sity of Iowa. George Barlow, Mary Lou Emery, Ed Folsom, Bruce Goebel, Mae
Henderson, Richard Horwitz, Tom Lutz, James Marshall, Mary Janell Metz-
ger, Peter Nazareth, Pat Nunnally, Dale Rigby, Al Roberts, Alan Spring, and
William Welburn were all incredibly supportive and each contributed in
quite specific ways to my intellectual growth. Darwin T. Turner and Jona-
than Walton both passed away during my years at Iowa; I could not have had
better teachers of African-American culture and history and it is my great re-
gret that they did not live to see this work completed. Albert E. Stone was not
only the most important intellectual influence on this project but was—and
is—a supportive friend and mentor too.
I have also been lucky to find a supportive academic community at the
University of Illinois at Chicago. Joe Alter, Ike Balbus, Eva Bednarowicz, Cyn-
thia Blair, Ginger Brent, Preston Browning, Franz Burnier, Katrina Caldwell,
Luisa Cariño, Nancy Cirillo, Jennifer Cohen, Chiquita Collins, Cathy Colton,
George Courts, Dan Dale, Jamie Daniel, Mike Davros, Terri de Langis, Susan
Edgerton, Julie Moody-Freeman, Judy Gardiner, Gwynne Gertz, Bridget Har-
ris, Darnell Hawkins, Annette Henry, John Huntington, Robert Jagers,
Lansiné Kaba, Dawn Kelly, Javelin Lawrence, Donald Marshall, Mildred
McGinnis, Chris Messenger, Charles Mills, Erica Myles, Kaine Osburn, Tom
Philion, Sterling Plumpp, Barbara Ransby, Stephanie Riger, Phil Royster,
Tricia Rowe, Kim Ruffin, Chris Shannon, Jim Sosnoski, Terri Thorkildsen,
P
REFACE IX
Shirley Turner, Deborah Um’Rani, Steve Warner, Jeanne Weiland, Virginia
Wexman, Dave Zauhar, and Daniel Zellman all get my thanks for the multi-
ple ways they have provided support and encouragement. Eric Arnesen and
Peg Strobel have been colleagues, friends, and mentors above and beyond the
call and duty and have my undying respect.
Academic life is, of course, also very much a process of cultivating friend-
ships and working collaborations from afar. Once again I have been lucky. I
am thankful for the support, conversation, and challenges of Linda Dahl,
Kathryn Earle, John Gennari, Heather Hathaway, Bill Kenney, Tom and
Carol Montgomery-Fate, Joycelyn Moody, Geraldine Murphy, Xavier Nich-
olas, Nigel Rothfels, Suzanne Smith, Alan Wald, and Tim Waples. While our
contacts have been unfortunately brief I need also to acknowledge the
thoughtfulness and support of Michael Dyson, Gerald Graff, Nathaniel
Mackey, Nellie McKay, David Lionel Smith, and Mary Helen Washington.
William Demby and Paule Marshall have graciously answered all my queries.
I hope the great respect I have for their lives and work is made most clear in
these pages.
One individual must be singled out: James Miller has been an exemplary
mentor and friend. Every junior scholar should be so lucky as to have such
a thoughtful guide to and interpreter of the profession. While it is a cliché to
acknowledge that teaching gets short shrift in our profession, it is a painful
truth to note that such thoughtful friendship—itself substantial work—is
never acknowledged as perhaps the most crucial contribution a scholar can
make. I do want to acknowledge publicly this important work and express
my great appreciation for his help and guidance.
While all of these friends and acquaintances graciously gave their time
and assistance, it is, of course, my family who has paid the greatest price for
the completion of this book. Walter performed the disarmingly crucial func-
tion of ritually but sincerely saying to me, “Tell me about your day, Dad.”
Just as ritually—and I suspect just as sincerely—Rebecca engaged and amused
Walt at strategic moments. Calum is perhaps luckiest in that he was born
too late to fully observe the book’s false starts and their effect on his father.
Given that, in many ways, this book is about the restoration of meaningful
public life, their patience and love come to me as the very best teaching and
cause for hope and persistence.
i gravitated towardAmerican Studies out of a need to find an institutional
location which possesses a rich tradition and breadth of vision, and in which
my interest in social transformation might be acknowledged. This book, cer-
tainly a product of my encounter with that tradition, has modest extrahis-
torical goals. It is meant to be cultural criticism as well as cultural history, an
attempt to situate antimodern sentiment in the modern university, fully
conscious, I hope, of all the ironies inherent in that act.
Perhaps one odd characteristic of my intellectual autobiography is my