Manliness and Its Discontents
The Black Middle Class and the Transformation of Masculinity, 1900-1930
Martin Summers
- 400 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Manliness and Its Discontents
The Black Middle Class and the Transformation of Masculinity, 1900-1930
Martin Summers
About This Book
In a pathbreaking new assessment of the shaping of black male identity in the early twentieth century, Martin Summers explores how middle-class African American and African Caribbean immigrant men constructed a gendered sense of self through organizational life, work, leisure, and cultural production. Examining both the public and private aspects of gender formation, Summers challenges the current trajectory of masculinity studies by treating black men as historical agents in their own identity formation, rather than as screens on which white men projected their own racial and gender anxieties and desires.
Manliness and Its Discontents focuses on four distinct yet overlapping social milieus: the fraternal order of Prince Hall Freemasonry; the black nationalist Universal Negro Improvement Association, or the Garvey movement; the modernist circles of the Harlem Renaissance; and the campuses of historically black Howard and Fisk Universities. Between 1900 and 1930, Summers argues, dominant notions of what it meant to be a man within the black middle class changed from a Victorian ideal of manliness--characterized by the importance of producer values, respectability, and patriarchy--to a modern ethos of masculinity, which was shaped more by consumption, physicality, and sexuality. Summers evaluates the relationships between black men and black women as well as relationships among black men themselves, broadening our understanding of the way that gender works along with class, sexuality, and age to shape identities and produce relationships of power.
Frequently asked questions
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Index
- Adultery, 45ā46
- African Blood Brotherhood, 159
- African Caribbeans: and black colleges, 271, 337ā38 (n. 24);
- and class, 7;
- reasons for immigration, 5;
- occupational status of, 29ā30;
- and Prince Hall Freemasonry membership, 29, 31ā32, 297 (n. 14);
- and Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino War, 32;
- and UNIA membership, 70ā71, 75, 307 (n. 24);
- and UNIA public rituals, 101, 313 (n. 97). See also Migration/immigration
- African Orthodox Church, 106
- African Times and Orient Review, 66
- Afro-American Council, 17
- Afro-American League, 17
- Age. See Manhood/boyhood distinctions
- Alcohol: black college policies on, 260ā61, 279, 340ā41 (nn. 59, 60);
- and Prince Hall Freemasonry membership, 35ā36;
- UNIA critique of, 90
- Alexander, G. W., 26
- Ali, Duse Mohamed, 66
- American Missionary Association, 246, 336 (n. 4)
- American Negro Academy, 18
- Anderson, Regina, 176
- Anderson, Sherwood, 215
- Andreyev, Leonid, 221ā22
- Anti-lynching campaigns, 319 (n. 57)
- Anti-Slavery and Aboriginesā Protection Society, 66
- Art deco, 232
- Artisanship: and Harlem Renaissance masculinity ideals, 219, 233;
- and Prince Hall Freemasonry, 27, 36, 50;
- and producer republicanism, 20, 295ā96 (n. 9);
- and UNIA manliness ideals, 68
- Ash, Ida E., 100
- Ashwood, Amy, 121
- Athleticism. See Physicality
- Athletics, 250ā51, 272, 280
- āAt Homeā receptions, 97ā99, 136ā37
- Attire: black college policies on, 256ā58, 276, 339 (n. 46);
- and Prince Hall Freemasonry, 54ā56
- Aunt Hagarās Children (Thurman), 240
- The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man (Johnson), 207ā11, 213ā14, 331ā32 (n. 23)
- Babbitt (Lewis), 172, 325 (n. 39)
- Bailey, William A., 71
- Bair, Barbara, 67, 122
- Banjo: A Story without a Plot (McKay), 224ā31, 239
- Banks, Joseph, 39
- BarthƩ, Richmond, 176, 196
- Bass, Charlotta Spear, 74
- Bass, Joseph, 74, 75
- Bederman, Gail, 102, 103, 292ā94 (nn. 15, 16, 20), 314 (n. 101)
- Bell, William Yancey, 105
- Bennett, Gwendolyn, 331 (n. 12)
- Bentley, Gladys, 180
- The Birth of a Nation, 100
- Black Christ/Black Madonna, 137ā38
- Black clergy: and consumption ethos, 91ā92;
- and homosexuality, 194ā95;
- and Prince Hall Freemasonry...