Jasmine Week 4 Assignments

Response Paper 2

Waldstreicher:

David Walstreicher’s “Reading the Runaways: Self-Fashioning, Print Culture, and Confidence in Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic” looks at the ways in which runaway advertisements either reflected or hid identity. He argues that the ads were the “first slave narratives” and that they were, in general, an example of the entrenched nature of the institution of slavery rather than evidence of black agency. He makes ample use of newspaper advertisements, particularly ones posted by slave masters attempting to attain the return of their alleged property. I would have appreciated more discussion of the information in Table 1 about the number of advertisements devoted to unfree labor related topics versus material goods - the numbers are staggering, and it would have been nice to get a little more context about them.

I also wish Waldstreicher had been able to include diary or journal entries that described the process masters went through when drafting runaway advertisements. I am not sure that those exist, or if any that do exist could be matched with a copy of the final newspaper ad, but it would be really interesting to see to what extent Waldstreicher’s guesses about the reasoning behind certain language being included were accurate. They seemed very plausible for the most part; it makes sense that a master who was listing the various positive qualities that might aid a slave or indentured servant in escaping might feel threatened by the length of the list and decide to downplay the slave’s other abilities, as Waldstreicher suggests on page 255. Still, being able to read about the master’s perception of his reasoning would be an intriguing psychological study. Would he be able to recognize that he felt threatened? Or would he attempt to validate his inaccurate representation of the slave’s skills by corroborating it in his personal journal? In my research paper, I hope to be able to put different kinds of complementary primary sources in conversation with each other in order to make my claims as founded in fact as possible.

Chauncey

George Chauncey’s Gay New York seeks to challenge the traditional narrative that claims that gay culture and society were invisible (or even nonexistent) prior to World War II and the 1969 Stonewall rebellion. The three main “myths” that he attempts to refute are those of isolation, invisibility, and internalization, and he gives helpful definitions of each one at the beginning of the introduction. He charts the course of gay culture by explaining how terms like “fairy,” “trade,” and even “gay,” have changed over time. I really enjoyed this approach to history, as we can certainly learn a lot from words and how different demographics utilized them. His usage of primary sources added a lot to the piece as well; in many cases he made a broader claim citing a secondary source, then substantiated the claim with a primary source. Rather than ask us to take his word for it that some segments of the population called gay men “pansies” in the 1930s, for example, he presents the reader with a headline reading “1931 Debutantes Bow at Local ‘Pansy’ Ball.”

Chauncey also avoids the common misstep of failing to adequately define the parameters of the demographic on which the piece will focus. Many historians, for example, will claim to be writing about women when really they are writing about white women (who are usually also straight and middle-class or above). While it is difficult to fully describe every characteristic of the group one is studying, Chauncey’s explanation of why he is writing only about gay men rather than about lesbian women as well is a good start. I definitely intend to include this kind of important detail in my piece, as it indicates an understanding of the frequently exclusionary nature of historical analysis.

Research Topic Statement

Specifics:

I plan to study the differences in sentiment toward mixed race individuals in the two decades before and after the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case that made anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional in the United States. I will do so primarily through the lens of the portrayal of multiracial people in literature, and I will look not only at multiracial characters, but also at where the books were published and where the authors were from. In doing so, I hope to discover that the Loving verdict led to an increased percentage of authors/publishing locations from states that had previously banned interracial marriage.

Argument:

I expect to find both a greater quantity of literature related to mixed race individuals and a more positive sentiment toward them after Loving v. Virginia than before. As I mention below in the troubleshooting section, it will be difficult to tell how much of the evolving attitudes are due to the newly nationwide legality of interracial marriage. Nonetheless, I hope to be able to argue that the case was a significant factor, particularly in states that had anti-miscegenation laws that were affected by the outcome of the case.

Significance:

Despite the fact that almost half a century has passed since it became legal to wed people of different races throughout the United States, many of the concerns faced by biracial or multiracial individuals are still largely ignored. Standardized tests still often require students to choose a single racial category, with the largest concession to the complicated realities of racial identity being the “other” category. Clearly, we have a long way to go, but how far have we come already? And to what extent was Loving v. Virginia responsible for the positive developments that have occurred thus far? In answering these questions, I hope to gain insight into the broader question of the relative effectiveness of top down factors like court decisions or legislation versus bottom up movements.

Primary Literature:

Pre-Loving:

• Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison (1952)
• Black Like Me - John Howard Griffin (1960)
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - Ken Kesey (1962)

Post-Loving:

• black is brown is tan - Arnold Adoff (1973)
• Oreo - Fran Ross (1974)
• Tar Baby - Toni Morrison (1981)

Misc:

• The case itself - Heinonline

Secondary Literature

• “Overturning Anti-Miscegenation Laws: News Media Coverage of the Lovings’ Legal Case against the State of Virginia” - Hoewe and Zeldes
• The Loving Story (documentary)
• Troubling the Family: the Promise of Personhood and the Rise of Multiracialism - Habiba Ibrahim
• Loving v. Virginia in a Post-Racial World: Rethinking Race, Sex, and Marriage - Villazor and Maillard
• Race, Sex, and the Freedom to Marry: Loving v. Virginia - Peter Wallenstein

Troubleshooting:

I anticipate one of the biggest difficulties with this topic being trying to isolate the effects of Loving v. Virginia versus all of the other independent variables that are relevant during this time period. I do not know how possible it will be to determine whether changes in sentiment toward or among mixed race people are due to the case rather than to the freedom struggles of the 1950s and ‘60s or to the general effects of gradually increasing progressiveness.