Dan Ruprecht
History 209S
On Lepore
One
of the first history courses that I took at Stanford was built upon the idea
that one could teach the American Revolution through mini-biographies of
American Revolutionaries. The following year, in 19th Century
American History, we were assigned a biography of Sam Patch, the “Yankee Leaper,”
which likewise assumed that one could use Patch’s life to explore changing
conditions and identities in the 1800’s. It is, I think, an incredibly effective
and memorable tactic in the historian’s arsenal. I will never forget, for
instance, the argument that Patch’s leap off Niagara Falls epitomized the
tension between the upper-class’ emerging conception of the natural sublime as
exclusive, only for the wealthy and educated who could appreciate it, against the
developing, classless individualism which argued that one could conquer
anything with craft, skill, and effort. Lepore has done me the service of
giving a term to a style of study that I have come to love, microhistory.
My
paper is not a biography by any means, and not necessarily a microhistory, in
the sense that it concentrates neither on one person or one-town, but I’ve
applied a microhistorian’s tools in using specific stories and voices to
extrapolate on themes of my concern. Take Gene Cabral, whom I’ve written about
in my topic statement and introduction. He was a younger brother of five, working
in a wartime factory and waiting to follow his family to join the military. He
recently was published voicing his opinion that the Zoot Suit Riots were
primarily racist. I use him to introduce the generalization: just as Cabral,
most Mexican Americans in Los Angeles during the Second World War had family
members already fighting. Most boys worked in the factories. The pervading
feeling among published speakers of the time is that the Riots were racially
charged. Thus, although my work is no microhistory, I am using Cabral as a
microhistorian would, to say this specific informs us of the general.
Primary Source #2: Naval Recruitment posters
Advertising
is key in forging an institutional identity. Not only was the United States
Navy trying to attract recruits with its posters, it also sought to broadcast
and popularize a particular image of itself—a particularly masculine image. The
first recruiting slogan, “BE A MAN AND DO IT,” is both an exhortation to the
American public—to live up to a masculine ideal—and also a statement of what
that ideal entails—joining the navy. “MEN
MAKE THE NAVY. THE NAVY MAKES MEN” works similarly, but is more overt for our
purposes. First off, the navy is made up of proper men and one should join to
be in their ranks; secondly, the navy improves those men with respect to their
manhood. The following image, from a recruitment pamphlet, stresses the importance
of toughness and fighting ability in naval masculinity. Their identity as
fighting men certainly is key when assessing how their training prepared them
for their violent attacks during the Riots.
I love that you are using visual sources!These sources really highlight the shift from a contained,temperate middle-class manliness in the nineteenth-century and the 'new' masculinity that Gail Bederman writes about. In the third source, I would note the attention given to pay, promotion and skilled jobs. In fact, taken together the three images suggest the three major characteristics of this new masculinity: heterosexual, physical strength, and bread-winning.
ReplyDeleteThese sources do a great job of showing what the priorities/values of the navy men involved in the riots might have been. The second one especially is advancing the notion that fighting is in and of itself a worthwhile thing, which could also have contributed to the ease with which these men engaged in violent acts.
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