Interzones: Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century / Edition 1

by Kevin Mumford

Overview

Interzones is an innovative account of how the color line was drawn—and how it was crossed—in twentieth-century American cities. Kevin Mumford chronicles the role of vice districts in New York and Chicago as crucibles for the shaping of racial categories and racial inequalities.

Focusing on Chicago's South Side and Levee districts, and Greenwich Village and Harlem in New York at the height of the Progressive era, Mumford traces the connections between the Great Migration, the commercialization of leisure, and the politics of reform and urban renewal. Interzones is the first book to examine in depth the combined effects on American culture of two major transformations: the migration north of southern blacks and the emergence of a new public consumer culture.

Mumford writes an important chapter in Progressive-era history from the perspectives of its most marginalized and dispossessed citizens. Recreating the mixed-race underworlds of brothels and dance halls, and charting the history of a black-white sexual subculture, Mumford shows how fluid race relations were in these "interzones." From Jack Johnson and the "white slavery" scare of the 1910's to the growth of a vital gay subculture and the phenomenon of white slumming, he explores in provocative detail the connections between political reforms and public culture, racial prejudice and sexual taboo, the hardening of the color line and the geography of modern inner cities.

The complicated links between race and sex, and reform and reaction, are vividly displayed in Mumford's look at a singular moment in the settling of American culture and society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231104937
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	07/01/1997
Series:	Popular Cultures, Everyday Lives
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 6.20(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Kevin Mumford is an independent scholar who holds a Ph.D. in history from Stanford University. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and has taught at the University of Minnesota.

Table of Contents

Part I. Drawing the Color Line in the Progressive Era
1. Jack Johnson and the Abolition of White Slavery
2. Interzones 1: Transforming Urban Geography
3. Interzones 2: Reform and Representation
Part II. Crossing the Color Line in the 1920s
4. Leisure and Sexual Racism: In-Between Men in the Dance Halls
5. Interracial Intersections: Homosexuality and Black/White Relations
6. New Fallen Women: black/white prostitution
Part III. From Vice to Vogue
7. On Stage: the Social Response to All God's Chillun' Got Wings
8. Slumming: Appropriating the Margins for Pleasure
9. Racial Reactions: Prohibiting Miscegenation in the 1920s
Epilogue: Sexual Racisms
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Nellie McKay

A first-of-its-kind scholarly exploration of race and racism, and the explosive power of black/white cross-racial sexuality. Focusing on marginal groups in Chicago and New York in the early years of the twentieth century, Interzones engages the idea that black/white sexuality frequently extends beyond the interpersonal into the realm of the political. In clear and sometimes compelling prose that probes deeply into the complexities of its subject, this book is a must-read for everyone interested in the dynamics of race and sex in America.

— Nellie McKay, author of Jean Toomer, Artist: A Study of His Literary Life and Work

Editorial Reviews

An interesting addition to the ever-growing list of works dealing with questions of race and ethnicity.

— Anna Notaro, University of Nottingham

American Studies (UK)

A first-of-its-kind scholarly exploration of race and racism, and the explosive power of black/white cross-racial sexuality. Focusing on marginal groups in Chicago and New York in the early years of the twentieth century, Interzones engages the idea that black/white sexuality frequently extends beyond the interpersonal into the realm of the political. In clear and sometimes compelling prose that probes deeply into the complexities of its subject, this book is a must-read for everyone interested in the dynamics of race and sex in America.

Nellie McKay

Mumford argues that the United States is unique in its historical anxiety about and regulation of black / white sex. Fears of 'miscegenation´ played hidden but determinant roles in shaping racial and gender identities at the beginning of the twentieth century. . . .This racialization of sex . . . generated a new urban landscape. 'Interzones´ were the black / white sex districts . . . located in neighborhoods with inhabitants who were black and white, heterosexual and homosexual, prostitute and customer. . . Interzones represents a significant and critical foray into the perplexities of the urban interracial universe.

culturefront

A good addition to an emerging body of creative and innovative work on the cultural history of race and the complicated relationship between marginal and mainstream culture in early twentieth-century America.

Amy Gilman Srebnick

An interesting addition to the ever-growing list of works dealing with questions of race and ethnicity.

Anna Notaro

An interesting addition to the ever-growing list of works dealing with questions of race and ethnicity.

Anna Notaron Studies (UK)

An interesting addition to the ever-growing list of works dealing with questions of race and ethnicity.

American Studies (UK) - Anna Notaro