Upbuilding Black Durham: Gender, Class, and Black Community Development in the Jim Crow South
In the 1910s, both W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington praised the black community in Durham, North Carolina, for its exceptional race progress. Migration, urbanization, and industrialization had turned black Durham from a post-Civil War liberation community into the "capital of the black middle class." African Americans owned and operated mills, factories, churches, schools, and an array of retail services, shops, community organizations, and race institutions. Using interviews, narratives, and family stories, Leslie Brown animates the history of this remarkable city from emancipation to the civil rights era, as freedpeople and their descendants struggled among themselves and with whites to give meaning to black freedom.

Brown paints Durham in the Jim Crow era as a place of dynamic change where despite common aspirations, gender and class conflicts emerged. Placing African American women at the center of the story, Brown describes how black Durham's multiple constituencies experienced a range of social conditions. Shifting the historical perspective away from seeing solidarity as essential to effective struggle or viewing dissent as a measure of weakness, Brown demonstrates that friction among African Americans generated rather than depleted energy, sparking many activist initiatives on behalf of the black community.
"1116949898"
Upbuilding Black Durham: Gender, Class, and Black Community Development in the Jim Crow South
In the 1910s, both W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington praised the black community in Durham, North Carolina, for its exceptional race progress. Migration, urbanization, and industrialization had turned black Durham from a post-Civil War liberation community into the "capital of the black middle class." African Americans owned and operated mills, factories, churches, schools, and an array of retail services, shops, community organizations, and race institutions. Using interviews, narratives, and family stories, Leslie Brown animates the history of this remarkable city from emancipation to the civil rights era, as freedpeople and their descendants struggled among themselves and with whites to give meaning to black freedom.

Brown paints Durham in the Jim Crow era as a place of dynamic change where despite common aspirations, gender and class conflicts emerged. Placing African American women at the center of the story, Brown describes how black Durham's multiple constituencies experienced a range of social conditions. Shifting the historical perspective away from seeing solidarity as essential to effective struggle or viewing dissent as a measure of weakness, Brown demonstrates that friction among African Americans generated rather than depleted energy, sparking many activist initiatives on behalf of the black community.
22.49 In Stock
Upbuilding Black Durham: Gender, Class, and Black Community Development in the Jim Crow South

Upbuilding Black Durham: Gender, Class, and Black Community Development in the Jim Crow South

by Leslie Brown
Upbuilding Black Durham: Gender, Class, and Black Community Development in the Jim Crow South

Upbuilding Black Durham: Gender, Class, and Black Community Development in the Jim Crow South

by Leslie Brown

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Overview

In the 1910s, both W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington praised the black community in Durham, North Carolina, for its exceptional race progress. Migration, urbanization, and industrialization had turned black Durham from a post-Civil War liberation community into the "capital of the black middle class." African Americans owned and operated mills, factories, churches, schools, and an array of retail services, shops, community organizations, and race institutions. Using interviews, narratives, and family stories, Leslie Brown animates the history of this remarkable city from emancipation to the civil rights era, as freedpeople and their descendants struggled among themselves and with whites to give meaning to black freedom.

Brown paints Durham in the Jim Crow era as a place of dynamic change where despite common aspirations, gender and class conflicts emerged. Placing African American women at the center of the story, Brown describes how black Durham's multiple constituencies experienced a range of social conditions. Shifting the historical perspective away from seeing solidarity as essential to effective struggle or viewing dissent as a measure of weakness, Brown demonstrates that friction among African Americans generated rather than depleted energy, sparking many activist initiatives on behalf of the black community.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780807877531
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date: 11/17/2009
Series: The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 472
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

Leslie Brown is assistant professor of history at Williams College.

Table of Contents


Acknowledgments ix Prologue 1 Introduction 9
1 Seek Out a Good Place: Making Decisions in Freedom 27
2 Durham's Narrow Escape: Gendering Race Politics 55
3 Many Important Particulars Are Far from Flattering: The Gender Dimensions of the "Negro Problem" 81
4 We Have Great Faith in Luck, but Infinitely More in Pluck: Gender and the Making of a New Black Elite 109
5 We Need to Be as Close Friends as Possible: Gender, Race, and the Politics of Upbuilding 147
6 Helping to Win This War: Gender and Class on the Home Front 217
7 Every Wise Woman Buildeth Her House: Gender and the Paradox of the Capital of the Black Middle Class 249
8 There Should Be ... No Discrimination: Gender, Class, and Activism in the New Deal Era 285
9 Plenty of Opposition Which Is Growing Daily: Gender, Generation, and the Long Civil Rights Movement 309 Conclusion 331 Epilogue 343 Notes 345 Bibliography 395 Index 427

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

In this meticulously researched and intelligently rendered history of black Durham, Leslie Brown masterfully documents the ways in which the 'capital of the black middle class' was forged through the cooperation of—and conflict between—African American women and men of the elite, aspiring, and working classes. This is a significant achievement and warrants a wide readership.—Martin Summers, University of Texas at Austin, author of Manliness and Its Discontents: The Black Middle Class and the Transformation of Masculinity, 1900-1930

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