Dropped "from the clouds": Cincinnati and manumission among the fancy and newly freed, 1831-1901

This dissertation argues that numerous ex-slave mistresses and the children they produced with white men thoughtfully rebuilt their lives as newly freed people by capitalizing on earlier, sometimes ongoing, ties to white men, but also by relying on themselves and others sharing their circumstances. Some such women appear to have been “fancy girls,” the brand name for enslaved women and girls sold for use as prostitutes and concubines during the slavery era of United States history. Relying greatly on letters from ex-slaves and an ex-slave narrative, this study pays close attention to the ways in which some such women were highly valued in the slave market because of their fair complexion, but shifts attention to their experiences outside the market, specifically to their lives as “favored” ex-slaves. It does so by focusing on the migration of such ex-slaves from the Deep South to Cincinnati, a city that had the highest population of mulattoes outside the South before the Civil War. This migration occurred during the rising surveillance of people of African descent in the South during the 1830s and the concurrent rise of cotton as a premier crop, two factors that figured greatly into elite white men’s unwillingness to have their relations with women of African descent scrutinized at the community level. Ultimately, this dissertation seeks to shed light on black-white intimacies and the ways in which Southern white men were hidden actors in antebellum black urban histories. It also hopes to reveal the degree to which focusing on a select slave expands our understanding of how oppressed bodies fit into both political and social histories because of their ability to draw upon the social capital that accrued from their connections to whites in authoritative positions.Ope

Panel. History, Fiction, and Interracial Intimacies in Faulkner

Account Ability: Race, History, and the White Southern Literary Imagination / Lael GoldConcerning their approaches to black history and the history of black-white relations, illuminating comparisons and contrasts can be drawn between Faulkner and Margaret Wrinkle. Both white, Southern authors share a legacy of ancestral complicity in slavery and the poignancy of childhood nurture and attachment across racial lines. Like Go Down, Moses, Wrinkle’s novel Wash depicts frustrated white encounters with recondite, vaguely threatening African sacred ritual and also oblivious white characters’ ineffectual attempts at intimacy with African Americans in their midst. Like Faulkner, Wrinkle bears witness across the remains of the same barriers that divide her white and black characters. Both also link their writing with historical scholarship by representing the sort of documents used as primary sources. Although one usually looks to the field of accounting for the most dispassionate recording of facts, the slave ledgers foregrounded by Faulkner and Wrinkle profoundly unsettle their characters in ways that speak volumes.Seeing Across the Divide: Recreating a Suppressed History / Margaret WrinkleWash was inspired by a rumor that a slaveholding ancestor of mine may have been involved in the breeding of enslaved people. At the heart of this story lies a secret ledger containing the details of this hidden practice. Such a ledger would provide the proof that historians need, just like Ike McCaslin’s ledger allowed him to piece together a related horrific truth in “The Bear.” But complex forces have endangered both the creation and survival of any written historical document containing the whole truth of slavery. Given these dynamics, how do we see across the divides of time, race, gender and power? Paradoxically, when writing about a region where the interpretation of reality has been so contested, fiction may form the strongest bridge. I will discuss my journey from history into fiction and read a few key scenes from the novel about the secret life of this lost ledger.Stranger Than Fiction: Faulkner, Wrinkle, Slavery, and History / Calvin Schermerhorn, Arizona State UniversityThis paper details historical records of sexual violence in nineteenth-century United States slavery, juxtaposing them with William Faulkner’s and Margaret Wrinkle’s representations of sexuality and intimacy across divides of race and slavery in the American South. In “The Bear” (1942), Faulkner textures accounts of sexual abuse and the personal violence of a slaveholder’s domination with humor and absurdity, layering them in time. In Wrinkle’s Wash (2013), Wash and his lover Pallas are exposed to cross-currents of owner-manipulated sexual aggression, Pallas when hired out to serve the violent fantasies of white slaveholders, and Wash when employed as the progenitor of enslaved offspring. Historical records of the United States domestic slave trade reveal counterpoints, including sexual violence and predation. Yet historical subjects seem to have evaded the moral accounting that holds together novelistic treatments of the Slave South.Some Sort of Love? Black-White Intimacies in Antebellum America / Sharony Green But there must have been love he thought. Some sort of love. Even what he would have called love: not just an afternoon\u27s or a night\u27s spittoon. Ike McCaslin, “The Bear” Some have argued that to be enslaved was to be forced into a legal arrangement that excluded the possibility for expressive moments. This discussion offers an opportunity to rethink such logic and suggest an answer to McCaslin’s poignant thought. Before the Civil War, many southern white men did something that went little discussed: free his enslaved women and the children she produced with him. Many ended up in Ohio, a place easily accessible by river. Using letters, some from freed people, this paper cautiously draws attention to the ways in which white men made a different kind of investment in human capital, an emotional one. Though oppression was ever-present, sometimes emotional exchanges went both ways

From margin to center: feminism in an era of mainstream co-optation

Contemporary American culture is witnessing the phenomenon of many high-profile celebrities proudly calling themselves, feminist--I refer to these individuals as celebrity feminists. This phenomenon comes as a shift from the historical avoidance with the term feminist and the feminist movement due to mainstream media's portrayal of feminism using negative and fallacious stereotypes. The current shift to "feminism is wonderful," in the mainstream media--as a reflection of a white supremacist and patriarchal society--de-politicizes feminism, making it less of a radical movement that seeks social change and more a portrayal of individual empowerment on the part of exceptional women. In essence, it seeks to separate the personal from the political. Following the lead of bell hooks, we must combat this co-optation and de-politicization of feminism and reclaim it as a transformative politics. We must come to a consensus on what feminism is, even if the definition is fluid and broad, determine the goals of feminism so that we do not mistake the individual success of women as proof of feminism accomplished, and challenge the so-called sex positivity of feminism as portrayed by the mainstream media for its lack of inclusion of all people and its portrayal of sex as the last frontier of feminism. In spite of these misrepresentations, feminism has a bright future in an era of social media that gives the power of media and message to more people who can portray a feminism that is radical and uses an intersectional lens. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries