Consolidation: Race, politics, and suburbanization in the Newport News-Warwick merger

The Hampton Roads area of Virginia changed dramatically during the 20th century as it transformed from rural farmland to suburban sprawl. Two cities in the region, Newport News and Warwick, employed a policy known as consolidation. While many cities throughout the United States utilized consolidation in the post-war era, the merging of Newport News and Warwick illustrates how consolidations manipulated and altered the landscape of the city. The modern city of Newport News is split between a large, prosperous, suburban area mainly populated by whites, and a small urban, declining, urban area mainly populated by blacks. The Newport News/Warwick consolidation illuminates the policies of white flight and suburbanization. The first chapter explores the history of Newport News and Warwick and the move towards consolidation. While Warwick had been a rural county for centuries, Newport News became an established city in 1896. During the post-war era, problems arose between the two polities. Newport News began to suffer from overcrowding, while Warwick was politically and economically weak. At first, Warwick opposed merging with Newport News, even establishing itself as a city. Eventually, the civic leaders of the two cities realized that they needed each other. The second chapter delves into the consolidation effort between Newport News and Warwick. While the majority of people from both cities approved the merger, the rural white population of Warwick and the urban black population of Newport News opposed consolidation as a threat to their political power. Ultimately, the pro-consolidation forces won, and the two cities merged. The third chapter analyzes the immediate effects from the consolidation. While the white population left the former Newport News area, the black population were forced to stay within the confines of the old city. The black population moved into public housing, and the former Newport News area suffered from a lack of city benefits. By contrast the former Warwick area grew in both population and power, until the old county became the dominant section of the city. The forth chapter explains modern day Newport News, a city that is still divided into two separate areas

Les voies de la rupture : veuves et orphelins face aux tâches du deuil dans le rituel funéraire bobo (Burkina Faso) (deuxième partie)

Dans cette seconde partie d'un article sur les rites de deuil bobo (voir Systèmes de Pensée en Afrique Noire, n° 9) observés lors des funérailles des chefs de lignage bobo, l'accent est mis sur les conduites et les fonctions rituelles des orphelins. Comme dans l'initiation, autre rite de passage, les orphelins sont amenés à absorber successivement des nourritures symbolisant la mort, puis la vie. Ainsi sont-ils mis en état d'agir sur l'âme du défunt, pour la forcer à quitter définitivement le village. Ils peuvent alors sortir du deuil et retrouver la condition de vivants.This follow-up on the author's article in issue 9 of Systèmes de Pensée en Afrique Noire dwells on the way the soul of the deceased is treated during funeral ceremonies for Bobo lineage heads. As in initiation, another rite of passage, orphans are successively led to partake of food symbolizing death and then life. They are thus enabled to act on the deceased person's soul so as to make it leave the village definitively. They can then break with the mourning period by reassuming the condition of living persons

Introduction à une étude du sacrifice chez les Bobo de Haute-Volta

Sacrifier, chez les Bobo, est un acte si fréquent qu’un recensement exhaustif des lieux sacrés (128) a été effectué dans un village afin d’étudier les modalités des sacrifices qui se déroulent sur les 61 autels voués à des cultes actifs. Les résultats de cette enquête portent essentiellement sur l’énoncé et le déchiffrement d’un code des victimes sacrificielles en rapport avec les diverses catégories spirituelles bobo. Pour chaque espèce animale sacrificielle, la victime — son sexe, sa robe — est choisie en fonction de la puissance surnaturelle à adresser. Un sacrifice nécessite la mise à mort d’au moins un poulet (éventuellement remplaçable par une pintade). La répartition de la bière de mil et de la viande donne à voir les hiérarchies dans le système de lignages au village. Les participants à ce repas sacrificiel s’impliquent dans l’acte du sacrifice même, et s’expose à ses effets (si, par exemple, une faute rituelle est commise ou si le sacrifiant ne remplit pas son contrat).Sacrificing is, among the Bobo, an action so frequent that an exhaustive list was made of the 128 shrines in a village with the goal of studying the forms of sacrifice observed at the 61 altars still actively used. The findings mainly have to do with the formulation and interpretation of a code of sacrificial victims in relation to categories of Bobo spiritual beings. For each sacrificial species, the victim — its sex and color — is selected depending on the being to be addressed. A sacrifice always calls for at least one chicken (occasionally replaced by a guinea fowl). The distribution of beer and, even more, of meat reveals the hierarchies in the multilineage community system. Those who partake of this meal are involved in the sacrificial act and exposed to its consequences (if, for example, a ritual error has been made or the sacrifier does not live up to his contract)