The representation of black women in the Harlem riots of 1943 and 1964: A comparative analysis

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The representation of black women in the Harlem riots of 1943 and 1964

A comparative analysis

Alessandra Galiani

Independent degree project Main field of study: History Credits: 15 hp

Semester/Year: Fall 2020 Supervisor: Christian Gerdov Examiner: Per Sörlin

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1. Introduction

African American uprisings seem never to get out of fashion. It is the summer of 2020 and the past weeks have seen the United States swept out by one riot after another. Not the United States only; the whole world has experienced a domino effect of demonstrations and revolts to address systemic brutality against people of colour, especially in America.

These new waves of protests seem to show that the world may have become ready to embrace the cause of the American black population and its claim for racial justice. Yet, even if the echo of the cry for racial justice resounds the world over as never before, the history of American riots as a response to systemic violence at the expense of black people is anything but new; it is almost as long as the African American experience itself.

Even if demonstrating in different eras and historical circumstances have produced disparate outcomes, taking to the streets in order to claim respect and equality has been a constant in the black American history, even though many strategies and aspects have changed throughout time. Among those aspects, the use of technology and the ability to reach out to a vast audience via social media figure as positive and crucial.

Another essential key to read the development of African American protest is the role of women, how it has evolved and the controversy that it still bears.

The role of the African American woman as spokesperson and representative of the black community has grown with time; she has become the protagonist and ambassador of new strategies of communication.¹ The death of George Floyd that has caused worldwide demonstrations in 2020 has come to the people’s knowledge thanks to the testimony of a quick young African American woman who shot the video and spread it to the entire world via social media; crowds

1 Two of the most popular Human Rights campaigns of the 2010s that have spread worldwide thanks to social media have been founded by African American women: the #metoo campaign against sexual harassment was founded by Tarana Burke; the Black Lives Matter campaign was founded by Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors.

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have been inflamed by the articulated speech of Tamika Mallory, a black woman who has embodied the spirit of the protest and whose public address has gone viral and has been acclaimed worldwide; the first statue dedicated to the Black Lives Matter movement represents a proud black woman, the activist Jen Reid.

If we were to stop here, the representation of black females involved in the riots we would get would be that of fierce, knowledgeable, leading women; and that would mean looking at one side only.

While it is undeniable that some women are taking the lead in the protests that urge the unequal treatment towards black people to come to an end, an increasing group of black feminists is, in fact, lifting the issue of how all the attention gathers around black male victims, leaving black female victims in the shadow.

Black feminists have brought to the public attention the case of Breonna Taylor, an innocent black woman killed in her apartment by the police. They wonder why the killing of a black man can raise hell, but not the killing of a black woman. In an experiment conducted at a TED conference, scholar and activist Kimberlé Crenshaw asked the audience to stand up when they recognized the name of a black person who had fallen victim of police brutality. While the pictures and the names of black males rang the bell, the pictures and names of black women were unknown to all the people sitting there, with one or two exceptions. Who is rioting for African American women?²

Crenshaw’s theory is that we do not take those women into consideration, because we do not see them, they are not represented, whereas men are. The double standard that black women are subjected to, due to their belonging to two overlapping minority groups, has been first analysed by Crenshaw in the 1980s and has been named intersectionality: being discriminated for being black and for being a woman intersect, thus putting black women in a situation of double

2 https://www.ted.com/talks/kimberle_crenshaw_the_urgency_of_intersectionality

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jeopardy.³ The main point of the intersectionality theory is that black women have been historically excluded by the women’s movements on one side and the black movement on the other, thus remaining behind in terms of social conquests.⁴ What black feminist groups claim is that a fair visibility of black women be offered, complaining the fact that too often black women have remained invisible or unheard or that the black woman’s image has been represented in a distorted way, thus mining her opportunities to be seen and consequently to have access to the means that provide her social growth. These demands have in the past months been embodied in a movement called

#SayHerName.

The sharp contrast between the representation of few fierce black women on the one hand, and the lack of representation of a crowd of invisible women on the other hand can raise questions about the role of African American women in historical riots.

Therefore, the main idea of this dissertation is to deliver a description of the representation of black women involved in two different riots in the renowned black neighbourhood of Harlem at two turning points in American history: the first one in 1943, in the middle of World War II, and the second one right after the approval of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

This study attempts to see how the media wanted black women to be perceived by the American readers, how much attention they got, and if they fitted in a stereotype or not.

The thesis is structured as follows:

In the first place, I will clarify the goal of this dissertation and present the sources, the methodology and the theory that have been used to carry out the study, together with a brief overview of the body of works that have previously considered the representation of black women.

3 Cho, Sumi, Crenshaw Williams, Kimberlé & McCall Leslie, Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies: Theory, Applications, and Praxis in Signs , Vol. 38, No. 4, Intersectionality: Theorizing Power, Empowering Theory (Summer 2013), pp. 785-810

4 Carastathis, Anna, Intersectionality. Origin, Contestation, Horizons, University of Nebraska Press, 2016, pg. 16

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In the second place, I will clarify the importance of representation, the role of stereotypes, and how they can affect popular imagery and consequently lead to the increment of discrimination.

In the third place, I will give a historical overview of the changes that black women underwent between the Forties and the Sixties and how their role dwindled during those years; in addition, I will offer an explanation as to why I have chosen Harlem, the riots and those specific historical moments as valid references to measure the quality of black women’s representation.

I will then display the sources that I have found and I will make a comparative analysis of the description of black women in the Harlem riot of 1943 first, and in 1964 then, and see if their depiction has changed throughout time following the parameters given in the previous chapters.

As a conclusion, I will analyse whether the female images that we have left from those riots can have contributed to the stereotypes that have negatively affected the black woman experience and how a different representation can turn into a positive change in society.

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2. Problem statement and guiding questions

This dissertation aims at analysing the representation of black women that took part in the Harlem riots of 1943 and 1964 in the newspaper coverage of that time and in the books that told the stories of the riots. The main purpose is to verify if the representation that circulated via the national papers or the later accounts that dealt with the Harlem uprisings have contributed to the creation or have in any way reinforced the stereotypes in which black American women have crystallized in each specific era.

The guiding questions that this study tries to answer are:

- How have the black women involved in the riots been represented?

- Has their representation kept similar traits in the two different epochs, or has it changed throughout the decades?

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3. Primary sources

The primary sources employed in this study are of two kinds: contemporary newspapers of the Forties and Sixties, and dedicated literature with absolute focus on the riots.

The list of the consulted newspapers includes New York Times, New York Amsterdam News, Chicago Defender, The Nation, Wall Street Journal, Atlanta Daily World, Dallas Morning News, and The Crisis. All have been accessed by their digital historical archives.

The list could have been longer if other newspapers had allowed access to their digital archives from outside the United States. I see the restricted quantity of sources as the main limit of this research, especially because they provided a smaller amount of evidence than had been expected or hoped for. Yet, the fact that almost all newspaper sources supplied a similar quality of information, this being a research based on qualitative method, can reassure that a wider number of sources would probably not have affected the result of the study. That the main New York newspapers figure in the list, thus providing the nearest and most detailed kind of sources, helps reinforce that belief.

New York Amsterdam News and New York Times have been indeed the richest sources of articles, unsurprisingly. Although they are popular nationwide, they are local newspapers, both headquartered in New York City, and New York Amsterdam News, in particular, is located right in the heart of Harlem.

The Nation, Wall Street Journal, Dallas Morning News and New York Times can be considered white newspapers, i.e. founded and owned mainly by white people and with the purpose of either reaching out to a mainstream audience of readers or to a niche of readers interested in specific topics, as in the case of Wall Street Journal focusing predominantly on finance.

The Nation, Dallas Morning News and New York Times can be described as liberal. The Nation was founded by abolitionist and defines itself as progressive;

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Dallas Morning News was known for its anti-Klan campaigns; New York Times is described as a major media company which had black employees.⁵ In News for all the people, González & Torres define New York Amsterdam News and Chicago Defender as black newspapers; the first calls itself the most influential black-owned and – operated media in the country, and the latter being the city’s major black-owned newspaper. Atlanta Daily World also counts as a black paper, founded by African American William Alexander and covering exclusively black issues.⁶

For those wondering what a black newspaper is, Professor Roland Edgar Wolseley, expert and pioneer in the field of black journalism, set the following criteria for a newspaper to be defined as black: African American must own, manage and be the dominant racial group connected to the paper; it must serve the cause and the fight for the advancement of the black community; it must be intended and tailored to suit the interests and the topic connected to the black population.⁷

The second type of primary sources are three detailed reports of the riots, which constitute the only exhaustive chronicles of the uprisings. For the riot of 1943, I have used excerpts from Dominic J. Capeci’s The Harlem riot of 1943 and Nat Brandt’s Harlem at War. Capeci wrote his book in the 1970s with the clear purpose of praising mayor La Guardia. His detailed accounts of the facts, based on a massive number of newspaper articles, counts as the most comprehensive description of the events that shook Harlem in August 1943. Brandt’s book is a wider description of the Harlemites’ lives during World War II and includes a detailed description of the riot. For the riot of 1964, I have used Race riots by Fred Shapiro. Shapiro’s book was written and published in the very same year the uprising took place. The author himself covered the riot as a journalist and

5González, Juan & Torres, Joseph. News for all the people. The epic story of race and the American media. London: Verso, 2011, pg. 302, 325, 237

6Ibidem, pg. 225, 262; https://chicagodefender.com/about-us/; https://atlantadailyworld.com/about-us/

7 Wolseley, Roland Edgard. The Black Press. Iowa University Press, 1990, pg. 20

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witnessed it while it was happening, thus leaving a first-hand account of the events.

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4. Methodology

To study the representation of black women I have used a qualitative method.

A qualitative approach is an in-depth and interpretative reading of the sources.

They are analysed mainly by a textual criticism method, in which it is the language used in the sources at the centre of attention: expressions and

vocabulary chosen to tell and describe people and facts are screened, evaluated and categorized.⁸

To implement this method, the vocabulary in the sources is scrutinized by answering the following questions: What kind of feelings and values are associated with the words chosen by the authors to describe the black women in the riots and their acts? Do the adjective and verbs and adverbs in the

sources usually express the idea of courage, beauty, and importance, or the idea of failure and ugliness? What are the main aspects that are taken up in the descriptions: physical aspects, behaviour, intellectual qualities?

Another question to look into when performing a textual criticism is whether the author of the source tries to convey a political or ideological message beside the mere description of the facts, when the source is not openly a political manifesto.

It may be argued that any author can embed his own personal values and perspectives in their writing, either willingly or unwillingly. However, qualitative textual analysis can help investigate a possible intention to use the sources to send a specific political or ideological message to the readers, instead of simply informing them about the events. Specifically, we will try to understand if there was a clear intention of discrediting black women.

A final question to consider is the evolution of language and concepts in time.

Have the words and the concepts expressed in the sources kept that same

8Berglund, Louise, Ney, Agneta, Historikerns hantverk. Om historieskrivning, teori och metod. Studentlitteratur, Lund, 2015, pg.159

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meaning that we give now? It is important to make clear whether we criticize the texts according to their contemporary or our contemporary frames and beliefs.

The results of the textual criticism of the sources from 1943 and 1964 will be compared. The comparative method will show whether changes in the quality of the sources have occurred throughout the years, and how the sources relate to their different historical eras.⁹

9 Berglund, Louise, Ney, Agneta, Historikerns hantverk, pg. 161

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5. Theory

This investigative study looks at the aim and the sources of this dissertation with the aid of two theories: the ethnicity and the gender theories.

The ethnicity theory looks at history from the perspective of underrepresented groups that have traditionally been overlooked in history accounts. The ethnicity theory puts at the centre minorities that have been marginalized and uses instead their point of view to tell history. ¹⁰

The gender theory reads history through the lenses of femininity. Like the ethnicity theory uses the minorities’ magnifying glass to observe history, the gender theory tells history as experienced and seen by women. Not only does it acknowledge the contribution of women to history by putting their stories on records; it also interprets historical periods according to the different phases of women’s progression.¹¹

Because of the fact that, when considering African American women, the ethnic and the gender perspectives overlap, it can be necessary to integrate their two framings of identity in a unified perspective where race and gender intersect: the intersectionality theory, which was mentioned in the introduction, and which was coined in the 1980s by Kimberlé Crenshaw.¹²

As we will see further on, the historical phases or milestones that apply to black men or to white women cannot be applied to black women. African American women have been excluded from the race achievements in that they were female, and they have been excluded from the gender achievements in that they were black. Although belonging to both groups, they have not been integrated in their historical journey, not completely at least. That is why it is made necessary to

10 Berglund, Louise, Ney, Agneta, Historikerns hantverk, pg. 98 11 Ibidem, pg. 94

12 Carastathis, Anna, Intersectionality, pg. 17-20

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look at the sources through an intersectionality theory, where both the female and the black identities are taken into consideration.

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6. Literature review

African American women have gained the attention of historians relatively recently. As demonstrated by the intersectionality theory of Kimberlé Crenshaw, studies that focus on the role of black women have come to the interest of scholars at the end of the twentieth century.

Feminist scholar bell hooks is among the most prominent writers to have in the early 1990s examined how black women are trying to overcome their traditional representation in order to shape a realistic self-identity; her work Black Looks counts as a pillar upon which this dissertation is founded. Such can even be considered the parts of Cornell West’s Race Matters, first published in 1993, that discuss the effects of the manipulated representation of black women on their search for equality.

Another milestone in the field is Michele Wallace’s Black Macho & the Myth of the Superwoman, which includes the role of representation in the many factors that have shaped the journey of the black woman’s perceived and self-identity.

Defying die-hard beliefs, this book has offered a massive contribution to the studies of black women and representation, and to this dissertation. In particular, Wallace has unhinged traditional taboos with regards to the competitive relation between males and females in the black American community.

In addition, there are a number of papers and dissertations that bring to the public’s attention the role of representation of black women which focus on literature, films, and advertisement. There is a solid interest for how fictional characters are thought and created, as in Whitmal’s The politics and poetics of African American women’s identity performances; in Black Feminism and the struggle for literary respectability Kinitra Brooks reasons about why black women have been represented in certain genres and not others; finally, there is research on how the black female body in advertisement has fed the American imagery with distorted messages, as in Turnbull’s White and Black womanhoods and their representation in the 1920s advertising.

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As far as my search for previous literature has reached, it seems like no study has been dedicated to either the role of black women in the Harlem riots or to their representation. Therefore, there is no piece of literature this dissertation stems directly from.

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7. The role of representation

“Representation is a complex business and, especially when dealing with

‘difference’, it engages feelings, attitudes and emotions and it mobilizes fears and anxieties in the viewer, at deeper levels than we can explain in a simple, common-sense way.”¹³

In this chapter I will give a brief overview on the historical mechanisms that have characterized the representation of the black minority in America and the social long-lasting consequences that a misleading representation, or stereotype as we may well call it, can induce.

As Stuart Hall states in the quote above, dealing with representation is not as easy a task as it may seem at a first glance. There are a few aspects that come into play when dealing with it. To start with, it is important to analyse the presence as much as the lack of representation of a certain subject in a certain context. Visibility and invisibility have been a crucial part in the debate on the representation of minorities, not second to the discussion about the way how they are depicted. The lack of visibility in arts and media have often resulted in the social oblivion of underrepresented groups, thus erasing them from the mainstream attention. Away from looks of the mainstream audience, their needs and demands have gone forgotten. Hence, the importance of finding a reason as to why specific actors have been overlooked even when they played a key role in historical events. To make historical actors invisible means to leave them powerless and voiceless; it interferes with the actor’s self-awareness and creates a sense of meaninglessness that can have serious social repercussions.¹⁴

When analysing representation we need to look at two binary dimensions: the first one is the relation between the author and the subject; the second one is the double effect that representation causes in the observers as well as inside the self-conscience of the observed.

13Hall, Stuart & Evans, Jessica & Nixon, Sean. Representation. 2^nd ed. London: Sage Publications, 1997, pg. 216 14 Ibidem, pg. 195

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As a first step, I would like to study how the dynamics in the relation between the American mainstream authors and the African American objects of representation have historically worked. As Stuart Hall explains, “people who are in any way significantly different from the majority – ‘them’ rather than ‘us’

– are frequently […] represented through sharply opposed, polarized, binary extremes – good/bad, civilized/primitive, ugly/excessively attractive, repelling- because-different, compelling-because- strange-and-exotic.¹⁵

Black women in America have been no exception to this rule. Since the slavery era they have lived in the white imagery as sensual exotic creatures on the one side, and as strong and energetic workers on the other side. It is in this double image that the conflicting self- identity of the African American woman is rooted, due to its hanging in between the traditional definitions of the masculine and the feminine. The passage from exotic to strong became more evident as black women replaced the traditional role of white women in the fields and the households. The delicate image of the white woman, which we have become so accustomed to, was slowly evolving as she abandoned her role of supporter by the side of her man during the conquest of the newfoundland and became a more tamed figure relegated to meek and less influential roles. The few female slaves that had the opportunity to come close to the owner’s family and work in the household with domestic tasks kept their feminine characteristics, often becoming the object of the master’s sexual desires. The majority of female slaves, though, kept performing the hard tasks in the plantation, and became affiliated with the idea of hard work and physical strength that once had belonged to the white woman.¹⁶

Because the representation of the other tends to simplify, to keep together the double souls of the black woman, her sensuality, and her strength, was too complicated. Since the beginning and for many decades to come, the

15 Hall, Stuart & Evans, Jessica & Nixon, Sean. Representation, pg. 219 16Wallace, Michele. Black macho and the myth of the superwoman, pg. 194

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representation of black people has been reduced to a few simple essential traits¹⁷. Being the access of black women to authorship and self-representation historically extremely limited, the image of the black female has often been represented by the hand of her counterparts, being them white men, white women, or black men. Denied her right to represent herself on a consistent basis, the black woman has for centuries had her image shaped by authors that for different reasons mostly gained from discrediting her rather than honouring her.

Therefore, the description of black women that has been culturally inherited in the West is a simplified representation, constituted by primitive and ridiculous traits, i.e. a stereotype.

As Richard Dyer points out, the word stereotype was not coined with the intention of having a pejorative connotation.¹⁸ Dividing people in different

‘types’ helps us make the world clear and easier to understand. We are in need of reducing the complexity of the humankind into smaller categories in order to increase our comprehension of reality. The problem with simplifying, though, is that the represented truth becomes more and more detached from reality, because reality is complex. Stereotypes not only make us misread reality; they necessarily create a hierarchy of groups due to the fact that simplifying means concentrating a whole lot of positive characteristics in a group, and negative characteristics in another group. The main issue with stereotypes is the consensus that it nurtures. A consensus based on the belief that everyone shares the same opinion about the characteristics of a certain stereotyped group.

Richard Dyer warns that “the stereotype is taken to express a general agreement about a social group, as if that agreement arose before, and independently of the stereotype. Yet from the most part it is from stereotypes that we get our ideas about social groups”.¹⁹

17 Hall, Stuart & Evans, Jessica & Nixon, Sean. Representation, pg. 234

18 Dyer, Richard. The role of stereotypes. In Media studies. A reader. Sue Thornham, Caroline Bassett, Paul Marris (ed.), 206-212 Edinburgh University Press, 2009, pg. 206

19 Ibidem, pg. 209

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Stereotypes used in representing minorities have the power to shape society’s dynamics by inducing the audience to believe in qualities that may be fictional, exaggerated or even the mere product of cultural manipulation. When a group happens to be a minority within two or more larger groups, the risk is that several stereotypes intersect, thus creating an even more depreciatory image of the sub- minority group. In that way, it does not surprise that the myth of the primitive and underdeveloped, created by the whites to describe black people, intersects with the myth of the strong and angry, created by black men and white women to indicate black women and cast them aside in their route towards liberation.

The theory of intersectionality, i.e. the double discrimination faced by black women owning to the fact that they belong to two endangered groups contemporarily, can be applied to the representation of that same group. When black women went from being an asset to the civil rights campaign to demanding same opportunity and visibility, they became a heavy load that might have prevented the advancement of both black men and white women. Reinforcing a stereotyped representation that caged black women in unflattering roles could be a good strategy to keep them from sabotaging the elevation of the other minority groups.

When the members of a group are forced in a stereotype throughout the centuries, not only does it authorize society to deny them rights and opportunities, in the name of the fact that the stereotyped group does not possess the qualifications to get those rights; it also creates a devastating phenomenon according to which the stereotyped group itself identifies with those stereotypical definition and characteristics. Towson, Zanna and Mac Donald have carried out studies on women’s behaviour and have concluded that when women - and the same can be extended to black women in particular - have seen themselves represented according to certain criteria, they tend to behave in conformity with those expected criteria. Because they are expected to behave the way they have oftentimes seen themselves described as behaving, they will fulfil their prophecy and mold themselves according to the characteristics they are

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predicted to possess. Towson, Zanna and Mac Donald call the overlapping of stereotype and expectation of behaviour a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that when a definition becomes accepted by society it induces the object of that definition to fulfil that expectation.²⁰

Identifying themselves with their own stereotypes keeps on producing serious repercussions on the health of black women still today. The liberation from their stereotype is a recent process of self-awareness that black women are going through. However, this liberation that has been longed for has also produced negative results. Convinced for centuries that their identity was founded on the criteria of anger, strength and determination, black women feel lost when those criteria cease to be the pillars of their identity.²¹ If they are not fussy and angry, what are they?

In a study on black women’s mental illness published in 2017, Julia S. Jordan- Zachery reveals the impact that failing to embody the notion of the strong black woman has on an important number of African American women. In order not to step out of the definition in which their constant representation has convinced them to identify themselves with, black women tend to keep pain inside and avoid looking for help when this is needed.²²

One reason for that is their attempt to cover any possible flaws that may harm their reputation. In a study on black women’s role in the horror genre, for example, Kinitra D. Brooks blames the long absence of multidimensional literary black feminine characters to the search for respectability and good reputation that was essential for setting the foundation of social growth; feeling broken and showing flaws or negative features would only add further stigma to the already harmed reputation of African American women.²³ The other reason

20 Towson S.M., Zanna M.P., & MacDonald G. Self-fulfilling prophecy: sex role stereotypes as expectations for behaviour. In Representations: social construction of gender. Rhoda K. Unger (ed.). Baywood Publishing Company, 1989, pg. 97-100

21 Ibidem

22 Jordan-Zachery, Julia S. Shadow Bodies: black women, ideology, representation, and politics. Rutgers University Press, 2017

23 Brooks, Kinitra. Searching for Sycorax: Black women’s hauntings of contemporary horror. Rutgers University Press, 2017

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is the black women’s identification with what bell hooks among others calls the Strong Black Woman script: “ The script of the Strong Black Woman suggests that black women have built-in capacities to deal with all manner of hardship without breaking down, physically or mentally”.²⁴ Jordan-Zachery adds that the internalization of the script of the Strong Black Woman, in which African American women have traditionally identified as mammies, lead these women to the denial of their personal pain, since their main role is to take care of everyone in the community.²⁵ Not living up to the expectations of the mammy role means suggesting that black women are flawed, which would support the negative stereotype in which the black womanhood is confined. ²⁶

“Mary Douglas argues that what really disturbs cultural order is when things turn up in the wrong category”, write Stuart Hall; therefore, moving from one defined category to another can be disruptive, even when the represented subject yearns for that change.²⁷

In the case of African American women, when in the Sixties they tried to turn the stereotype upside down and insert the elements of femininity and sensuality into their traditional representation of strong and angry black women, their depiction in the media did not gain in terms of positive approach from other social groups. The analysis of the articles where black women appear will not produce a particularly flattering image.

The role of representation in terms of quantity (visibility) and quality (non- stereotyped images) is crucial. Representation is a significant part of the self- narration that each defined group talks itself into. Differentiating between a positive representation and one that is the fruit of cultural manipulation and subtle oppression can make a difference in the process of rising self-worth and achieving true liberation.

24 hooks, bell. Black looks. Race and representation. New York: Routledge, 2015, pg. 138

25 The role of mammy, often portrayed in caricatures, is inspired by African American female slaves and maids who served and took care of their white family and did anything in order to protect it.

26 Jordan-Zachery, Julia S. Shadow Bodies. Pg. 135

27Hall, Stuart & Evans, Jessica & Nixon, Sean. Representation. Pg. 226

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8. Why the Harlem riots

The aim of this dissertation is to analyse as random a sample of black women as possible. Consequently, the choice to focus on Harlem and on the riots. As a first step, I will explain why Harlem represented the widest variety of black people in the United States at that time. Founder of the Harlem Renaissance Wallace Thurman depicted Harlem’s internationality with these words:

You have pure- blooded Africans, British Negroes, Spanish Negroes, Portuguese Negroes, Dutch Negroes, Danish Negroes, Cubans, Porto Ricans, Arabians, East Indians and black Abyssinian Jews in addition to the racially well- mixed American Negro. You have persons of every conceivable shade of color. Persons speaking all languages, persons representative of many cultures and civilizations. Harlem is a magic melting pot, a modern Babel mocking the gods with its cosmopolitan uniqueness.²⁸

From the 1920s Harlem had become home to all sorts of people of African descent in America. At the same time, this city within the city had attracted both intellectuals from all over the country, and any kind of worker moving north to the promised land, desperate to escape the Jim Crow laws of the South.²⁹ In this way Harlem had become the Negro Mecca, where cultural and political leaders set their headquarters; where writers and musicians expressed their newly found Negro culture; and members of the working class amassed, being the ghetto the only spot in town where they were guaranteed a place to live.³⁰

28James, Winston. Harlem’s difference. In Race Capital? Harlem as setting and symbol. Andrew Fearnley and Daniel Matlin (ed.). Columbia University Press, 2019, pg111

29 Jim Crow laws enforced racial segregation in the Southern States of America between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and the Civil Rights Movements in 1950s. Jim Crow laws included, among other restrictions, ban on interracial marriages and separation between races in public spaces.

30 People of African descent in America have been identified with different terms throughout the times. The term Negro, now considered old fashioned and offensive, was used until the 20^th century to classify people with certain physical traits such as dark skin. From the 20s to the 40s it became widely used by black people thanks to scholar Alain Locke’s anthology of black literature called The New Negro, in which black culture was uplifted to a new dignified dimension.

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Any social group could be found in Harlem, and different kinds of groups shared the same environment, thus intertwining various life experiences and mutual comprehension. The fact that Harlem had developed so rapidly had created a situation in which fine intellectuals and members of the working class lived in a propinquity that ensured a unique mutual knowledge and understanding. In such a way, the black elite had felt a sympathetic vicinity with a part of society that was oftentimes neglected by intellectuals and artists at that time. Harlem intellectuals were particularly radical in comparison to the average American intellectual. ³¹ “Harlem not only drew artists and political activists to its bosom but also captured and stirred their imaginations. Additionally, it was the site of the most expansive black proletarian dreaming and yearning, as captured well in the fiction of Rudolph Fisher, the poetry and prose of Hughes and McKay, and the neighbourhood’s exuberant music and dance”.³²

Harlem thrived with sprightly vitality and welcomed black people from all over, creating in this way a concentration of diverse political views. Leaders of all different credos walked the streets in Harlem and had chosen those streets as the site of their political headquarters and the editorial board offices of their magazines and newspapers. Harlem’s literary profile merged successfully with political soul. New trends and fashions were shaped there and echoed to the black communities the world over. The Chicago Defender wrote a couple of weeks after the riot of 1943 that

Harlem, New York, is the largest Negro city in the world. It is undoubtedly, also, one of the most, if not the most important. It reflects the moods of Negro America to a sharper degree, perhaps, than any other city, for there are located the headquarters of the most of the national organizations of the Negro People, and from there run the ties that bind Negro America to the Negroes of the

31 James, Winston. Harlem’s difference, pg. 24 32 Ibidem, pg.112

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Latin-American countries, the West Indies, and even Africa itself. The Negro world will be deeply moved by the events which occurred in Harlem. ³³

Black people of all sorts mingled and integrated in Harlem, but the majority of the population still lived in poverty. Yet, from the Forties the situation was slowly getting better. Brandt tells that, despite the fact that 20% circa of Harlemites still lived on home relief, black women had started being admitted to training courses at several hospitals and were being hired as nurses, and black men were for first time being hired as drivers and conductors by the Third Avenue bus company.³⁴

The Big Depression was slowly being left behind and white men in war provided a good opportunity for black people to replace them. The crime rate was nonetheless still high. ³⁵ For this reason, tensions between whites and blacks were not uncommon. Mayor La Guardia, one of the most popular white mayors among black citizens, enforced the police surveillance on the Harlem streets, which often led to conflicts. Frictions between single Harlemites and white policemen could develop into crowd gatherings and spontaneous demonstrations. This partially justifies the choice of using the riots as a moment to analyse the population. Most riots in Harlem, definitely those in 1943 and 1964, were not the result of a planned revolt; they were impromptu reactions of frustration and anger. When they broke out all kinds of people were attracted:

passers-by, residents, random visitors to the neighbourhood. Hundreds of African Americans of any class and age gathered on those occasions, thus offering a good slice of diversity.

The Harlem population consisted predominantly of women, which guarantees quite a wide range of variety in the sample of women who partook in the riots.

On the pages of New York Amsterdam News, a reader lamented the presence of far too many women in the neighbourhood. Women outweighed men six to one,

33 The Chicago Defender, 14th August 1943, pg. 14

34 Brandt, Nat. Harlem at war. The black experience of WWII. Syracuse University Press, 1996, pg. 166 35 Ibidem

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an enormous challenge from the women’s side to get a man, and from the men’s side to choose. As the law of the markets teaches, too much offer lowers the price and value of the goods. The way the New York Amsterdam News readers spoke about black women confirms that principle:

“There should be some concrete effort to utilize all that woman-power. It isn’t politic at all that all that brawn and muscle as I see in so many of these big- hipped, block-busters walking around in slacks, should go to waste”.³⁶

36 New York Amsterdam News, 2nd October, pg. 22

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9. African American women between the 1940s and the 1960s

Black women have actively contributed to the advancement of the people of colour since the time of slavery.³⁷ Despite this, there have been moments when they had to take a step back and keep their demands for equality on hold, because bigger issues such as the advancement of the black man had to be resolved first.

Progress in America has always come in small doses, and the first dose that the U.S. could take at that time was the slow integration of black man. Between the Forties and the Sixties women of colour were thus still swaying between elevation and invisibility. The 1940s represented a moment of relative elevation.

World War II proved an unprecedented opportunity to walk over the threshold of segregation. If black men had already shown their loyalty during the first world conflict, the second World War came as a strategic circumstance to shake the American conscience. American was winning in her purpose to export democracy and rescue the Jewish people from the Nazi grip. The message that the Americans were bringing to Europe was clear: people could not be discriminated against on the basis of their origin, and racism would not be tolerated. How about slavery and segregation then? Now that America went out to the world as an official symbol of democracy, black Americans could finally carry out their battle to enforce equality back home. Black soldiers were still segregated in the army, but their official status had undoubtedly risen. Black soldiers proved themselves valiant and, for the second time in history, they were representing America abroad. That was a golden opportunity to promote their

37 Gilkes Townsend, Cheryl. Three Great Revolutions: Black women and Social Change Source. In Berkeley Journal of Sociology. Vol. 60, 50-56, Regents of the University of California, 2016; Hopkins LaVaughn, Gary, Deshaies, Molly

& Strange, Julia. “Black Women in History- Civil War and Reconstruction”. In Black History Bullettn. Vol. 74, No. 2, pp. 24-31, 2011

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requests, and African American leaders did not miss the chance to push their demands as hard as never before.

In the wake of the cultural and intellectual Negro renaissance that had spanned from the 20s to the 30s in Harlem, a stronger self- awareness had started to take shape in the black community. The Great Migration from the segregated southern states to the more tolerant north had meant leaving behind the lynching and the systemic humiliations. It had not necessarily meant a better lifestyle or better living conditions, but it had enfranchised the black people from their past as slaves. It was a new beginning, a renaissance indeed. The Migration brought a significant increase in the number of black women seeking employment.³⁸ Although a big part of the black community was living in indigence, important milestones were reached in those years: Charles Drew became known for developing a technique to preserve blood plasma, Jackie Robinson became the first black man to play major league baseball, and Timmie Rogers became the first African American entertainer to host a prime-time, all-black TV show on CBS.

Black women too began to grow. The Forties started with Hattie McDaniel becoming the first African American to win an Academy Award in 1941, and unfolded with unprecedented work opportunities, thanks to the void left by the men who were now on the war front. “Gradually, some advances were made, particularly by black women, in defence industries and in occupational categories”, remembers Capeci.³⁹

They were still earning 44 cents for every dollar a white woman earned, 62 cents for every dollar a black man earned and 30 cents for every dollar a white man earned, but their occupational progress led to better wages. Between 1940 and 1950 their average hourly wage doubled from $1.12 to $2.26.⁴⁰

38 Capeci, Dominic J. The Harlem riot of 1943. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1977, pg. 135 39 Ibidem, pg. 137

40 Branch, Enobong Hanna. Opportunity denied. Liming Black women to devalued work. Rutgers University Press, 2011, pg. 134-139

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On the spur of the new national acclaim for black talent and the economic progress, African Americans felt that that was the time to finally unhinge the die-hard institutionalized racism and became more organized and active as ever:

in 1941 unionist Philip Randolph proposed a march on Washington to demand fair employment condition for black workers; in 1942 the Congress of Racial Equality was founded; in 1943 Randolph created the National Council for a Permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission; in 1946 congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. began attaching his “Powell Amendment” to bills; in 1946, W.E.B. DuBois submitted to the United Nation a petition in which American racism was linked to colonial imperialism. Black voices were becoming stronger and were now addressing an international audience.

Black women played a key role in those years with their grassroot activism and their support to black men. They did not step on national or international stages, of course; they worked behind the scenes thus gaining public appreciation by W.E.B. DuBois, the most influential black leader, who emphasized their strength and their role in society, and their beauty in contrast with the American standard.

They organized recreational activities for the black soldiers who served in the segregated army and were in general highly active against racial discrimination.⁴¹ Because the biggest part of the black movements and their claims were grounded on the fact that black soldiers had participated in the war, most focus lay on men, and after 1945 the contribution of women in the black movement was neglected.⁴²

The era of the Civil Rights Movement was approaching quickly. The Fifties brought a wave of fervent activism and sparked frequent civil actions against racial injustices. A series of campaigns of civil disobedience spawned in the whole country, leading to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first act that addressed civil rights since those issued during the Reconstruction era. Even if

41 Collier-Thomas, Bettye & Franklin V.P. Sisters in the struggle. African American women in the Civil Rights – Black Power Movement. New York: New York University Press, 2001, pg. 26-28

42 Lawson, Steven F. Civil Rights Crossroads. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2003, pg. 269

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the Civil Rights Act of 1957 did not create new rights, black Americans could now rest on a safer ground that laws protecting civil rights were being enforced:

their right to vote was being protected as was the possibility to call on the newly created Civil Rights Commission in case the laws were violated.

In those years back female activists shyly came closer to the centre of public attention, also thanks to the figure of Rosa Parks that had sparked the famous bus boycott in Alabama in 1955 when refusing to leave her seat to a white man on a segregated bus. However, they never made it to the spotlight. Black men did not want to give away the position that the participation in war had given to them. They were building a new patriarchal role that the figure of the white master had stolen from them during slavery, and wanted to keep their women by the side, as tamed as possible. Rosa Parks was no exception. Lawson writes:

“Women like Rosa Parks gained visibility when their actions sparked demonstrations that attracted national coverage, but then faded into the background when male leaders such as Martin Luther King presented black demands to a national audience”.⁴³

Michele Wallace confirms that, even though many of the women in the Civil Rights Movement were respected by men for their contribution to the cause, they were not allowed to take as much space as male leaders such as Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins or John Lewis. None of those women held any of the major speeches nor was any of them invited to join the delegation of leaders that went to the White House during the march on Washington. ⁴⁴

Shirley Chisholm also experiences a frustrating beginning of her political career, relegated in the shadow: Keller remembers that, despite her undisputed talent, Chisholm was assigned simple duties such as organizing food and decorations for fund-raisers, stuffing envelopes with campaign materials, and driving voters in carpools on election day.⁴⁵

43 Lawson, Steven F. Civil Rights Crossroads, pg. 266

44 Wallace, Michele. Black macho and the myth of the superwoman. London: Verso, 1990, pg. 157 45 Kallen, Stuart. Women of the Civil Rights Movement. New York: Thomson Gale, 2005, pg. 64

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Chisholm herself told how her talent was exploited and forgotten

“Discrimination against women in politics is particularly unjust, because no political organization I have seen could function without women. They do the work that the men won’t do. I know, because I have done it all. For years I stayed in the wings and worked to put men in office, even writing their speeches, and cueing them on how to answer questions.”⁴⁶

Even if women were requested to take the back seat, the 1960s saw important achievements for the whole black community. Among the vehemence and terror that the advancement of coloured people had triggered in the South, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law, on July the 2^nd, and it contained extensive measures apt to dismantle American racism.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ceased any discrimination and segregation in all public facilities based on the ground of race, colour, religion, and origin; every person was now entitled to be free; desegregation of the education system was ordered; a commission on civil rights issues was created; equal employment opportunities were guaranteed.

The struggles of black people for equal opportunities were joined by another struggle that was fiercely rising and catching the attention of the public opinion:

the fight for gender equality. Since the publication of Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex in 1949, the idea that gender was just a social construction was becoming popular, and women were awaking to a more conscious understanding of their roles in society. Women’s world had already expanded outside the kitchen even before ideologies had come down the political and philosophical arena.

As already mentioned above, World War II had opened doors for women to go out and join the producing forces in society, and replace the very men’s jobs, thus proving that they were just as capable. By winning their battle to ensure their voting rights, they had also proved that they could navigate a political

46 Kallen, Stuart. Women of the Civil Rights Movement, pg. 69

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process and that they had the strength to create change. From the 20s onwards, women started embarking on any kind of enterprise that would expand their sphere of influence: their military abilities were acknowledged by receiving medals during World War II; in 1949, the institutions welcomed some of them to influential positions such as United States ambassadors or Treasurer; and in 1947 Gerty Cori became the first American woman to win a Nobel Prize in Medicine. A new ideal of womanhood was being shaped, and the boundaries that had limited women for centuries were now being stretched. They demonstrated proficiency in any possible field and showed that equality was a well- deserved right.

With the black people advancing on one side and women progressing on the other, black women could finally have the time of their lives, one may believe.

Instead, they bumped into two hard walls, as none of those minorities were ready to take them fully on and cede possible progress. Black women were a minority inside both minorities and were viewed as crippling. They found themselves in the middle of a crossfire: conservative white women who claimed female rights on the base of race superiority, and black men who did not want their march towards equality to be stopped by asking too many rights at the same time, as the stakes were too high now.

The emergence of Malcom X in the political arena and his call for strong black manhood weakened the position of the black women even more. As Farah Jasmine Griffin explains, Malcom X’s desire to protect black women was the result of a sincerely felt concern for their safety, but also the reflection of the double power struggle that black men were fighting against white men and Black women.⁴⁷ James Baldwin remembers how, in his meeting with the leader of the Nation of Islam, the motto “Protect your women”, was constantly and insistently repeated.⁴⁸

47 Collier-Thomas, Bettye & Franklin V.P. Sisters in the struggle. Pg. 216

48 Baldwin, James. The fire next time. New York: Dial Press, 1963, pg. 77

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Malcom X’s view on femininity was emphasized over the 1960s and grew stronger with the Black Power movement gaining popularity. Activist Maulana Karenga, convinced that cultural awareness for black Americans passed through the reconciliation with their African traditions, including dress, language, familial arrangements, and strict gender roles. As Tracy Matthews writes:

One major component of US rhetoric called for women’s submission to traditional male “authority” and promoted the notion of complementary gender roles. According to Karenga’s teachings, what makes a woman appealing is femininity and she can’t be feminine without being submissive. A man has to be a leader and he has to be a man who bases his leadership on knowledge, wisdom and understanding. There is no virtue in independence. The only virtue is in interdependence…. The role of the woman is to inspire her man, educate their children, and participate in social development. We say male supremacy is based on three things: tradition, acceptance, and reason. Equality is false; it’s the devil’s concept.⁴⁹

The black man’s hunt for submissive women was not kept within the borders of the black community. Now that the liberation movements were thriving and segregation was falling apart, black men and white women had the possibility to come close. This harshened the already suspicious relation between black and white women. If a certain white part of the feminist movement had already expressed doubts on whether black women should join the feminist cause, it was now black women who had hard feelings.

The new macho ideology put black and white women in competition. Steven Lawson explains how the resentment of black women directed towards white women originated in the fact that white women were considered more suitable for dating by black men, whereas black women, often occupied in less traditional feminine roles were seen as expropriating black men of their role.⁵⁰

49 Collier-Thomas, Bettye & Franklin V.P. Sisters in the struggle. Pg. 235

50 Lawson, Steven F. Civil Rights Crossroads, pg. 270

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With more black men choosing white women to have romantic relationships with, black women saw not only their political power usurped by the infiltrated white females, they started questioning their sexual roles and their idea of identity and beauty. SNCC leader Doris Ruby Smith confessed in her memories that she hated white women for a period of years when she realized that they represented a cultural ideal of “beauty and femininity”. ⁵¹

Wallace recalls how, after hours of meetings of the civil rights movement in the South, black men would go out with white women, leaving coloured women wondering about their worth and how they could manage their man’s rejection.

According to Wallace, this was the black man’s way to punish his woman for her competence. ⁵²

To understand what Wallace means, we need to go back to the concept of emasculation that for years had harmed the black man’s self-esteem and identity.

It all stems from the plantation time, when the white man had extorted the black man of all his power, including the power to take care of his women and children.

The black man had in this way lost his influence and his masculine identity. He could not provide for his family and he could be sold and sent away at any time.

This had caused terrible repercussions on the dynamics of the African American family and has to this very day devastating consequences in the relationships between males and females in the black community.

As we have seen in the chapter on representation, the black woman, left alone, had to embrace those characteristics of strength and masculinity that once had belonged to their men. Now black men wanted that masculinity back. They were enjoying the attention of white women and the fact that they could now steal the master’s woman, just like the master had done to them years back. Long past were the days when the black women’s strength was praised by Du Bois.

51 Evans, Sara. Personal politics. The roots of women’s liberation in the Civil Rights movement and the new left. Vintage Books, 1980, pg. 88-89

52 Wallace, Michele. Black macho and the myth of the superwoman, pg. 157

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Now, according to Wallace:

all parties managed to agree on at least one issue: The black woman’s act needed intensive cleaning up. She was too domineering, too strong, too aggressive, too outspoken, too castrating, too masculine. She was one of the main reasons the black man had never been properly able to take hold of his situation in this country. The black man had troubles and he would have to fight the white man to get them solved but how would he ever have the strength if his own house was not in proper order, if his wife, his woman, his mother, his sister, who should have been his faithful servants, were undermining him at every opportunity.⁵³

Her notorious strength was also the cause of hostility from the white women.

According to Wallace the myth of the strong black woman had weakened the strength of the white woman. She had now to embody the role of weakness because in the traditional imagery, and its tendency to simplify, the black woman had already taken on the role of the strong woman. Wallace states that liberal white women, who had abandoned their prejudices against the black man, still could not accept the black woman; her referring to black women as strong was not to be interpreted as a sign of admiration, more like as a sign of jealousy and disparagement. ⁵⁴

There in the Sixties stood the black woman totally alone for the first time, trying to figure out a new identity for herself. The partnership with her white fellow females had not worked and her man was not granting her womanhood. Despite her acceptance of his predominance, stepping down from her domineering position had not guaranteed her a “happily ever after” with her man. This position can explain why the black woman in those times stopped questioning

53 Wallace, Michele. Black macho and the myth of the superwoman, pg. 91

54 Ibidem, pg. 93

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the black authority and tried to be supportive at all cost, even when that meant suffering abuse from him.

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10. The representation of the black women in the Harlem riot of 1943

All the sources agree on the causes of the Harlem riot in 1943 and on how the events unfolded. On August 1^st, policeman James Collins tried to arrest Miss Margie Polite in an attempt to contain her disorderly conduct. Margie Polite had checked in at the infamous Braddock Hotel in Harlem and was not satisfied with the room she had been given. Therefore, she decided to check out shortly after she had arrived. Upon leaving the hotel she started a quarrel over a dollar tip that she had given the porter and that she was now claiming back. At the same time, private Robert Bandy, a black soldier on furlough, and his mother Florentine Roberts were checking in at the reception of the Braddock. In the belief that they were witnessing an assault made by a white policeman at the expense of a black woman, mother and son decided to intervene. Allegedly, Robert Bandy took Collins’s stick, and the latter fired his gun, thus wounding the soldier slightly.

Collins also was slightly wounded and both men were hospitalized.⁵⁵

It did not take long for rumours to spread that a white policeman had shot down and killed a black soldier. A crowd gathered around the hotel and protests soon degenerated into violence and looting. Windows of white owned shops in particular were smashed, and many stores were plundered by a mob out of control. Hundreds of people, including police officers, were injured and five died; millions of dollars were lost in property damage.⁵⁶

The events of the riot in 1943 resembled those of 1935, when Harlem was set on fire by similar circumstances: false rumours that a boy, who had tried to pilfer, had been killed by a white shop owner. This time, though, the local black and white leaderships refused to consider this riot race related, maybe not to harm the reconciliation process between the black and the white New York

55Guzman, Jessie Parkhurst, Foster, Vera Chandler, and Hughes William Hardin. Negro year book: a review of events affecting Negro life 1941-1946. Tuskegee Institute, 1947, pg. 242

56 Ibidem, pg. 242-244

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populations that Mayor La Guardia had activated in 1935. Despite New York politicians trying to deny the racial nature of the riot, many saw the discontent of the black Harlemites for their living conditions as the triggering cause of looting and violence.⁵⁷

Whatever the latent or the actual reasons that caused Harlem flare on that Sunday afternoon, the uprising of 1943 will be forever bound to the name of a black woman.

Miss Margie Polite and her rebellious attitude were considered the main cause of the riot, both in court documents and in history records.

Poet laureate Langston Hughes, one of the founders of the Harlem Renaissance and among the most influential poetic voices at that time, dedicated a long poem to Miss Polite, humorously indicating her as the scapegoat of the American society for being coloured and female.

If Margie Polite Had of been white She might not’ve cussed

Out the cop that night.

In the lobby Of the Braddock Hotel

She might not’ve felt The urge to raise hell.

[…]

They taken Margie to jail And kept her there.

DISORDERLY CONDUCT The charges swear.

Mark August 1^st As decreed by fate For Margie and History

To have a date.

[…]

Margie Polite!

Kept the Mayor- And Walter White -

57Capeci, Dominic J. The Harlem riot of 1943, pg.37-39

The representation of black women in the Harlem riots of 1943 and 1964: A comparative analysis