Strange Fruit Research Articles

The Moral and Aesthetic Debate inStrange Fruit: Coexistence of Violence and Beauty in Human Nature in Works of Art

In the contemporary era, philosophers have debated the homogeneity of arts moral and aesthetic values. As far as musical works are concerned, in contrast to traditional music ethics, contemporary musical works are increasingly charaterised by the integration of aesthetic and moral values. However, it is important to note that aesthetic and moral values are not always unified and that there may be instances when there are differences and even conflicts between them. When such a conflict arises between the aesthetic and moral values of a musical work, it becomes necessary to consider how its overall artistic value should be evaluated. This paper employs a case study methodology to analyse the song Strange Fruit in depth. Discussing the formal aesthetics of the work, which has been the subject of considerable controversy due to its depiction of violence, is set against the moral value of the work, which reveals the problem of racial discrimination and prompts a deep reflection on justice in society. The conflict and balance between the two are explored in light of the claims made in the philosophy of art to date. In such instances, the value of art is profoundly affected by the conflict between moral values and aesthetic concepts.

BLACKS' PROTEST SONGS: THE EXPRESSION OF LYNCHING AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM IN THE USA

The protest has become the main, dominant inner-structure, and predominant theme not only in black writings, especially literary works, like; novels and poetry but also in the song writings. The protest is rooted in black slavery and racism has been felt and may continue to be felt throughout U.S. history. This article sought to indicate the mode of racism and ways of black in resisting it reflected in three protest songs written by blacks. Looking at the three decades of protest songs, three are standing out as important examples for this study: “Strange Fruit” (1937), “Say It, I’m Black and I’m Proud” (1968), and “Blue Lights” (2018). These protest songs are consistent in messaging the racism in the criminal justice system and black resistance against it over time. Critical race theory enables how racism as a legal, cultural, and political condition is reproduced and maintained, primarily in the US context. Strange Fruit portrays about lynching in the era of Jim Crow. They were tortured and lynched, reflecting how black people were experiencing discriminatory treatments and extrajudicial punishment after the civil war. Say It, I’m Black and I’m Proud portrays racial inequality in the post-Civil Rights Movement. Whites are still privileged and blacks are undervalued. More advances, Blue Lights portrays the concern of black people in facing racism that affects institutions like law enforcement, which leads to arbitrary shooting of black people in crime scenes in the present time. Taken together, the songs reflect the dynamic nature of racism, as well as the shifting mode and attitude of blacks in struggling against racism from the past up to the present time in the US from passive, radical, and subtler

BLACKS' PROTEST SONGS: THE EXPRESSION OF LYNCHING AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM IN THE USA

The protest has become the main, dominant inner-structure, and predominant theme not only in black writings, especially literary works, like; novels and poetry but also in the song writings. The protest is rooted in black slavery and racism has been felt and may continue to be felt throughout U.S. history. This article sought to indicate the mode of racism and ways of black in resisting it reflected in three protest songs written by blacks. Looking at the three decades of protest songs, three are standing out as important examples for this study: “Strange Fruit” (1937), “Say It, I’m Black and I’m Proud” (1968), and “Blue Lights” (2018). These protest songs are consistent in messaging the racism in the criminal justice system and black resistance against it over time. Critical race theory enables how racism as a legal, cultural, and political condition is reproduced and maintained, primarily in the US context. Strange Fruit portrays about lynching in the era of Jim Crow. They were tortured and lynched, reflecting how black people were experiencing discriminatory treatments and extrajudicial punishment after the civil war. Say It, I’m Black and I’m Proud portrays racial inequality in the post-Civil Rights Movement. Whites are still privileged and blacks are undervalued. More advances, Blue Lights portrays the concern of black people in facing racism that affects institutions like law enforcement, which leads to arbitrary shooting of black people in crime scenes in the present time. Taken together, the songs reflect the dynamic nature of racism, as well as the shifting mode and attitude of blacks in struggling against racism from the past up to the present time in the US from passive, radical, and subtler

Strange Fruit: Racism and Community Life in the Chesapeake—1850 to the Present by John R. Wennersten

Reviewed by: Strange Fruit: Racism and Community Life in the Chesapeake—1850 to the Present by John R. Wennersten John G. Deal Strange Fruit: Racism and Community Life in the Chesapeake—1850 to the Present. By John R. Wennersten. (Washington, D.C.: New Academia Publishing, 2020. Pp. xiv, 225. Paper, $24.00, ISBN 978-1-7359378-4-7.) In Strange Fruit: Racism and Community Life in the Chesapeake—1850 to the Present, John R. Wennersten examines race relations on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to challenge assumptions about race on the national level. Organized chronologically, Strange Fruit will appeal to a general audience, [End Page 145] thanks to its lively prose, vivid descriptions, dramatic photos, and historical overviews that serve as guideposts for each chapter. It is a relatively short book of just over two hundred narrative pages. Wennersten begins with a brief history of Somerset County, noting its geographic isolation, which caused residents to identify themselves regionally, rather than as Marylanders. Wennersten moves quickly through the trajectory of race relations beginning in 1850, when Somerset County had a proportionately large number of free Black and enslaved persons (4,571 and 5,089, respectively), while the white population stood at 15,332. Owing to its isolation, the county had about the same population in 2020 as it did in 1850. Wennersten describes the abuses and indignities heaped on enslaved persons, the domestic slave trade, and (thanks to Somerset County’s border state location) escapes to freedom. Despite efforts by the county’s slaveholding elite, Maryland’s new state constitution outlawed slavery in September 1864. In post–Civil War Somerset County, freedmen faced white intransigence as they entered a world of new political opportunities, demanded civil rights, and participated in a free labor economy. Many formerly enslaved people became watermen and contributed to the Eastern Shore’s expanding seafood industry. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, race relations deteriorated further with the advent of Jim Crow segregation and efforts to restrict Black voting rights in Maryland. Making effective use of local and state records, contemporary newspapers, and his own interviews, Wennersten hits his stride as the narrative enters the twentieth century. To show how violence against Black people in Somerset County intensified, he vividly describes the murder of George Armwood in 1933. Armwood was falsely accused of raping an elderly white woman. A white mob hauled him out of his jail cell, stabbed him to death, and dragged him through the streets, at which point he was hanged and burned. In response, a New York City teacher named Abel Meeropol wrote a poem that began with the verse, “Southern trees bearing strange fruit. Blood on the leaves and blood at the roots” (p. 137). The state of race relations on the Eastern Shore during the twentieth century mirrored conditions in other regions. The local canning industry exploited Black labor, and many young African Americans migrated elsewhere in search of work. While exploring these larger themes, Wennersten also reveals interesting details, such as the use of German prisoners of war as agricultural workers during World War II, a move that undercut Black wages. Like other communities around the country, African Americans on the Eastern Shore demanded an end to segregation in schools, restaurants, and hotels during the 1960s. Blacks had few white allies in their efforts, and protesters were met with violence that sometimes escalated into riots. Aligning with the present-day African American experience nationwide, Black people on the Eastern Shore continue to confront limited access to medical care, higher mortality rates, underrepresentation in public offices, and violence perpetrated against them. Reflecting on the persistence of racism in the Chesapeake, Wennersten titles his last chapter “Semper Eadem,” which translates to “always the same” (p. 205). [End Page 146] John G. Deal Library of Virginia Copyright © 2023 The Southern Historical Association

Critical Essays on the Writings of Lillian Smith ed. by Tanya Long Bennett

Reviewed by: Critical Essays on the Writings of Lillian Smith ed. by Tanya Long Bennett Jennifer Ritterhouse Critical Essays on the Writings of Lillian Smith. Edited by Tanya Long Bennett. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2021. Pp. vi, 179. Paper, $25.00, ISBN 978-1-4968-3685-4; cloth, $99.00, ISBN 978-1-4968-3684-7.) “Am I really going down in history as just the ‘brave little woman who spent her life helping Negro[e]s,’” Lillian Smith asked plaintively in a letter written the year before her death from cancer in 1966. She hoped instead “to be acknowledged as the writer I think I am” (p. 8). Although scholarship on Smith has grown steadily over the decades, historians are especially prone to discuss her politics and draw on her insights about the segregated South without exploring her literary artistry. Yet Smith’s “optimism about improving society was inextricably tied to her artistic impulse,” argues Tanya Long Bennett, a professor of English at the University of North Georgia, an institution with which four of the seven contributors to this volume are also affiliated (p. 5). Critical Essays on the Writings of Lillian Smith is the first edited collection examining Smith’s entire body of work—from her best-selling debut novel Strange Fruit (New York, 1944) and her widely cited autobiography Killers of the Dream (New York, 1949) to her lesser known books from the 1950s and 1960s. These seven essays are organized chronologically “to guide readers through the powerful aesthetic and thematic workings of her texts” (p. 16). Along the way, they connect Smith’s writings not only to segregation and the civil rights movement but also to modernism, psychoanalysis, the Cold War, trauma theory, and the struggles of female artists in a misogynistic culture. The basis for Smith’s optimistic belief that individuals were able to overcome societal barriers and form mutually beneficial relationships also becomes clear. Bennett provides both a valuable introduction, which includes a review of existing scholarship on Smith, and the collection’s first essay. Her careful examination of the geography of Maxwell, Georgia, the setting of Strange Fruit, culminates in an appreciation for Smith’s use of multiple perspectives to put the reader in the shoes of various characters, female and male, Black and white. “Smith’s use of narrative point of view to effect individual awakenings aligns with research indicating that fiction can diminish perceived race boundaries,” Bennett writes (p. 38). Conversely, examining how anxious white patriarchs enforced boundaries and indoctrinated the young is the primary goal of [End Page 183] Killers of the Dream, as interpreted by Justin Mellette, who puts Smith’s autobiography in dialogue with William Alexander Percy’s Lanterns on the Levee (New York, 1941) and other texts. Emily Pierce Cummins focuses on Killers of the Dream as well, using trauma theory to highlight Smith’s optimistic “belief that human connection and understanding can stop the cycle of trauma and restore the future” (p. 83). Moving into Smith’s Cold War–era writings, Wendy Kurant Rollins offers a close reading of Susie, a character in The Journey (Cleveland, Ohio, 1954). “Smith weaves into Susie’s characterization two sides or impulses that Smith frequently identified in herself and called her Martha and Mary sides,” Rollins writes. As a result, Susie comes to embody “the maddening and isolating effects of totalitarian political culture on women” (p. 89). Keenly aware that Smith was no twenty-first-century feminist, Cameron Williams Crawford interrogates Smith’s problematic use of an eight-year-old girl’s false rape accusation as a plot device to explore the mob mentality of the Joseph McCarthy years in One Hour (New York, 1959). Narrated by a white male minister, One Hour can also be read to show “how rape culture is perpetuated when men’s voices are given more power than women’s,” Crawford argues (p. 124). In the collection’s final two essays, April Conley Kilinski finds much more than nostalgia in Memory of a Large Christmas (New York, 1962), and David Brauer draws especially close connections between Smith’s political sensibilities and her use of rhetorical strategies and multivocal narration in Our Faces, Our Words...

Strange Fruit & Other Plays by Harold Jaffe

Reviewed by: Strange Fruit & Other Plays by Harold Jaffe R. Sebastian Bennett (bio) strange fruit & other plays Harold Jaffe Black Scat Books https://blackscatbooks.com/2021/10/#:~:text=Harold%20Jaffe's%20new%20collection,we%20find%20ourselves%20in%20today. 144 pages; Print, $14.95 Harold Jaffe's latest volume, Strange Fruit & Other Plays, is a compelling exploration of Art and History. The work comprises a selection of dramatic texts, a new literary form for Jaffe, author of more than thirty books. The title of the book derives from Billie Holiday's anthemic song, "Strange Fruit," about the horror of a lynching in the South. The song was written by a Jewish high school teacher from the Bronx, who was also a writer and activist. He handed it to Billie Holiday after a gig in a Greenwich Village club. The song immediately moved her. Jaffe's dramas, which themselves expose racial issues and endorse humanistic cooperation, explore sociocultural and political themes and trends through a combination of character analyses and macroscopic investigations of cultural moments/shifts over the past century. The net result is a fresh, acute rendering of and commentary on artistic dimensions—especially as they relate to cultural crises. Jaffe's dramas can be divided into those that are primarily diagnostic representations and those that are aspirational representations—in the latter case pointing to aspects of society that could or should be ameliorated. As Jaffe has done so well in many of his other texts, his dramas diagnose issues that live at the core of current and historical conflicts, including racism, gender inequality, excessive commercialism (i.e., excessive selfishness). Other dramas include more aspirational themes, such as the function of art as a dream [End Page 155] that releases us from the confines and restrictions of our materialistic world; and the theme of return to innocence—a return to our purest, most spiritually complete form as children, a motif that expands on similar dynamics in the works of Blake, Whitman, and Wordsworth. From the basal position, Jaffe explores the art-making process, including consideration of the enigmatic question of whether the goal of art is fully met in its creation, or whether art is epistemologically furthered, in an augmented observer effect, via its distribution, acclaim, or status. This juxtaposition is seen most pointedly in the drama Artaud/Bataille, wherein Antonin Artaud "is writing to Jacques Riviere, literary editor of the important journal Nouvelle Revue Francais," after Artaud's work is rejected. Artaud queries, What if I were to inform you that … the so-called literary world, such as you have devoted your professional life to, means to me nothing. Less than nothing. It is precisely the "bleeding out into the absolute" which alone compels me. Jaffe expands his inquiry into status to include consideration of the commercialization of brands, or quests for brand awareness; and astutely connects this brand-questing to many individuals in our new technocracy who strive to create their own "brands," in essence selling themselves—which can be seen as a form of prostitution, although not necessarily sexual, wherein the ultimate goal is monetary gain, or somewhat less frequently, narcissistic satisfaction or ego enhancement. In Shredded Wheat, Jaffe vividly renders humans in the act of commercializing themselves through a conversation between an "Actor" and a "Brand": actor: Why are some humans called brands, Brand? brand: Humans are called brands because they market and whore themselves. actor: Why are some humans called actors? brand: International bad humans are called actors because they play the roles laid out for them. actor: Who uses the term actor and brand? brand: Fools and mofos who themselves are brands and actors use the term actors and brands. [End Page 156] At times, some of Jaffe's dramas morph into "meta-dramas," dramas within or about dramas, as in Jimi/Janis/JM, where Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin are simultaneously portrayed through their music and offstage commentary and through actors rendering the musicians' would-be personae onstage. This disconnection, explicitly manifest in the stage directions, represents the musicians' private and public images as well as the jagged gap between the public's view of a "celebrity" and that person's true "self." The...

Lose Your Father

Lose Your Father

Introduction

Introduction

Strange Fruit: the power of a protest song NCSS trade book investigation

Strange Fruit: the power of a protest song NCSS trade book investigation

Blue Notes 2.0: The Diachronic Resonance of Langston Hughes During the George Floyd Protests: A Foreword

Blue Notes 2.0: The Diachronic Resonance of Langston Hughes During the George Floyd Protests: A Foreword

Valuing the Partnership Between the Veterans Health Administration and Academic Medicine.

Valuing the Partnership Between the Veterans Health Administration and Academic Medicine.

Mapping the Lost Home: Psalm 137 and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing

Mapping the Lost Home: Psalm 137 and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing Rachel Ewing Jesmyn Ward’s 2017 novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, tells the story of Jojo, a thirteen-year-old biracial boy in coastal Mississippi, and his family as they struggle to navigate issues of grief and addiction rooted in the generational trauma of racist oppression. When Jojo’s father Michael, a former meth cook, is released from the Mississippi State Penitentiary, also known as Parchman Farm, Jojo accompanies his mother Leonie, baby sister Kayla, and questionable family friend Misty on a road trip across the state to bring Michael home. Although the family is temporarily reunited, theirs is not a happy ending. Grandmother and matriarch Philomène dies of cancer; Jojo learns the horrific truth about his beloved grandfather River’s own time as a prisoner; and Leonie and Michael’s meth addiction intensifies. Anxious and restless, Jojo begins walking the woods near his home. In the final pages of the novel, such a walk leads him to something strange: a tree full of ghosts, with bird-like spirits perched two or three to a branch “all the way up to the top, to the feathered leaves” (282). The vision, which Kayla also sees when she and River follow Jojo, evokes the horrors of lynching, the “strange fruit” of Abel Meeropol’s poem and Billie Holiday’s famous song. Readers might also think of the tree of crucifixion, or the baobab tree of African legend.1 Considered alongside the ghosts’ behavior, however—the [End Page 143] “speaking” of the trauma of their death, and their longing remembrance of “home” when Kayla sings—the tree of ghosts functions as a modified iteration of the poplar(s) (or willow[s]) of Psalm 137, sometimes called the Tree of Lamentations, in which the exiled Judean singers hang their harps on the bank in Babylon. 1By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.2There on the poplars we hung our harps,3for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” 4How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?5If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill.6May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you,if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.2 The psalm has a long history in resistance art. Rose Lucas, among many others, explains its adaptation to “articulate Caribbean and African-American experiences of colonisation and its resistant voices” (2) to express an important liberation theme in Rasta reggae music, and to contrast European and Indigenous experiences in Australian culture. In linking the landscape of the Mississippi coast to the site of exile on the riverbanks of Babylon, Ward brings these associations to bear. As we will see, the adaptation of the psalmist’s tree and the actions of the ghosts—the “speaking” of their trauma, their participation in Kayla’s song, and their refusal to leave the branches—allows the final scene of the novel to encompass both cathartic release and a lament for the loss of a symbolically complex “home,” a lament for a loss that is both past and ongoing, atemporal and rooted in a history of racial oppression. [End Page 144] Avoiding overly simplistic optimism, the ending of the novel is an expression of trauma that in its very existence resists erasure, a complex act of mourning that maps the contours of an unbearable vanishing point as well as a possible path forward. I The adaptation of the tree of Psalm 137 emphasizes “home” as a symbolic and psychological space. Composed after the burning of Jerusalem, the psalm is a lament not only for a physical homeland and cultural identity but also for social bonds previously used to define subjecthood. In the novel, the ghost of the murdered Richie, a boy who served time in Parchman with River, explicitly connects the concept of home to love and family, rather than physical space: “Home...

The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House: The Role of Diversity in Anti-Racist Education

Diversity is a strange fruit that requires critical analysis to understand its meaning, value and impact on education. Depending on the era, diversity has been defined in a number of different ways and has a variety of meanings across a range of contexts. The lack of shared meaning and understanding of diversity and who controls the diversity narrative have significant implications for the development of anti-racist pedagogy in gerontological education. This presentation will discuss the history and evolution of the “diversity discourse” and how mainstream notions of diversity impact diversity initiatives, curriculum design and anti-racist pedagogy. Strategies for engaging in an historical analysis of diversity and how this process relates to the design, leadership and ownership of anti-racist curriculum will be discussed, as well as the role of gerontology in leading these efforts.

Strange Fruit

Author(s): Goenawan, Mohamad | Abstract: An analysis of the long history of anti-Black racism, which stretches from George Floyd's trampling death back to the lynching murders which Billie Holiday sang about in "Strange Fruit."

Groan

Listen. There’s no introduction to Nina Simone’s rendition of “Strange Fruit,” only a single note. Her voice emerges. Rough. Direct. Accusing. Denouncing. Her entire performance is predicated on the tightly controlled breath: each word bears the weight of her lungs, none left unarticulated or lost among the bitter poignancy of images made into word.Placing Nina Simone’s rendition of “Strange Fruit” is an effort in trying to place breath. Simone’s interpretation is no wail or cry. Hers is a performance steeped in a Black tradition of breathing, born of centuries of fugitivity and bearing the scars of a people trying to live in hostile atmospheres. Her “for the leaves to drop” extends “leaves” for a full seven seconds, voice a decrescendo like the wind wailing before a storm or the scream of a siren. Her guttural energy, baptized in anger and disgust as much as sorrow, reverberates as a groan—that deep, nonlexical sound of despair; that low moaning breath when weight crushes the chest. It’s the breath of a person in pain, an attempt to assuage something they have no remedy for.Her groan is an indictment. It’s an indictment of a world that cuts short the breath of Black people, leaving Black bodies swinging in the trees, or restrained on the side of the road with a knee to the neck. It’s an indictment of the state of Black life, which is always marked by imminent and immanent death. Hers is a groan uttered through tightly clenched teeth.Yes. If singing with Simone, do it with clenched teeth and clenched fist.

Seeing the Chauvin Trial Through the Eyes of Another

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article ViewpointsFull AccessSeeing the Chauvin Trial Through the Eyes of AnotherAyana Jordan, M.D., Ph.D.Ayana JordanSearch for more papers by this author, M.D., Ph.D.Published Online:13 Apr 2021https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2021.5.43AbstractSouthern trees bear a strange fruitBlood on the leaves and blood at the rootBlack bodies swingin' in the Southern breezeStrange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees—excerpt from “Strange Fruit,” made famous by Billie HolidayThe execution of Black people at the hands of the police is the modern-day version of 19th and 20th century lynchings—where Black bodies hung from trees for the world to see. Lynchings were meant to control “freed Blacks,” instilling fear and despair. Similarly, today there is a collective anguish in the Black community as we are repeatedly exposed to media images of Black people being killed by the police.With the trial of Derek Chauvin (known in many Black spaces as simply “the trial”) now under way, we are reliving the horror of George Floyd’s death—through the replaying of raw video footage, witness and expert testimony, and the defense offered by Chauvin’s attorneys.The constant replaying of raw video footage of George Floyd’s death harkens deep-seated agony, as we globally bear witness to the harmful ills of overt racism.Vicarious trauma—the emotional and physical experiences that can arise from witnessing the pain of others, in this case the killing of George Floyd—is triggering for many Black people. Additionally, as Chauvin’s defense attorneys assassinate Floyd’s character to provide justification for the stark injustice, there is growing fear among Black people that such messages could serve to embolden racist police.With the coverage of the Chauvin trial at great heights in the mainstream media, some may experience symptoms closely related to posttraumatic stress disorder including (1) intrusive symptoms (bodily cues like an increased heart rate connected to the triggering event), (2) avoidance (not watching the trial because it brings up memories of the traumatic event), (3) negative changes in mood (feeling detached from others, inability to experience joy) and (4) changes in arousal (difficulty concentrating, always being “on guard”).How do we as psychiatrists—many of whom will never share the understanding of personally mediated racism at the hands of the police—provide healing care to those who are experiencing this trauma? What is the way forward in supporting our patients who are indeed being personally and peripherally affected by the vicarious trauma during “the trial”?There are many ways forward, but we must be deliberate in acknowledging the grave injustices related to Black identity in America. We cannot shy away from the realities that Black people are more likely to suffer negative consequences, including death, at the hands of the police than non-Black people in this country. Bringing this reality into the treatment milieu can help to affirm the very real and harmful experience of racism.Secondly, we can silently bear witness to the pain associated with this experience and simply listen—without rushing to offer solutions. Being seen and heard are essential in healing, and many Black people simply need a place to do both.Finally, we can encourage patients to practice acts of self-preservation—such as engaging in prayer and meditation—and join in community healing—through participation in all-Black spaces such as virtual emotional emancipation circles and Sawubona healing circles.As psychiatrists, we can play a major role in helping those most adversely impacted by the Derek Chauvin trial access true liberation and wellness. We must position ourselves to lead this effort now and during other difficult times when people encounter injustice. ■Ayana Jordan, M.D., Ph.D., is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and an addiction psychiatry physician at Connecticut Mental Health Center. Jordan is the early career psychiatrist trustee-at-large on APA’s Board of Trustees. ISSUES NewArchived

“Strange Fruit”: Teaching the Present and Past of Racial Violence in the Rural South

ABSTRACT Drawing from data from a multicase study, I examined how teachers teach current racial violence and for racial justice in rural school spaces in the U.S. South. Using abolitionist teaching and trauma-informed pedagogy as theoretical lenses, I argue that racial violence and racial justice can be taught well even in schools in complex political, social, and ideological communities. Teachers need to assume racial trauma in all students, connect the past and present of racial violence and resistance, frame teaching for the space in which the teaching is done, and finally, affirm the experiences of students of color, recognizing both the violence and the resistance.

Preaching The Blues: Black Feminist Performance in Lynching Plays by Maisha S. Akbar

Reviewed by: Preaching The Blues: Black Feminist Performance in Lynching Plays by Maisha S. Akbar Judith Stephens-Lorenz PREACHING THE BLUES: BLACK FEMINIST PERFORMANCE IN LYNCHING PLAYS. By Maisha S. Akbar. Routledge Focus series. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2020; pp. 138. In Preaching the Blues: Black Feminist Performance in Lynching Plays, Maisha Akbar examines the intersections of lynching dramas, performance theory, and a Black feminist blueswoman tradition. Drawing on the work of journalist and anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells (1862–1931) and Bessie Smith's (1894–1937) performance of "Preachin' the Blues," Akbar provides, in three chapters, a perspective through which readers can recognize the disruptive force of Black feminist/non-normative subjects and strategies in lynching plays. In our 1998 volume, Strange Fruit: Plays on Lynching by American Women, Kathy Perkins and I called for the recognition of lynching drama as a distinctly American genre, offered a definition, documented more than a hundred plays in existence (at that time), and reviewed lynching's influence on other art forms. More recently, Koritha Mitchell's award-winning volume Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890–1930 provides a critical analysis of these plays as mechanisms through which African Americans survived mob violence while continuing to assert their right to full citizenship. Treva Lindsey's Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington D.C. examines lynching plays as nontraditional sources of Black women's cultural production in Washington D.C. and highlights the important role of local playwright/poet Georgia Douglas Johnson's literary salon. In her introduction and chapter 1, Akbar's volume presents the genre as a Black feminist performance tradition and thus provides an additional framework through which to view these plays. She also posits "critical lynching studies" as an interdisciplinary critical cultural scholarship project for examining lynching plays as well as other forms of antilynching cultural production. Beginning with the work of anti-lynching pioneer Wells, Akbar guides her readers through an understanding of the plays as a Black feminist performance and/or discourse tradition comprised of specific (counter-hegemonic) communicative strategies and practices opposing lynching as white supremacist performance. As Akbar recognizes the foundational work of Wells in opposing what scholar Kirk Fuoss has termed "lynching performances" (that is, actual historical lynchings), she examines lynching plays for their disruptive (non-normative) constructions of race, gender, and sexuality as well as their antilynching themes. Akbar honors a Black feminist tradition of disrupting and challenging commonly held or established views and practices of white su premacy. In doing so, she foregrounds anti-lynching plays and activism as disruptive forces in opposition to the whiteness narrative of the traditional lynching story in which a fragile innocent white female victim needs to be protected/rescued by a gallant white male hero from rape by a villainous Black man. In this archetypal lynching story, which became familiar through novels such as Thomas Dixon's The Clansman (1905) and films like D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), Black women are absent. Employing Angela Davis's Blues Legacies and Black Feminisms (1998), Hazel Carby's Cultures in Babylon: Black Briton and African America (1999), and Smith's composition "Preachin' the Blues" (1927), Akbar links the anti-lynching activism performance tradition to a blueswoman music tradition, specifically through the use of a blues-spiritual aesthetic in which an unexpected or disruptive combination (such as sacred/secular) occurs. Drawing on the lyrics from Smith's version of "Preachin' the Blues"—"Now one sister by the name of Sister Green jumped up and done a shimmy you ain't never seen"—Akbar perceives a vision of the Black church as a potentially disruptive space in which women can challenge traditional gender roles and express themselves more fully. Reflecting this same spirit, Angelina Grimke's Rachel (1916) is set in a Black home and presents a female protagonist as a "non-normative subject who is unwilling to replicate a white supremacist societal/family construct" (32). As the character of Rachel (after learning of her father's lynching and of the continual racial bullying of neighborhood children) rejects marriage and biological motherhood, she is refusing to take part in the...

“Blood at the Root”: Cultural Abjection and Thwarted Desire in the Lynching Plays and Poetry of Angelina Weld Grimké

Well before Billie Holiday’s doleful rendition of “Strange Fruit,” African American women playwrights directly confronted the subject of lynching. In addition, Angelina Weld Grimké’s Rachel (1916) offers a prime example of how Black lesbian writers used coding and nuance to present queer content in lynching dramas. This reading of Grimké’s work reveals how the Black lynched body and the Black lesbian body both become culturally abject within the sexual economy of lynching. Taking a holistic view of Grimké’s oeuvre, I analyze Rachel alongside her erotic poetry and short stories, establishing multiple connections between the theme of lynching and lesbian longing. Grimké kept her own longings private, submerged in her literary output, yet similarities in themes, figures, and images suggest that Grimké resisted racism and homophobia simultaneously. By listening closely for how lesbian desire appears, often through absence, critics can develop new perspectives on these often overwrought, sentimental writings from the earliest moments of the Harlem Renaissance. I urge a more expansive approach to women’s queerness in these incipient years, prior to Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929), or the “downlow” coolness of Black women’s blues music.

Creative Introduction

Creative Introduction Walidah Imarisha "But in their own way, the new generation—to whom so much had been given, from whom so much was being stolen, for whom so little would be promised—would not settle for the things previous generations had been willing to settle for. Concede them a demand and they would demand more. Give them an apocalypse, and they would dance" (Chang 19). Jeff Chang's words above were written about the youth who created hip hop in 1970s South Bronx. And yet it feels timeless and absolutely relevant today. This is partially because the same structural inequalities, staggering disparities, and systemic oppressions that shaped the lives of late 20th century poor/working class urban Black and Brown kids still sculpt the present. But likewise, this same spirit of creative resistance, righteous rebellion, and innovative audacity pervade the art of those who are metaphorically dancing through this current apocalypse. The ability to dance through an apocalypse is something communities of color have honed and perfected over the countless generations of destruction they have survived, in this nation and globally. Having lived through so many historic and ongoing assaults, communities of color have made themselves into fire-activated seeds, like the eucalyptus. The eucalyptus understands the world it lives in, understands fire is inevitable, and plans for it. The heat releases the seed, allowing new life to be birthed in an inferno. As Black feminist science fiction writer and luminary Octavia E. Butler wrote, "In order to rise / from its own ashes / A phoenix / First / Must / Burn" (137). The rise of so many movements for justice and liberation within communities of color is the seed sprouting in the blaze, the phoenix ever rising from previous [End Page 17] generations' pyres. Amidst the literal fires ravaging our planet, along with so many other climate catastrophes, Indigenous communities continue to be the warrior caretakers for us all. Through the decades and centuries of onslaught against Black communities by law enforcement, again and again resistance movements like Black Lives Matter have exploded forth. And of course all of these movements are not only connected, they breathe deeply as one, exhaling liberation dreams. Those in these movements hold hope even in the face of the unimaginably brutal. "Let this radicalize you rather than lead you to despair," prison abolitionist Mariame Kaba instructed us. Art is a powerful arena for this alchemic process of transmuting pain and horror into hope. Art allows us to not only sustain ourselves through trauma, but also allows us to imagine a way through it. When we cannot see beyond the abyss beneath our feet, we cling to the edge. But what if the abyss is actually a portal? As A.J. Hudson writes in the essay "The End of the World, for Whom?": "One way or another Climate Change will end our world. But not all endings are bleak." The "Curating At the End of the World" exhibit shows that apocalypse has happened before. It is sometimes necessary for the new to be born. Created to respond to the multitude of intersecting "existential threats" to Black people in the diaspora, the first section of the exhibit opened online during the beginnings of the pandemic, when so much felt terrifying and unknown, dystopic and devastating. The three art pieces reprinted here show the breadth of the response to that ongoing crisis, which of course is connected to all other crises. The images capture the horror but also the hope not just of these artists but also Black communities. It helps recenter the historic certainty of Black visionary survival rooted in Black creativity that is our birthright. As Reynaldo Anderson and Sheree Renee Thomas write in their essay, "This work is remembrance and resurrection, resistance and restored hope in a social, economic, and political landscape of uprisings and upheaval, strange fruit buried in scorched earth." This is the charge of the artist in all times but especially these times. If artists of color are truly honest about themselves, their communities, and this world, they have to be disruptors and subversives. In a country rooted in white supremacist hetero-patriarchal capitalism (word to bell hooks), to see people of color...