Academic literature on the topic 'Men in black (Motion picture)'

This chapter examines the photographs shot by Henry C. Norman and amateur photographer Mary Britton Conner of Natchez African Americans in the postwar era. Norman, a highly-skilled white photographer, created hundreds of magnificent portraits of African-American men, women and children, leaving a priceless record of how these people wanted to be remembered. At a time when American popular culture frequently ridiculed African Americans, Norman’s portraits gave his black customers a means to define themselves in the face of negative racist stereotypes. The images shot by Conner reveal the social climate of early twentieth century Natchez as seen through the eyes of a prominent white woman raised in an environment suffused in Lost Cause romanticism and Jim Crow racism. In stark contrast to the narrative visible in Norman’s portraits of black consumers, Conner’s photographic images reflect the depth of white southerners’ nostalgia for antebellum notions of race, dependency and paternalism.

The medieval foliate head has proven to be a powerful icon in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the US and UK, not only of human interdependence with non-human nature but also of sexual and racial boundary crossings among humans. This decorative motif known popularly as the Green Man – a human head made of leaves, or with vegetation sprouting from it – was almost ubiquitous in English and Western European church sculpture from the late eleventh to the sixteenth centuries. These aesthetically intricate, affectively intense images represent bodies that are strange mixtures, weird amalgams: they picture intimate trans-species relations. Drawing on recent theories of queer inhumanism, this chapter analyses uptakes of foliate head imagery in festivals (including Burning Man), sexual subcultures (the Radical Faeries), and literature (Randolph Stow’s Girl Green as Elderflower), focusing particularly on traumatic postcolonial contexts out of which new queer worlds are imagined.

The chapter begins by stating that a widely circulated picture of a white soldier and a Black Confederate soldier is actually a photograph of Andrew Chandler and his family slave, Silas. Slaves were sometimes allowed to purchase military uniforms or were provided them by their masters, which explains why there are photographs of Black men in Confederate uniforms. At the onset of the war, Confederates believed they could offset the disadvantage of having a smaller population and less war-making power than the Union by utilizing slave labor. The government impressed enslaved people to work on earthworks, railroads, and weapon production. They also performed various jobs in camps such as cooking, performing music, and assisting in hospitals. White soldiers often brought slaves from home to act as personal servants. At times, the presence of personal slaves created class tensions within camps. Enslaved people often took on various tasks in camps for payment. While the shared experience of war likely brought the enslaved and their enslavers closer together, the racial hierarchy was strictly, and often violently enforced by the enslavers. Enslavers’ belief that their slaves were loyal to them and the Confederate cause sometimes caused emotional distress when a slave would run away or defect to the Union.

The Civil War had little impact on Green, who continued to travel between Maysville and Paris. In August 1865 he attended a meeting in Louisville of black clergy that set in motion plans for a black institution of higher learning. In the same month, he had not only paid off the $850 but was able to buy the house he had been renting behind the Methodist Church. Slavery was slow to end in Kentucky, and Green had to fight to free his children in 1866. That year, he negotiated for the creation in Paris of Clayville, a neighborhood of black-owned houses. In 1867 he was a delegate to the State Convention of Colored Men held in Lexington reporting on the condition of freed slaves in Mason County. In 1868 and 1876 he campaigned for Republican candidates. In the 1870s he was embroiled in various religious disputes with younger pastors in Paris.

By arriving at the South Pole on 14 December 1911, the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen (1872–1928) reached his destination over a month ahead of the British effort led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott (1868–1912). As Scott’s party approached the South Pole on 17 January 1912, they were devastated to see from afar the Norwegian’s black flag. On arrival, they discovered the remains of his camp with ski and sledge tracks, and numerous dog footprints. Amundsen, it turned out, had used dogs and diversionary tactics to secure victory while the British team had man-hauled their sledges. These differences were not lost on The Times in London, which marked the achievement with muted praise, declaring it ‘not quite in accordance with the spirit of fair and open competition which hitherto marked Antarctic exploration’. Exhausted, Scott and his men spent time the following day making scientific observations around the Pole, erected ‘our poor slighted Union Jack’, and photographed themselves in front of it (Plate 11). Lieutenant Bowers took the picture by pulling a string to activate the shutter. It is perhaps the most well known, and at the same time the saddest picture, of the entire expedition—a poignant image of the doomed party, all of whom look utterly fed up as if somehow sensing the fate awaiting them. The cold weather, icy wind, and dismal circumstances led Scott to acerbically remark in his diary: ‘Great god! This is an awful place and terrible enough to have laboured to it without the reward of priority.’ By this time, the party had been hauling their sledges for weeks, and all the men were suffering from dehydration, owing to fatigue and altitude sickness from being on the Antarctic plateau that sits nearly 3000m above sea level. Three of them, Captain Oates, Seaman Evans, and Bowers, were badly afflicted with frostbitten noses and cheeks. Ahead lay the return leg, made all the more unbearable by the crippling psychological blow of knowing they had been second to the Pole. After a gruelling 21-day trek in bitterly cold summit winds, the team reached their first cache of food and fuel, covering the distance six days faster than it had taken them to do the leg in the other direction.

These two fathers’ quotes encapsulate three central themes for African American fathers. The first reflects an experience common to many fathers, regardless of race—that a father’s participation in child-rearing is not as important as a mother’s. Fathers are often made to feel uncomfortable when they do express an interest. A second theme relates to the dangers in the community of associating with the “wrong crowd” and the pressure on these young women to become sexually active and have babies at a very young age. The second father speaks to the third theme, the challenges he sees his daughter facing as she grows up and tries to compete in an unjust world. This is a refrain that we heard throughout the interviews with the fathers. This chapter presents the stories of the fathers. They are an important part of the tapestry that has produced their academically successful daughters. They have often been a counterweight to the mothers by offering education about the male world and by providing a male perspective. It is they who assume a protective stance (often along with mothers) as they warn about relations with men. And it is they, along with the mothers, who set the achievement bar high. How did they learn the values they impart, and how do they help their daughters prepare for the future? We asked them what messages they received about education and about being Black when they grew up, and how these messages influenced their parenting style. We asked specifically about their daughters’ abilities and interests in math and science. We were interested in who the fathers believed had been helpful to their daughters along the way. We particularly focused on adolescence and the thorny issues that arise regarding emotional and physical development, dating, and growing up Black. Finally, we asked for their wisdom—what do they recommend to other parents who want to engender academic excellence in their children? Many have a certain picture of the African American father, particularly those fathers who are poor.