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Staging Civil Rights: African American Literature, Performance, and Innovation

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Staging Civil Rights: African American Literature, Performance, and Innovation University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2014 Staging Civil Rights: African American Literature, Performance, and innovation Julius B. Fleming Jr University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the African American Studies Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, and the Theatre and Performance Studies Commons Recommended Citation Fleming Jr, Julius B., "Staging Civil Rights: African American Literature, Performance, and innovation" (2014). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1276. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1276 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1276 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Staging Civil Rights: African American Literature, Performance, and innovation Abstract This dissertation examines the relationship between African American literature and performance during the modern Civil Rights Movement. It traces the ways in which the movement was acted out on the theatrical stage as creatively as it was at those sites of embodied activism that have survived in intellectual and popular memories: lunch counters and buses, schools and courtrooms, streets and prisons. Whereas television and photography have served as primary ways of knowing the movement, this project turns to African American literature, and the live performances it inspired, to provide a more complex framework for analyzing the movement's cultural arm. Focusing in particular on African American drama and poetry, I argue that critically analyzing the intersections of literature and performance uncovers conceptual and epistemological frameworks that productively reorient traditional accounts of the modern Civil Rights Movement. In this vein, I examine the works of relatively well-known artists, such as Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, Alice Childress, Langston Hughes, Margaret Walker, Amiri Baraka, and Gil Scott-Heron, and lesser known artists and performance collectives, such as Paul Carter Harrison, Pearl Cleage, the Free Southern Theater, and the Broadside Press Poets. Building upon this archival intervention, I argue that black writers and performers develop what I term acts of black performative revealing , in which they use their bodies, the stage, and literature to play with and challenge iconographies of race, gender, sexuality, nation, and modernity that circulated in U.S. public discourse and international media. Despite preoccupations with "making it new" in the realm of art, science, and technology, there was a troubling, diametrical desire to constrict people of African descent to antiquated modes of being in the domain of rights, equality, and justice. Yet, from the revered stages of Broadway to community theater performances that were produced in the cotton fields of Mississippi, blacks crafted innovative performance and aesthetic techniques that creatively challenged and repurposed the very lexicon of scientific and technological innovation. Utilizing these practices to reimagine race, gender, sexuality, nation, and U.S. modernity, the artists studied here invite more nuanced conceptions of the movement's "classical" phase, which has, of late, fallen out of critical vogue because of a "dominant" narrative that the intersection of literature and performance fruitfully unsettles. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group English First Advisor Thadious M. Davis Keywords African American literature, Black Poetry, Black Theater, Civil Rights Movement, Modernity, Performance Subject Categories African American Studies | English Language and Literature | Theatre and Performance Studies This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1276 STAGING CIVIL RIGHTS: AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE, PERFORMANCE, AND INNOVATION Julius B. Fleming, Jr. A DISSERTATION in English Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2014 Supervisor of Dissertation: ______________________________________________________________________ Thadious M. Davis Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and professor of English Graduate Group Chairperson: ______________________________________________________________________ Melissa Sanchez Associate Professor of English Dissertation Committee: Herman Beavers, Associate Professor of English/Undergraduate and Graduate Chair, Department of Africana Studies John L. Jackson, Jr. Richard Perry University Professor of Communication and Anthropology STAGING CIVIL RIGHTS: AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE, PERFORMANCE, AND INNOVATION © 2014 Julius B. Fleming, Jr. iii Acknowledgements I have had the good fortune of being supported, loved, mentored, nurtured, and sustained by some of the most wonderful people with whom one can hope to cross paths. Words cannot capture how much my dissertation committee at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) has shaped the person and thinker I have become. My advisor, Dr. Thadious M. Davis, has been generous, encouraging, and supportive, having faith in me even when my own faith was running short. She models so much of what I love about this profession and hope to become. Dr. Herman Beavers has been tremendously formative to my intellectual and personal development. His insights and commitment have made me a better scholar and taught me to be a good citizen of the world and the academy. Dr. John L. Jackson, Jr. has significantly informed my ways of thinking through classes and meetings that always made this journey more possible and enjoyable. His mentorship has been priceless. I am grateful to the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Research Fellowship, the Social Science Research Council, the Fontaine Society, the Manuscript and Rare Book Library at Emory University, the Penn MMUF program, and the Departments of English and Africana Studies at Penn for their generous funding and support. Drs. Candice Love Jackson, Salamishah Tillet, Tsitsi Jaji, Amy Kaplan, Barbara Savage, Camille Charles, and the staff in the department and Center for Africana Studies at Penn have helped beyond measure. They have provided refuge and peace in times that were crucial points along my journey. This study has also benefited from the support and keen insights of friends. Jarvis McInnis, Cameron Brickhouse, Venise Battle, Jibril Powell, Daniel Fryer, Diana Burnett, Renaldo Williams, Joshua Green, John Purnell, and so many others: thank you. I have been blessed with an amazing family. My maternal grandparents, Billy and Rachel, have always been a source of strength and profound happiness. Lisa, Tina, Amber, and Tim: you are amazing. My brother, Mario, was my first friend. He continues to motivate me in ways that he will perhaps never know. He moves through life with a peace and an easiness that continue to inspire me. I owe my parents, Julius Fleming, Sr. and Sharon Fleming, the world and so much more. They have always seen the best in me, pushed me to new limits, and ensured that I would be in a position to leave this world better than I found it. And, last but certainly not least, my wife, Phylicia (Lisa) Fitzpatrick-Fleming, renews me, and has been my best friend since our days at Tougaloo College. She teaches me how to live, and for that I am forever grateful. To my parents and Lisa, I dedicate this dissertation. iv ABSTRACT STAGING CIVIL RIGHTS: AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE, PERFORMANCE, AND INNOVATION Julius B. Fleming, Jr. Thadious M. Davis This dissertation examines the relationship between African American literature and performance during the modern Civil Rights Movement. It traces the ways in which the movement was acted out on the theatrical stage as creatively as it was at those sites of embodied activism that have survived in intellectual and popular memories: lunch counters and buses, schools and courtrooms, streets and prisons. Whereas television and photography have served as the primary ways of knowing the movement, this project turns to African American literature, and the live performances it inspired, to provide a more complex framework for analyzing the movement’s cultural arm. Focusing in particular on African American drama and poetry, I argue that critically analyzing the intersections of literature and performance uncovers conceptual and epistemological frameworks that productively reorient traditional accounts of the modern Civil Rights Movement. In this vein, I examine the works of relatively well- known artists, such as Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, Alice Childress, Langston Hughes, Margaret Walker, Amiri Baraka, and Gil Scott-Heron, and lesser known artists v and performance collectives, such as Paul Carter Harrison, Pearl Cleage, the Free Southern Theater, and the Broadside Press Poets. Building upon this archival intervention, I argue that black writers and performers develop what I term acts of black performative revealing, in which they use their bodies, the stage, and literature to play with and challenge iconographies of race, gender, sexuality, nation, and modernity that circulated in U.S. public discourse and international media. Despite preoccupations with “making it new” in the realm of art, science, and technology, there was a troubling, diametrical desire to constrict people of African descent to antiquated modes of being in the domain of rights, equality, and
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