© 2017 Meredith Elaine Davis ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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© 2017 Meredith Elaine Davis ALL RIGHTS RESERVED EVERYDAY MEN, EXTRAORDINARY HUSTLES: SOUTHERN BLACK MASCULINITY IN MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE By MEREDITH ELAINE DAVIS A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Women’s and Gender Studies Written under the direction of Mary Hawkesworth And approved by _____________________ _____________________ _____________________ ______________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey JANUARY 2017 ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION EVERYDAY MEN, EXTRAORDINARY HUSTLES: SOUTHERN BLACK MASCULINITY IN MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE By Meredith Elaine Davis Dissertation Director: Mary Hawkesworth This dissertation explores the complex lives of African American men in Memphis, Tennessee (1925 – 2006), whose vocations and acts of courage afford alternative perspectives on Black masculinity. Comparing the Jim Crow, post-apartheid, and “postracial” eras. The project documents institutional and socially-sanctioned racism over the course of a century in the U.S. south. Crafting an interdisciplinary methodology that encompasses archival investigations, critical race and gender theories, and analysis of visual culture, I conduct case studies of the heroism of dockhand Tom Lee, the Sanitation Workers Strike of 1968, and the depiction of twenty-first century urban life in Hustle and Flow to disrupt pernicious and pervasive stereotypes of Black men. I demonstrate how a culture of emasculation generated practices of subjugation and systemic oppression, which operated over time and through changing modes of employment and economic dispossession to produce Black men as racialized and gendered subjects. I also illuminate Black men’s creative resistance to these modes of subjugation, identifying diverse means devised by Black men who struggled against great odds to build lives of dignity and win public respect. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND DEDICATION One thing they cannot prohibit ⎯ The strong men . coming on. The strong men gittin’ stronger. Strong men. Stronger. Sterling Brown, 19311 To Edward Miller Davis, My Father/ My Danish: If no one else ever acknowledges your presence and footprint in this earth I will. As a southern black man you were misunderstood and underestimated. I am the proof of your love, compassion and tenderness. You fed seven with an eighth grade education and single income. You taught me how to cook, play hopscotch, and say prayers at night and how to persist in the midst of obstacles. My inheritance is your manhood. I am your seed. I embrace the man and woman within me. I remember you. You were and you still are here, Tu tamen et hic. To all the men with tears unshed, fears fed, left weak by a false fortitude, I see you, I know you. This is our Pandora’s Box we must open. Let the floodgates of love and vulnerable drown us in the regret that we made you less human, less than a man. To Pansy Pamela Astrid Davis, I love you more than words. Your sacrifices were not in vein. Thanks Mommy, you share this degree. To Michelle and Melanie, my big sisters, I love you more than you will ever know. To Patty, my Pit, one of the greatest minds I have ever seen. You could not finish but I grabbed the baton and did it for us. My twin, my soulsister. To my best friend and sister, Baretta, you are my confidant and comfort. Thanks for sharing Camille throughout our lives and Chris, the only Big Brother I’ve ever known. 1 Originally published in The Book of American Negro Poetry, ed. James Weldon Johnson (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1931) iii Gone before us, our sister Melissa Darlene, the first educator I knew. Thanks for being a great big sister. To those gone before me: Calvin, Nina Ida, Arnim, Dallas, your blood and wisdom runs through my veins. To Lucille and Umar, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and all of my SMCM family, you were the place and the people that first recognized my passion and purpose. My heart is filled with gratitude, and this work is for you. For my Gentle Giant, from far from Gray, you are my one true love. Thank you for letting me be me. And now, to those of intellectual and “comradic” gratitude: First, my dissertation chair, Dr. Mary Hawkesworth, thank you for believing in my craft and intellectual capability unlike any other. To my committee members, Dr. Cheryl Wall, Dr. Sherri-Ann Butterfield and Dr. Hasan Jeffries I am grateful and honored you took time to read and assist in my process. Drs. Felicia McGinty and Christel Temple, you have inspired me for years. My sisterfriends: To Dr. Danielle Cunningham, a partner in the academic grind, thanks for staying close and keeping me hopeful this day would arrive. To the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, thanks for giving me the chance to complete this degree in a non-traditional and unconventional way. Thank you Mr. Wayne Dowdy and the Benjamin Hooks Library for assisting me with your wonderful archives. Finally, to Ernest L. Gibson III, I was wounded within the house of what appeared as friends and your love, patience and kindred spirit aided in this journey of healing. You truly are my intellectual and spiritual muse. iv Table of Contents Copyright Abstract ii Title Page Acknowledgement and Dedication iii List of Illustrations vi Chapter One. Theorizing Black Masculinity in the New South 1 Chapter Two. The Useful Negro: Re-Constructing An Obstructed Version of Black Masculinity— Tom Lee, 1925- 1954 47 Chapter Three. The Missed Subject: Black Masculinity in the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike 94 Chapter Four. “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp”: New Spaces of Redemption Created by Southern Black Men 141 Chapter Five. Re/Visioning Southern Black Masculinity 185 Works Cited 202 v List of Illustrations Chapter Two: Figure 1. Picture of Tom Lee, pg. 71. Figure 2. Original Tom Lee Obelisk, pg. 92. Figure 3. The New Tom Lee Sculpture pg. 93. Chapter Three: Figure. 1. Memphis, Mayor Henry Loeb shaking hands during the Sanitation Workers strike’s negotiations, pg. 94. Figure 2. White students taunting the “The Little Rock Nine,” African American youth integrating Central High School in 1957, pg. 104. Figure 3. Editorial Cartoon, “Relax! He’ll Drink when He’s Ready,” Commercial Appeal, pg. 106. Figure 4. Editorial Cartoon, “Conquer and Breed,” Commercial Appeal, pg. 109. Figure 5. Commercial Appeal contributor, Thomas Fox collecting trash, pg. 119. Figure 6. Commercial Appeal, “Ciampa Go Home,” pg. 123. Figure 7. Editorial Cartoon, “Beyond the Bounds of Tolerance,” Commercial Appeal, pg. 124. Figure 8. Ernest Withers, civil rights photographer during his coverage of the Little Rock Nine, pg. 127. Figure 9. Black Protester during the Sanitation Strike, 1968, pg. 130. Figure. 10. Mississippi civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer speaking to sanitation workers in Memphis in 1968, pg. 132. Figure 11. Black Women Protesters on behalf of the sanitation workers, pg. 134. Figure 12. Black male protester with placard, pg. 136. Figure 13. Young boy asleep after protest, pg. 138. Figure 14. Sanitation Workers and National Guard, pg. 139. Chapter Four Figure 1. Nola fighting the heat working the streets, pg. 150. Figure 2. DJay persuading Nola to connect with a John, pg. 153. Figure 3. Former high school classmate and producer Key, pg. 157. Figure 4. Skinny, hip hop artist, pg. 169. vi Figure 5. Nola and Lexus, pg. 178. Figure 6. Yvette, Key’s wife, pg. 178. Figure 7. Nola and DJay listening to Key direct his choir, pg. 179. Figure 8. Craig Brewer, Director and Creator, Hustle and Flow, pg. 184. Chapter Five Figure. 1. Young boy asleep after the protest, pg. 201. vii 1 Chapter 1 Theorizing Black Masculinity in the New South What do a dockhand in 1925, sanitation workers in 1968, and a 2006 film featuring an Oscar winning southern hip hop group have in common? Put somewhat differently: what do a black savior, a group of innovative laborers, and salacious redeemers have in common? The lived experiences and social realities that surrounded Tom Lee, Black Memphis sanitation workers, Hustle and Flow and Three 6 Mafia spanned disparate decades. Yet, each provided powerful insights into the politics of race, gender, respectability and worthiness that shaped and informed Black men in Memphis, Tennessee. Examining these lives is a means to gain a more nuanced understanding of the unconventional ways that black men have asserted themselves, disrupting stereotypical projections about race and manhood in the contentious and often complicated mid-southern United States.2 Although their lives appear disconnected, their stories, social positions and vocations illuminate the forces that circumscribe and constitute black male subjectivity and self-determination. At first glance, it might appear that Memphis, Tennessee has few racial, social or political continuities that span 1925, 1968 and 2006. Yet closer reflection makes it clear that each of these years (and the years in between) have been profoundly shaped by the history of slavery, an institution that created and solidified the racial caste system of the United States with continuing reverberations in the twenty-first century. Variously 2 I use the term maleness as an inclusive term connoting young black boys as well as men. I used manhood to refer exclusively to adult men, avoiding the conflation of young boys with men, a problematic and often disregarded difference. 2 labeled the eras of Jim Crow, post-apartheid, and “postracial,” all three of these historical moments have been marked by institutionalized and socially sanctioned racism, adorned with derogatory notions of blackness particularly in the US south. Although the manifestations of institutional racism have differed in these epochs, each building upon its predecessor and taking on new forms, pervasive inequality persists.