American Vernacular: Popular Culture, Performance, and the Question of National History, 1871-1915

American Vernacular: Popular Culture, Performance, and the Question of National History, 1871-1915 By Gabriel Farren Milner A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Richard Cándida Smith, Chair Professor Paula Fass Professor Katherine Snyder Spring, 2013 ©2013 by Gabriel Farren Milner All rights reserved. Abstract American Vernacular: Popular Culture, Performance, and the Question of National History, 1871-1915 by Gabriel Farren Milner Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Richard Cándida Smith, Chair Scholars tracing America’s development into a powerful modern nation between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War One have traditionally considered popular culture, and especially popular culture’s depictions of national history, as a vehicle for conveying ascendant socioeconomic ideals of “incorporation” or “Americanization.” In this view, vernacular histories—histories rooted in local conceptions of self, community, and experience—provided a nostalgic reminder of a lost golden age, a diversion from the tasks of everyday life, or a quality to be appropriated and remade to fit prevailing narratives of economic and territorial consolidation and white racial superiority. This dissertation, by contrast, considers how popular representations of national history and citizenship were frequently framed by local conceptions of past and present. Specifically, I examine four performances where groups that were (or imagined themselves to be) regionally, ethnically, or racially marginalized by the nation’s shift to modernity enacted their pasts for national audiences, and the ways in which these performances circulated vernacular versions of U.S. history and culture for a consuming public. Chapter one examines the Fisk Jubilee Singers in their first decade (1871-1881). The chapter discusses their performances of slave spirituals as cultural expression and as political practice in a decade spanning the end of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow. Spirituals embodied ideals of self-making, piety, communal solidarity, and liberation. The singers, like their slave forebears, used the spiritual to achieve a level of autonomy, cohesion, and pride as they negotiated the contours of citizenship. The performances examined in chapters two and three struggled with the question of the ideal of “progress” in late nineteenth century historical narration. Chapter two describes the emergence of a particular brand of rugged self-making, seen as central to American identity and threatened by the “settlement” of the West, which was enacted and perpetuated at Buffalo Bill’s The Drama of Civilization (1886-1887). Buffalo Bill Cody astonished audiences with a spectacular pageant reenacting the “settlement” of the West, but his presentations also mourned the potential loss of “rugged individualism” with the closing of the frontier. Chapter three considers the ways in which the Hull-House Labor Museum (1900-1910) dramatized a history of immigrant craftspeople as integral to seeing America as a workingman’s republic, the benefactor of a transnational, transhistorical process of self-, community-, and nation-making through indigenous 1 craftsmanship. Chapter four reads The Birth of a Nation (1915) as a highly divisive neo- Confederate history that dramatized a discourse of northern conspiracy and southern patriotism. Ending with this popular film, the dissertation also highlights the dangers of vernacular history becoming normative. Reading these accented dramatizations of national history within and against key social and economic developments, the dissertation argues that popular culture provided a language for registering disillusionment with the shift to modernity, including links between whiteness and patriotism, territorial expansion and “settlement,” and technological and social progress. For the performers and the impresarios of these performances, enacting a familiar past as foundationally “American” provided a framework for self-making, “authenticity,” and ambition that shaped their conception of the meaning of modern citizenship and of their own place in the nation at large. 2 To my parents, Patsy and Sheldon Milner i Table of Contents Illustrations……………………………………………………………………………… iii Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................. iv Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter One The Tenor of Belonging: The Fisk Jubilee Singers in Public and Private ………………11 Chapter Two Frontier Central: Performing Frontier America in The Drama of Civilization ………….54 Chapter Three Jane Addams versus the Melting-Pot: Preserving “The Patient Performance of Painful Duty” at the Hull-House Labor Museum.………………………………………………..91 Chapter Four Love in the Ruins: The Birth of a Nation’s History Crusade.…....……………………..132 Conclusion …………………………………………...................................…………...174 Bibliography.....………………………………………………………………………...179 ii Illustrations “The Wild West”…………………………………………………………………………79 “The Labor Museum at Hull House”…………………………………………………...119 “D. W. Griffith directing The Birth of a Nation (1915)”……………………………….147 iii Acknowledgments Three women planted the seeds of this project during my childhood. Dorothy Bulmash, Shirley Milner, and Betty Johnson were great self-mythologizers. As they told me stories of their pasts, my imagination toggled between a Baltimore that was unrecognizable to me in the 1980s and 1990s, a larger-than-life New York and New Orleans, or a tough and rural North Carolina. From these three women I was early schooled in the ways in which people make sense of their identity within the context of both the local and the national community. Thank you to a special group of people who helped me move from hunches to ideas and who patiently served as sounding boards, critics, cheerleaders, commiseraters, and distractors. Keerthi Potluri and Nicholas Junkerman kept me company in the library. Pablo Palomino, German Vergara, and David Tamayo did the same in the halls of the history department. Elsewhere, Tia Halpern, Nancy Whichard, Molly Anderson, and Harris Feinsod remained steadfast in their attention and encouragement. Special thanks go to three friends who, though not in academia, listened attentively to my ideas, encouraged me through rough patches, and celebrated with me during small victories. My conversations with Peter LaBier about popular culture, identity, and politics pushed me to think about my own work in new ways. David Kolker has been a partner in crime for twenty-five years. Even when he was most busy with his own work, he never failed to remind me that what I was doing was important and somewhat impressive, and that it would get done. Finally, my brother Zac ably demonstrated how to approach the task of living with the appropriate doses of irony and sincerity. Funding for research trips was made available through a Dean’s Normative Time Fellowship and the University of California, Berkeley Graduate Division Summer Grant. These research trips took me across the United States, where I was fortunate enough to work with patient and innovative archivists. I wish to thank Mary Diaz at the Halsted Special Collections Library at the University of Illinois, Chicago; Charles Silver at the Film Research Center at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City; and the staff of the Pacific Film Archives in Berkeley. At an extended research trip in Cody, Wyoming, I was welcomed into the friendly and dynamic community of scholars who tirelessly retrieved boxes for me, discussed ideas over lunch, and were always on the lookout for sources that might, somehow, help me round out my scholarship. It was a singular pleasure, in Cody, to work with Mary Robinson at the McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center; John Rumm, curator of the Buffalo Bill Museum; and Linda Clark at the Buffalo Bill Papers. The late Beth Howse, Special Collections librarian at the John Hope and Aurelian E. Franklin Library at Fisk University, enthusiastically welcomed me to Fisk and continued to assist me with photocopying and advice even after I returned to California. Although I never had the pleasure of meeting them, a number of archivists relayed important materials to me via the Internet and provided advice and direction during pivotal transitions. Thank you to Andrew Salinas at the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University; Steven Friesen at the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave in Golden, Colorado; and the staff at the Rauner Special Collections Library at Dartmouth College. I was graced with a wonderful committee. Katie Snyder has been a steadfast supporter of my work while forcing me to refine both my analyses and how I articulate iv them. In moments of stress and confusion, Katie reminded me, by way of example, that it’s important to maintain your allegiance to the world outside of academia. I was fortunate enough to meet Paula Fass during my first year in graduate school and to have maintained a friendship with her. Paula pushed me to make important connections between ideas and to think big. Her enthusiasm for my work, and also her frankness about issues that needed resolving pushed me in the best ways. My advisor, Richard Cándida Smith, has been a tireless advocate of my writing and ideas, but also an attentive reader, able

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