©2010 Krystal D. Frazier ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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©2010 Krystal D. Frazier ALL RIGHTS RESERVED FROM THE REUNIONS OF RECONSTRUCTION TO THE RECONSTRUCTION OF REUNIONS: EXTENDED AND ADOPTIVE KIN TRADITIONS AMONG LATE- NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURY AFRICAN AMERICANS by KRYSTAL DENISE FRAZIER 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 History Written under the direction of Dr. Mia Bay And approved by ____________________________________ ____________________________________ ____________________________________ ____________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey January 2010 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION “From the Reunions of Reconstruction to the Reconstruction of Reunions: Extended and Adoptive Kin Traditions among Late-Nineteenth and Twentieth Century African Americans” By KRYSTAL DENISE FRAZIER Dissertation Director: Dr. Mia Bay Only in the last forty years have scholars began to take seriously the expansive kinship networks often seen in African American families. Although African Americans have a longstanding history of maintaining extended kinship networks, which often also incorporated non-relatives as adoptive kin, the majority of scholars who have researched black kin systems are not historians. Such work has largely been taken up by sociologists and anthropologists. Moreover, few historians have researched black kin systems beyond the period of Reconstruction. This dissertation historicizes black family culture and its impact on political and economic history after Emancipation. The dissertation uses a thematic and chronological approach to examine the ways in which traditions of familial flexibility, first developed under slavery, continued to shape African Americans’ conceptualizations of family and patterns of organizing ii well into the Twentieth Century. Both the reunion movements of Reconstruction and the turn of the twenty-first century demonstrate the importance of familial networks to black communities. Chapters on black church families at the turn of the twentieth century, interdependent families affected by twentieth century war-time migration, and political kinship established by black families in the late-twentieth century Civil Rights Movement reveal the ways in which African Americans conceptions of family shaped their efforts to address poverty, racism, and familial dispersion. The dissertation builds on historical work on the black family, as well sociological and anthropological theories to make several interventions. By using family as both a site for historical inquiry as well as an analytical framework for interpreting history, the dissertation introduces new methods of investigating the political and economic impact of black family culture. The project also sheds new light on old historiographical questions, including the ways in which the church became the most autonomous of black institutions in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries as well as the impact of migration on the societies migrants leave behind, by examining them through the lens of family. Additionally, it contributes a historian’s analysis to a growing and necessary literature on the characteristics and experiences of black families that advances scholarly discussions beyond pathology debates and monolithic depictions of black family life. iii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my delightful parents Otis James and Wilma Wright Frazier for introducing me to both my history and the Ancient of Days. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To my brilliant dissertation advisor Dr. Mia Bay, whose astute editing hand and consistent analytical probing pushed me to ask more important questions and make clearer arguments. I often say that we did an excellent job in selecting my committee members—Professors Ann Fabian, Deborah Gray White, Steven Lawson, and Kimberley Phillips and I hope the work I’ve produced with their guidance, in some way, demonstrates a portion of my appreciation for their pouring into me. Thank you all for believing in me and the possibilities of my project. Without the encouragement of Dr. Bay and my committee this project could not have been completed. Of course, I own all of its shortcomings, but they would exist in far greater number if not for the astute assessments of my committee. Thank you also to my extended family—the members of 15th Street COG and its extensions, St. James East Millstone, Abundant Life Family Worship Church, and New Life Fellowship for your prayers, words of encouragement and nurturing embraces during this arduous process. My heart overflows at the love and support of my adopted kin and extended family including my newly adopted WV Family, the Brownes, Alonzos, Delk-Millers, Jameses, Eustache-Joneses, Cooper-Joneses, Boyces, Wrights, Richards, and Fraziers. So many mentors, friends, and colleagues have read parts of the dissertation and offered insightful critiques and helpful edits. Thank you to Amrill Alonzo, Maria Rice Bellamy, Melissa Stein, my University of Rochester of Rochester dissertation reading group—Paula, Kathleen, and Laura, Ms. Gloria Delk, and Othell Miller. For research support and thought-provoking reviews of my work I thank the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, the Mustard Seed Foundation Harvey Fellowship, the Northeast Consortium for Faculty Diversity and the Frederick Douglass v Institute for Research on African and African American Studies. Ghislaine Ragedone- Eison, Gail L. Figgins, Jeff Tucker, Larry Hudson, and Jesse Moore provided invaluable support and warmth during my research year in Rochester. Thank you to Dr. Ione Vargus of Temple University’s Family Reunion Institute, Ms. Sarah Coleman of C. N. Jenkins Memorial Church and Mrs. Carrie W. Smashum for mentorship and research interviews. I am also eternally grateful for the encouragement of my sisters Kimberly D. Frazier and Kelly D. F. Deese, A. Sophia V. Gomez C. Heyward, Natasha S. F. Boyce, Kenya D. Anderson, who tolerated, supported and encouraged me through the worst of my academic and personal challenges; brother-in-law Jermaine, nephews, Keston William and Jayson Kyle; nieces, Kendall Gloria and Krystien Mauria and godchildren Stephanie-Dawn and Angelina, all of whom inspire me to be better and to leave a legacy that will inspire them; Grandmother Mrs. Viola R. Wright, Grand-Auntie Mrs. Carrie W. Smashum, Grand-Auntie Mamie R. Turner, and parents, who have taught me how to persevere. Thank you all and I hope you find much to appreciate in this project and the scholarship that will eventually emerge from it. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Title Page……………………...…..…………………………………………………….….…………….i Abstract…………………….…………………………………………………………..………..……....ii Dedication………………………………………………………………………….…….…….………iv Acknowledgements…………...……………………………………….…..…..........…..……..……....v Table of Contents.....…………………………………………….……..….……………………….....vii Introduction “Making It What We Need It to Be”: Lessons from the Pass and a Twentieth Century African American Familial Consciousness..……...….......................1 Chapter 1 “Homes for Some and Work for Others”: Affective Ties, Economic Needs and Reunion in the Post-War Era………..……………………………………….................28 Chapter 2 “In the Household of Faith”: The Church Family Among African Americans at the Turn of the Twentieth Century..................................................54 Chapter 3 Making Emmett Till Justice: Political Sensibilities, African American Families and the Migration Years.……………………...………………………………....110 Chapter 4 “In the Family of Civil Rights”: Southern African American Kinship and the Civil Rights Movement…………………………………………………165 Chapter 5 “All the Folks You Love Together”: New Identities, Black Family Reunions and Reclaiming the Extended African American Family in Recent History….………….228 Conclusion “We Are Family”: The Centrality of Extended and Adoptive Kin Systems to African American Family History…………………………………………………..…286 Bibliography……………………………………………...……………………………………….....290 Curriculum Vitae……………………………………………………………………………………297 vii 1 Introduction “Making It What We Need It to Be”: Lessons from the Past and a Twentieth-Century African-American Familial Consciousness “We don’t hold to the view that the nuclear family is the only kind of family that exists in America,” Dr. Dorothy I. Height told an interviewer when she launched the first annual National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) National Black Family Reunion Celebration (NBFRC) in 1986.1 The thousands of African American family groups included distant relatives and fictive kin but all, gathered on the National Mall that September with “a true sense of unity and pride,” that provided a “momentum for dealing with our problems by building on the strengths of the Black family.”2 Height imagined the NBFRC as an avenue through which young people could “take pride in their self-image, for people of all ages to speak up for the essence of Black heritage and pay tribute to the skills and the many ways Black people have not only survived but achieved.”3 She also hoped that the organization would help black communities mobilize to address under-employment, teenage pregnancy, substance abuse, educational deficiencies and other problems within black communities.4 Over the next twenty-three years the Council’s annual “reunion” celebrations grew to include hundreds of thousands of African American participants. The long and important history of extended and adoptive family as an organizing metaphor