turn of the century urban traffic

Clarence King surveyed the Far West for the U.S. government.

And I thought traffic around Tuscaloosa could be trying. Up top is footage of traffic in London, San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles at the turn of the century. It reminds me of a clip I posted earlier with "La Femme D'Argent," an electronica tune by the French band Air, playing underneath (check that video out to the lower right). My colleague, Dr. Bart Elmore, who did a mash-up for a soundtrack under a short film students in this class produced last fall, hipped me to "La Femme."  During a talk before the premiere of the film in our own ten Hoor hall, Bart mentioned that it was interesting to see how well modern-day European  music went with images from nineteenth century Tuscaloosa. Certainly many local buildings, among them Jemison Mansion, have European influences.

And speaking of the nineteenth century, Clarence King, a geologist born in that century and subject of one of this course's readings, once claimed Manhattan "as his new frontier." He was particularly drawn to the lower portion of the island where he could see the urban poor. This practice, which was called "slumming," allowed him to escape the stress he felt when he was with his wealthy friends and business associates.

King also spent time in London where he befriended folks in both the upper and lower classes. According to historian Martha Sandweiss, he "moved easily between one world and the other." However, no matter where his travels took him, King seemed to be drawn most to the poorest in society. Whereas he found a homogenous white working class in London, those in lower Manhattan were black and newly arrived white European immigrants. But by the turn of the century, African Americans, who had been in lower Manhattan since the seventeenth century, were increasingly moving to Harlem where they were joined by people of color from the South, the Caribbean and Latin America.