pondering the nineteenth century urban space via the daily newspaper

My own research relies partly on looking at nineteenth century newspapers.

In tomorrow's class we will look at the ways in which baseball and the "metropolitan press" contributed to emerging urban life. In light of last Saturday's field trip, which was canceled, Dr. Richard Megraw will join us to lead a discussion on the former.

I will draw on my own knowledge of the sport to make connections to the metropolitan press. To be sure, I will try to approach the lecture with new eyes. Indeed, I was a newspaper journalist for the better part of a decade, having started as a high school intern before working as a staff copy editor, reporter and assistant editor for three newspapers once owned by Knight-Ridder (now The McClatchy Company), a large chain once based in my hometown. By 2000, I could see the decline of daily newspapers with the public's growing attention to the Internet and left the company. After working as a freelancer for a bit, I applied to graduate school. Eleven years later, I'm teaching and have more time to tell a story as an academic.  I sometimes miss the adrenaline rush from running after after a good story. I miss, too, having a copy editor (So does my husband who once jokingly said - I hope - of one of my academic typescripts, "If I never see this again, it won't be too soon").

During my newspaper days, I had no knowledge of how newspapers contributed to nineteenth century urban dwellers sharing a "common humanity," as Gunther Barth writes. On the basis of my own research on the migration of freedwomen and children to Ohio, it certainly appears true. In the pages of archival newspapers I've seen hints of a rapidly changing world. Take for example,  Jourdan Anderson, a former enslaved man and Dayton, OH-resident whose 1865 letter to his former master was printed in the New York Daily Tribune. Apparently his master wanted him to return to the South after the Civil War and work for him. Anderson worried about the impact of such a move on his two daughters Milly and Jane. He wanted them to be safe from sexual abuse. Anderson also wanted back-pay from his earlier days of working as an enslaved person.

I recall, too, reading about Cincinnati white man of means who published a notice alerting area merchants that he'd no longer be paying the bills of his wayward wife; the African American domestic worker who avoided conversation with the abolitionists  knocking on the door of the house in which she worked, lest her employer hear her doing as much(these visitors were in search of signatures for their cause; she was trying to keep her job); and numerous newspaper advertisements for school books, which evidently unveiled the growing access to education some people had by mid-century. It is a topic that the students and I have discussed. I've seen, too, many advertisements from people in search of property in an increasingly crowded Cincinnati.


In the years leading to the Civil War, and prior to the formation of ghettoes, African Americans were by and large dispersed throughout Cincinnati’s white residents, among them, Irish and German immigrants fleeing a famine and a failed revolution in their homelands, respectively. Between 1840 and 1850, Cincinnati’s population increased from 46,338 to 115,434. It was third behind only New York and New Orleans in volume of commerce.

How do such individuals from varying backgrounds find the "common humanity" via the metropolitan press?  How do issues like entertainment, leisure and language figure into this conversation from the perspective of readers? How does honesty figure in from the perspective of newspaper businesssmen? What practical purposes did newspapers serve? The students should be curious about the answers to these questions and  come to class prepared to have a productive conversation on these and other issues.

cities need nature, one astronomer says

This is UA's old golf course. Lots of bird calls here. I took this photo last week.

Check out this cool story heard today on National Public Radio (NPR). It's about how cities and nature can work together. It's so Frederick Law Olmsted, 21st century-style. Apparently, even songbirds change their tunes while living in cities. Makes me wonder now about the bird in our backyard lately. Must be a migratory one on his way somewhere south of here. Sounds like he's singing "Jeter, Jeter, Jeter" (That one's for you, my late Mississippi-born-Yankees-fan Grandpa).

birmingham and baseball: a case study

Birmingham(1919), Courtesy of Perry Castaneda Library

On Saturday, the students and I will travel with Dr. Richard Megraw of UA's American Studies Department to Birmingham's Rickwood Field. They should be prepared to think deeply about how Birmingham serves as a case study for analyzing baseball's role in emerging urban life. 

When and where do we see Americans entering ballparks? 

Yes, how does watching a baseball game help us find meaning in a changing world on and off the field during the nineteenth century? 

For historian Gunther Barth, baseball figures into emerging city culture between 1830 and 1910, give or take a decade. 

Is baseball just an athletic contest or does it have other lessons to teach us about competition in a modern world? 

How do referees seem to take the place of public officials and priests? 

And since people have been playing ball since antiquity, what's significant about what's happening by the middle of the nineteenth century? 

Is the Roman emperor really the same as baseball entrepreneurs? How does the story of baseball in Birmingham compare to baseball's emergence in, say, New York, St. Louis or Pittsburgh?

With all of things we've learned to date, among them topics addressing gender, race and ethnicity, I hope the students come prepared to ask and offer answers to these and other questions. 

Meanwhile, check out an interview with Dr. Megraw here.

Rickwood Field, circa 1920s

on the possibilities of seeing the "city" in a starring role

It is always interesting watching something old with new eyes. For example, tonight while channel surfing I saw a tribute to Michael Jackson's music on Fuse tv. The city seemed to have a starring role in several videos. For sure, city streets and/or subways are the backdrops for "Billie Jean," "Beat It," and "Thriller," hits that took Jackson to never-before-seen heights as a solo artist. The city is present, too, in "Bad" and "Smooth Criminal." 

Noticing as much made me wonder how the city functions in Jackson's videos. For example, would we even think of this space if we heard only the lyrics to some of these songs? What narratives does the urban space produce in these videos? Is the city we see an "American" one? And why does the city appear ever-green in some cases?  "Smooth Criminal" looks like it could be set in the 1920s,1930s or 1940s and even some future apocalyptic moment.  

I also wondered how the students would answer these questions  knowing what they now know about emerging urban life.  For example, "Billie Jean"  finds a bow-tie-wearing Jackson walking past a  store window on some anonymous city street. This brings to mind the arrival of ready-made clothing and department stores. This is a topic they will learn more about while reading Gunther Barth's study on emerging urban culture in the United States. They will learn about fashion, too, something that was important to Jackson, even in edgier videos like "Scream," which finds him and his sister Janet in a space ship with words like "recreation" in neon behind them. Indeed, they play different games, which are some metaphoric release from daily pressures.

Speaking of recreation, as mentioned, next week we turn to baseball, which also figured into emerging urban life in America. We will do as much by taking a tour of Rickwood Field with Dr. Richard Megraw from UA's Department of American Studies.

on minding your manners

 John F. Kasson takes on civility in everyday urban life.

The often uncivil comments on social media, news and other websites make many wonder, "When did people become so rude?" Gunther Barth tells us it is actually the other way around, particularly in an emerging urban America. For him, nineteenth century city-dwellers in the United States underwent a "civilizing process." 

No surprises here. The opening decades of the nineteenth century found many people encountering others whose personalities, politics and culture were quite different from their own. And in this space, as Barth says, a particular culture emerged. It did as much when a motley crew found new ways of coping with with one another.

Next week, we take up the issue of civility in urban America via a select reading from John F. Kasson's Rudeness & Civility: Manners in Nineteenth Century Urban America. It's a perfect bridge to the following week's Barth reading. For sure, two weeks hence we will discover the ways Barth allows us to see how people learned restraint (often while still fighting) in baseball parks. At the time, spectator sports became a critical part of an urbanizing and industrializing America. Perhaps all of these ideas will crystallize when the students and I visit Rickwood Field in Birmingham and learn more about the history of baseball in America with Dr. Richard Megraw from UA's Department of American Studies. 

As a prelude to that trip - and Alabama playing Florida next Saturday (As a University of Miami grad and Miami-native, I'm especially looking forward to this game!) - we'll also pay some measure of attention to civility and sports.  That discussion requires a closer look at commoners and aristocrats in and outside the urban space.  From cockfighting, billiards and horse-racing to rowing and the beginnings of football in the land that will become these United States, we'll have much to think about. 

When do Americans begin to collectively learn the merits of self-discipline and emotional control and why is this still a work in progress here and elsewhere? How do capitalism, gender and class figure in, according to Kasson? How do we widen our scope of inquiry to include other differences like race, ethnicity and region?

transportation and emerging urban life

Today the students were challenged to make connections  between the ways in which waterways and railroads played a role in an urbanizing America. We began with a discussion of David Cecelski's study of African American maritime workers in antebellum North Carolina. These men played a role in Wilmington's growth on the heels of navigational improvements along Cape Fear.

Our discussion went beyond Wilmington and included other waterway narratives. For example, the students learned that former South Carolina Congressman Robert Smalls was among the enslaved maritime workers who aided the South during the Civil War. A boat pilot, Smalls escaped on a steamer in 1862 with his family and other enslaved people and eventually served in the Union Army.

Altogether, there were several opportunities for the students to see the ways that railroads and water vessels were useful on many fronts including this momentous war. For sure, the Weldon Railroad, running north from Wilmington to Richmond and Petersburg, was a critical transportation artery in sustaining Robert E. Lee's army of northern Virginia during the latter stages of the U.S. Civil War.

The students were given homework assignments that require them to analyze three pages of a diary kept by Nathaniel C. Kenyon, a man who served in the 11th Illinois Infantry. A copy of this diary is in UA's Hoole Library. In it, Kenyon wrote detailed descriptions of the southern cities through which he traveled, among them Tuscaloosa. 

In light of today's reading on how enslaved men evidenced power in the maritime industry, I look forward to sharing excerpts from the students' work in an upcoming blog entry. I hope they are able to intuit the ways in which Kenyon also evidenced power although he was a prisoner of war. In what ways does his life compare to the men in Cecelski's study? What new things does he teach us about urban life in nineteenth century America?

Beeler points out the path of the L & N.

Afterwards, we walked down to the nearby Black Warrior River to hear a short lecture by Dr. John Beeler of UA's History Department on the development of railroads in Tuscaloosa. Hear an excerpt from his talk on this blog post.

Meanwhile, here's a brief chronology that allows us to see Tuscaloosa becoming part of an urbanizing Alabama:

1871: The Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad (renamed the Alabama Great Southern Railroad in 1878) is completed, creating a diagonal link across Alabama that includes Tuscaloosa.

1898: The trestle that runs by Tuscaloosa's Amphitheatre (2710 Jack Warner Parkway NW, Tuscaloosa, AL) is constructed across the Black Warrior River for the Mobile & Ohio Railroad. The M & O ran between Columbus, MS, and Montgomery.

1890s:  A system of locks built on the Black Warrior River permits a cheap way to move goods to Mobile, a Gulf port city, stimulating industry in Tuscaloosa.

1912: Chartered in 1850 in by the state of Kentucky, the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, formerly the Birmingham and Tuscaloosa Railroad,  arrives in Tuscaloosa, passing near campus. Its 20-mile Tuscaloosa Mineral branch line reaches Brookwood coal mines. L & N’s station (301 Greensboro Ave, Tuscaloosa, Alabama) is now used for weddings and other social events.

If there are any errors in this timeline, they are mine alone. I'm still learning this history. I welcome feedback.

Dr. John Beeler's map of Tuscaloosa railroads.