my new book addresses how we become "city people"

My new book arrived this week as I have by now said in virtually every social media site I have - except this one. That lapse is interesting given that so much in this book pivots on how southern white male slaveholders essentially played some role, whether they intended to do as much, in the "urbanization" of freedwomen and children. Certainly antebellum Cincinnati, as shown on a map in the page above, was ground zero for the resettlement of such women and children partly because of its position on the Mississippi-Ohio river waterway. It was easy to get them out of slave territory on this important river network. These were obviously people in whom such men had invested themselves emotionally and financially.

Via letters, business and legal documents, I carefully try to tell this difficult story that brings to light new ways of thinking about "intimacy" across the races. To say "intimate" is to go beyond the obvious and think about how people connect despite obvious power differentials that show up in everyday life. I think the city space is one place we have done this across time.

As the students in this class will learn, ghettoes are something that began to appear after the Civil War as Americans were increasingly separated on the basis of race. While there were communities like the so-called "Little Africa" and "Bucktown" where people of African descent congregated more often that not, they generally lived in clusters alongside of "native" whites as well as the German and Irish immigrants who began arriving as the century matured.

It takes real work to realize that city life as we know it today, even with the kind of gentrification that finds many white Americans returning to urban areas long populated by African Americans, is a historical development. We began to see it in this country between 1830 and 1910, give or take a decade.

That emerging urban life is something that can be studied and seen as something that is still with us. It's an abstraction, historian Gunther Barth tells us, in that it's essentially a way that people with very different backgrounds learn to share the same space and learn to find a "common humanity" despite their differences. Some do as much via sports. In other words, new immigrants learned how to be American by rooting for the baseball team in their town. They learned how to speak English by reading the metropolitan newspaper. They learned to see themselves and others by laughing in vaudeville houses.  Indeed, we learn how to be "city people."

I'll keep driving this point again and again as we use Tuscaloosa and Birmingham as a laboratory. Yes, we will leave the classroom more than once to see this emerging urban phenomenon that has changed, but remains the same via landscape - many buildings in the 1830-1910 window still stand - but also in how we interact. Stay tuned.

Emerging urban life seen in Birmingham hotel

As I prepare for the fall semester, I am already thinking about possible field trips for this course. We have focused twice on how Tuscaloosa fits into the story of emerging urban life in America. Perhaps we will travel to Birmingham and discover how that city figures into the same narrative. One place to visit, if we do as much, is the Hampton Inn's Tutwiler Hotel, which was built in 1910 as a nine-story fancy apartment house. 

Below are photos I took at this hotel, which pays homage to Birmingham's historic past well into the 20th century.While the Civil Rights movement is often the narrative to which we return to make discoveries about Birmingham, perhaps it will be worthwhile to also think about a longer narrative that includes human rights issues alongside additional topics, among them gender, culture, housing, industrialization and architecture.

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

Sloss Furnaces

Sloss Furnaces, Birmingham, Alabama

I am still plotting out the various lessons that will be taught in this course. There is one thing on the horizon that I am especially excited about as a newcomer to the state of Alabama. If all goes as planned, the students and I will  travel  to Birmingham to tour Sloss Furnaces, a national historic landmark. I believe this site will help us understand how industry and technology played a role in America's emerging city life during the nineteenth century. While the original Sloss complex is no longer standing, two 400-ton blast furnaces and some forty other buildings in this complex will aid our ability to think deeply about many issues concerning modern life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We will, among other things, learn about Sloss's role in putting Birmingham on the map as an important American city. As an aside, just as I used a blog while teaching "African Americans in the City" last spring at the University of Alabama during a graduate fellowship, I will use a blog for this course. Please check it regularly to learn more about the issues being discussed in this class.