exploring the issue of mobility and power in an urbanizing America

This past Wednesday, the students visited Manderson Landing here in Tuscaloosa. There, on the banks of the Black Warrior River, they saw remnants of the L & N Railroad line. This visit figures into a lesson on transportation, mobility and power in the nineteenth century. With the arrival of the steamboat, which moved along inland waters, people and products began to move through space in an urbanizing world. Railroads are a part of this narrative. The students were also made aware of how people of African descent, even ones enslaved, participated in these technological advancements.

Using David Cecelski's study on black watermen in antebellum North Carolina, they begin to see how even oppressed groups had the skills to navigate waterways. Robert Smalls, an enslaved boat pilot and later, Congressman, even escaped slavery on a vessel he piloted for the Confederates.

Notably, Horace King, an enslaved bridge builder, constructed bridges throughout the south. He was of huge assistance to Alabama Sen. Robert Jemison Jr., whose many business interests included building bridges and turnpikes during the antebellum period.

After my lecture and the visit, the students wrote reflections on these and other issues. Wrote Adams, "With the emergence of the 19th century city, some men learned skills that will translate into power, skills that even privileged white men did not possess at the time." Added Lin, "I was really surprised [to learn about men like] Horace King who were able to do thing that ...other black people...would not have been able to accomplish." Chance made connections between oppressed minorities in other settings, among them, ones residing in Turkey, who are able to gain control simply because they moved through space. Wrote William, "Space define[d] a relationship between man his quest for power." Morgan homed in on how information, not just people and products, trave[ed]  faster with advancements in technology.

These short reflections are worth 25% of the students' overall grade. I think they are off to a great start. When we meet on September 30, we will tackle the issue of civility in an urbanizing world. We will be attentive how people had to learn how to behave in public settings as an middle class urban population began to emerge in the United States during the nineteenth century.

Visit to Gorgas House sets off semester-long query

Lydia Ellington, Dir. of UA's Gorgas House, speaks to class.

This year's "The Nineteenth Century City" class reflects the decline in enrollment seen in some courses in the History department and elsewhere on campus. My colleagues and I are trying to sort through this. 

In the meantime, I am determined to keep course content interesting. I think we're off to a good start. Our class of seven students visited yesterday Gorgas House, an antebellum house on the University of Alabama's campus. There, we learned about the Gorgas family, among them Mary and Jessie, two daughters who were permitted to obtain an education. That they did juxtaposes nicely with our interest in female academies, or young women in institutions of higher learning in the United States between the 1830s and 1920, the window to which historian Gunther Barth points as being a place to see emerging urban life. 

After the visit to the Gorgas House, the students were given two letters written by Josiah Gorgas, former UA President. The recipients were his daughters who were studying at Sewanee, The University of the South in Tennessee. 

In one letter, the elder Gorgas inquires about the outcome of a baseball game. This was intriguing as baseball is one of five things to which Barth points to announce the arrival of a modern urban culture in America. Barth states that it is around this game, which gradually becomes popular in the second half of the nineteenth century, that people of varying backgrounds learn to root for the same team, or share a "common humanity." 

Throughout the semester, the students will be challenged to see how young educated women figure into this common humanity. Who gets included in this narrative, I've asked them. Who gets left out? How do we find meaning in a generation of young women who seem to be forerunners to feminist ideas, among them Amelia Gorgas, Josiah's wife? She not only ran the University's Library, post office and infirmary when her husband became ill, but continued to successfully raise six children into adulthood.

One aside: Dr. William Gorgas, one of the Gorgas children and the 22nd Surgeon General of the United States Army, appears to have been an avid fan of baseball as Gorgas House displays his lifetime pass to the American League games. He is best known for helping the United States combat the impact of yellow fever during the building of the Panama Canal at the turn of the century.

Victoria Ott, guest speaker

Meanwhile, like last year and the year prior, the semester-long query will culminate in a class project. This year, the students will present a curated exhibit of primary sources at the Gorgas House. Victoria E. Ott, James A. Wood Associate Professor of History at Birmingham Southern University, will be our guest speaker.

Katherine Richter, Executive Director of the Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society, and Ian Crawford, House Manager of Jemison Manager, have generously offered their insight about Tuscaloosa's founding families to help us get started. Richter also shared diplomas and report cards that will also be helpful. Heartfelt thanks to Lydia Ellington, Director of Gorgas House,
for her assistance, too.

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.

on the issue of fashion, urban life and democracy

1939 movie "Gone with Wind" captures antebellum dress.

1920s attire featured into Harlem's vogue moment.

Postwar wealth's rising hemline.

The college "uniform"

"The Nineteenth Century City," a course I generally teach in the fall, provides a reason to to reflect on how far we have come on the issue of women's fashion in the United States. An expanding mass consumer market, innovations in technology, the growth of the "ready-made" clothing industry, and a host of other things have made it possible for people to make decisions about what they want to wear and moreover, to even change the meaning of what looks fashionable and what does not.

These days, one does not have to wear a dress and corset obviously to look fashionable, hip, or with the times, pun intended.

How did we make this transition? It's worth thinking about and even mulling over how urban living figures into this transition.

Gunther Barth is a historian to whom this course often turns because of how he positions emerging urban life. He says we saw it come into being in the United States between the years 1830 and 1910, give or take a decade.

Evidently, we can look way back to start pondering the many answers to the aforementioned question (How did we make this transition?). Along the way, we will be required to think about women's growing presence in public spaces and how people from very different backgrounds feel included simply because they can wear something wealthy people wear despite ongoing structural oppression. That they can figures  into many complex American experiences and yet another way democracy is a word on which we can think deeply -  the next time we dress to go out on the town, or the Quad.

slideshow of images from "Druid City: A Music Video" Premiere at Jemison Mansion

Here's a slideshow of photos from our December 3, 2014 premiere of "Druid City: A Music Video" featuring the music of local band Bible Study. Special thanks to Courtnee "Voni" Cook, a student enrolled in "The Nineteenth Century City" during the Fall 2014, for sharing these photos with us.

three days until the music video premiere

Still of clock in downtown Tuscaloosa

Still of student Rae Mann in Edelweiss, a local coffee shop.

Now that we've won the Iron Bowl against Auburn, we can turn toward completing the rest of the school year in fine fashion. The "world premiere" of the students' music video is just three days away.   It features not only the video itself, but a documentary of the students "discovering" the nineteenth century city in Tuscaloosa. Here are two still photographs from the project, which runs about 13 minutes.

The premiere happens 5:30-6:30 pm this Wednesday, December 3, at Jemison Mansion, 1305 Greensboro Avenue in Tuscaloosa. Dr. Robert Mellown, Associate Professor Emeritus of Art History at the University of Alabama, will be our guest speaker. There will be a silent auction of the students'  photography and refreshments.

Tim Higgins and Emily Dozier-Ewell, two members of the band Bible Study (whose music is featured in the video), will be present. Kori Hensell, composer of "Druid City," the song around which the video and documentary are deployed, will be there in spirit as she is now in Fairbanks, Alaska, pursuing an MFA. Talk about tensions between the frontier and the city!

Meanwhile, the students should also be studying for their final exam, which will take place December 9. Until then, Roll Tide!

downtown Tuscaloosa field trip was amazing

The students listen to my digital lecture during our recent field trip.

The students and I had a good time visiting downtown Tuscaloosa this past Wednesday. We gathered footage for our music video featuring the sounds of local folk band Bible Study. The  "world premiere" of the  video will be held at 5:30 pm December 3 at Jemison Mansion in Tuscaloosa.

Also, on November 3, four students enrolled in this course this semester and one student enrolled last fall will accompany me and Dr. John Beeler to the Tuscaloosa County's Preservation Society's Annual Awards Banquet at Christ Episcopal Church (this church was featured in "Tuscaloosa: The Nineteenth Century City," the final student project from last fall).

On Wednesday, we did a tour that featured this church among other sites (I recorded my lecture-tour on how signs of emerging urban life manifest in present-day Tuscaloosa the night before and uploaded it to Vimeo.com. Doing as much allowed the students to hear me while they walked, permitting me to capture footage of them along the way).

One aside: I just curated a couple of dozen photographs that the students have taken in and outside of Tuscaloosa. These images bring to mind some of the ideas and topics we have been discussing about emerging urban life. Some of these photographs will be on display at the December 3 event. For now, we thank Ian Crawford and Tim Higgins of Jemison  (and Bible Study) well as Katherine Richter, Director of the Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society, and finally, music critic/author  Ann Powers for their role in helping us document Tuscaloosa's starring role in nineteenth century urban history this fall! Roll Tide!

Next week, we turn to our final course reading. We will learn about the ways in which the experiences of  nineteenth century geologist Clarence King epitomize the across time tensions between urban life and the frontier. What new things can King's disdain for New York City and love for mapping the West for the U.S. government teach us? How do the Civil War, Gilded Age and rising Jim Crow practices expand our knowledge of urban life? Finally, how do race, gender and class aid our ability to find meaning in an industrializing America?

PS Music by the Junkyard Kings, another local band, was also considered for the video. We are desperately trying to help them get access to our university's new recording studio on the old Bryce Hospital property so they can make a demo. Their song "Roses" is as wonderful as Bible Study's "Druid City." Thank you, Louise Manos, for introducing us to this band.

meet the students

Four features of city life are presented in City People

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Yesterday this class of ten students shared their thoughts on the first two chapters of Gunther Barth’s City People via a short essay assignment. In the first chapter, Barth describes the “modern city culture” emerging in the United States during the nineteenth century. For him, modern means “present.” "Culture" generally refers to institutions like the apartment house that first appeared in urban areas in the U.S. during the nineteenth century, giving places like New York, Chicago and other urban areas a particular identity. Interestingly, Barth, a Harvard-trained historian who died in 2004 after teaching for years at the University of California, defines city as an abstraction even as he considers it a real space in which people came up with solutions to new problems, among them the isolation felt from residing in an area different from their more rural past, or previous life in another country.  I was curious about whether the students perceived the city that Barth describes as a hopeful place. About half of them seemed to feel as much. The rest generally saw a bit of hope, but also despair.  Anne Marie honed in on how people’s “sense of identity” often came from opportunities to work. Michael saw cities as places where one could “find yourself” and begin “anew.” Regan noted that improvements in technology led to sturdier buildings that made cities better through the years. Byron was attuned to the challenges of city living, saying those who moved to cities often did so to “survive.” Evelyn was drawn to the ways in which people adapted to city life. She mentioned the gridiron streets that helped city dwellers live in a more orderly way. Electric street cars “brought efficiency to transportation,” she also wrote. These and other factors such as dividing one’s home from one’s work place and one’s sources of entertainment figured into the “harmony” urban dwellers needed, she added. Ryan was attentive to the ways in which city life posed hurdles for women, especially those who “left farm life” to contend with “hard factory work.” Lewis understood the degree to which new arrivals were “strained by urbanization and industrialization” while they dealt with “Old World concerns” and “rivalries.” Aaron realized that the tensions felt caused some groups to become more cohesive and gave them “a sense of place.” Similarly, A.J. noted how individuals residing closely beside each other forced them to become a “community,” albeit not always a “close-knit one.” Aaron noted the “poetic” quality of Barth’s writing, saying his use of “great minds and great poets’ helped flesh out his view of the city. Finally, Lauren detected that cities were places where one could find “high culture” even as “the immense amount of people and buildings crammed into” small spaces left “many with a dirty impression” of urban living. I thought the responses from the students were generally a good start. I look forward to seeing them deepen their thinking as we look at some of the institutions Barth believes helped define city life in the United States. We start next week with the metropolitan press and the department store. Along the way, we will be very attentive to how race, class and gender, and ethnicity sharpen our view of city life. From time to time, per the suggestion of one student who was struck by how some of the architecture in the States receives influence from older cultures/civilizations, we will also focus briefly on nineteenth century city life outside of this country. My colleagues have steered me to readings about places as different as Germany, Mexico, France, Cuba and Brazil that should be helpful. In the meantime, please meet the students via the short video pictured here. Music provided in part by Weldon Burger, native of Greensboro, NC.

what baseball has to teach us about city life

I know very little about baseball, but was intrigued to learn that it is a sport that we can look at to learn more about the beginnings of city life in the United States.  In his book City People: The Rise of Modern City Culture in Nineteenth-Century America, Gunther Barth tells us that in the 1840s a group of "New York gentlemen" spent their "sunny days" playing ball on one Madison Avenue corner. As ball clubs sprung up in New York, Brooklyn and other cities like Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, the everyday man became fascinated, needing a distraction from work life. The earlier development of newspapers drew more attention to the sport, which is actually a descendant of British ball games, one of them dating back to the 1700s. Spectators welcomed hearing stats. Rules eventually governed this game just as they had governed what happened outside of ballparks.This morning, NPR had a great story about the Birmingham Barons breaking the racial divide in baseball in the early 1960s. It is worth listening to in order to learn more about a sport that became big business although always one about which the public has had some say. Think about what umpires often hear. I don't even want to share what I once heard in the stands at a Cubs game. This semester, students enrolled in this course will learn more about this game as we make discoveries about American culture and the story of the nineteenth century city. Baseball fan and scholar Dr. Richard Megraw of Alabama's American Studies Department will join us September 11 as we explore this topic.

Coming soon...

HY 300

Fall 2013

Wednesdays, 3:30-6 pm

University of Alabama

"In an atmosphere of expanding personal freedom and individual opportunity, nineteenth century cities severed the old ties of men and women with the countryside, setting them adrift in a maelstrom of people radically different from themselves."

Gunther Barth, City People

Lower East Side, circa 1890