Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, 2020
Emancipation celebrations in the United States have been important and complicated moments of cel... more Emancipation celebrations in the United States have been important and complicated moments of celebration and commemoration. Since the end of the slave trade in 1808 and the enactment of the British Emancipation Act in 1834 people of African descent throughout the Atlantic world have gathered, often in festival form, to remember and use that memory for more promising futures. In the United States, emancipation celebrations exploded after the Civil War, when each local community celebrated their own experience of emancipation. For many, the commemoration took the form of a somber church service, Watch Night, which recognized the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Juneteenth, which recognized the end of slavery in Texas on June 19, 1865, became one of the most vibrant and longstanding celebrations. Although many emancipation celebrations disappeared after World War I, Juneteenth remained a celebration in most of Texas through the late 1960s when it disappeare...
Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American Popular Culture. B... more Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American Popular Culture. By William J. Mahar. Music in American Life. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999. Pp. xix, 444. Tables, appendix, musical examples, playbills. Cloth, $60.00; paper, $24.95.) According to William Mahar, the "burnt cork mask" worn by performers of antebellum minstrelsy has quite literally and figuratively obscured minstrelsy's varied and complex functions to contemporaries and historians alike. From Fredrick Douglass's contemporary observations to Eric Lott's recent influential study, analysts have focused almost exclusively on the racial meaning of white performers wearing black masks. William Mahar seeks to recover the complexity of antebellum minstrelsy by moving beyond a strict racial focus in Behind the Burnt Cork Mask. Mahar's detailed and comprehensive examination of a very wide range of minstrel performances includes the playbills, printed minstrel ...
Slavery in New Jersey offers scholars a rich, untapped source for new scholarship about the meani... more Slavery in New Jersey offers scholars a rich, untapped source for new scholarship about the meaning of freedom and liberty from the Founding Era to the Civil War. Kean University recently sponsored a panel discussion featuring three scholars and their research into the story of slavery in the Garden State. This opening essay offers a summation of the Kean panel's findings, and offers encouragement to other scholars of slavery in the state.
torical detail, as it highlights more than ever Dickinson’s profound difference in a context of l... more torical detail, as it highlights more than ever Dickinson’s profound difference in a context of likeness, seems to increase rather than diminish the mystery of Dickinson. Petrino’s explanation for Dickinson’s difference rests in the politics of the famous decision not to print. In a chapter devoted to the rigid publishing constraints for women, Petrino demonstrates why discretion was demanded when women did challenge convention. Dickinson’s private forms of publishing, likened to the tradition of portfolio writing, are seen as a radical gesture. Because she would not have her artistic conception violated, she would not publish; thus, she turned another convention, that of women’s inherent privacy, to her own unconventional ends. This is a familiar argument inDickinson studies. Although it may explain how Dickinson got to keep her ‘‘Snow,’’ it shies away from explaining what and why this Snow might be. Petrino’smethodology is thematic. She readsDickinson’s poems in terms of what they say, comparing Dickinson’s ideas with those of her female contemporaries. And yet when we see her poems contrasted with those of others, the most glaring difference resides in their language. Nobody wrote like Dickinson—ever. Her challenge to convention is as verbal as it is ideological, and the two cannot really be separated. To bypass the words may help Petrino recuperate other writers who lack such ‘‘linguistic superiority’’ (207), but the omission leaves the mystery intact: if Dickinson’s ‘‘life story is in many respects a classic example of the nineteenth-century American woman writer,’’ how do we account for the ‘‘poetry that transcends her age and ours’’ (210)?
This book examines constitutional law and early American politics in the neglected Olmsted case (... more This book examines constitutional law and early American politics in the neglected Olmsted case (United States v. Peters). It is the story of a privateering adventure during the American Revolution that ended thirty years later in an armed rebellion ordered by the governor of ...
THIS IS A VERY EARLY STATEMENT OF MY IDEAS. THEY HAVE EVOLVED FROM HERE>.
This conference pap... more THIS IS A VERY EARLY STATEMENT OF MY IDEAS. THEY HAVE EVOLVED FROM HERE>.
This conference paper explores the relationship between the grassroots movement to spread Juneteenth and the politicians who adopt it as a state holiday.
During the Revolutionary era, two slaves, one named Leander from South Carolina and another named... more During the Revolutionary era, two slaves, one named Leander from South Carolina and another named Caesar from Massachusetts, legally verified their new free status after long battles to become free. These two cases expose some similarities in the slave systems of ...
IN 1783, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts pronounced Quock Walker-and all other slaves... more IN 1783, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts pronounced Quock Walker-and all other slaves in the commonwealth-free. In that stroke, the court transformed Massachusetts from the first colony to legalize slavery into the first state immediately to deny its citizenry ...
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, 2020
Emancipation celebrations in the United States have been important and complicated moments of cel... more Emancipation celebrations in the United States have been important and complicated moments of celebration and commemoration. Since the end of the slave trade in 1808 and the enactment of the British Emancipation Act in 1834 people of African descent throughout the Atlantic world have gathered, often in festival form, to remember and use that memory for more promising futures. In the United States, emancipation celebrations exploded after the Civil War, when each local community celebrated their own experience of emancipation. For many, the commemoration took the form of a somber church service, Watch Night, which recognized the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Juneteenth, which recognized the end of slavery in Texas on June 19, 1865, became one of the most vibrant and longstanding celebrations. Although many emancipation celebrations disappeared after World War I, Juneteenth remained a celebration in most of Texas through the late 1960s when it disappeare...
Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American Popular Culture. B... more Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American Popular Culture. By William J. Mahar. Music in American Life. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999. Pp. xix, 444. Tables, appendix, musical examples, playbills. Cloth, $60.00; paper, $24.95.) According to William Mahar, the "burnt cork mask" worn by performers of antebellum minstrelsy has quite literally and figuratively obscured minstrelsy's varied and complex functions to contemporaries and historians alike. From Fredrick Douglass's contemporary observations to Eric Lott's recent influential study, analysts have focused almost exclusively on the racial meaning of white performers wearing black masks. William Mahar seeks to recover the complexity of antebellum minstrelsy by moving beyond a strict racial focus in Behind the Burnt Cork Mask. Mahar's detailed and comprehensive examination of a very wide range of minstrel performances includes the playbills, printed minstrel ...
Slavery in New Jersey offers scholars a rich, untapped source for new scholarship about the meani... more Slavery in New Jersey offers scholars a rich, untapped source for new scholarship about the meaning of freedom and liberty from the Founding Era to the Civil War. Kean University recently sponsored a panel discussion featuring three scholars and their research into the story of slavery in the Garden State. This opening essay offers a summation of the Kean panel's findings, and offers encouragement to other scholars of slavery in the state.
torical detail, as it highlights more than ever Dickinson’s profound difference in a context of l... more torical detail, as it highlights more than ever Dickinson’s profound difference in a context of likeness, seems to increase rather than diminish the mystery of Dickinson. Petrino’s explanation for Dickinson’s difference rests in the politics of the famous decision not to print. In a chapter devoted to the rigid publishing constraints for women, Petrino demonstrates why discretion was demanded when women did challenge convention. Dickinson’s private forms of publishing, likened to the tradition of portfolio writing, are seen as a radical gesture. Because she would not have her artistic conception violated, she would not publish; thus, she turned another convention, that of women’s inherent privacy, to her own unconventional ends. This is a familiar argument inDickinson studies. Although it may explain how Dickinson got to keep her ‘‘Snow,’’ it shies away from explaining what and why this Snow might be. Petrino’smethodology is thematic. She readsDickinson’s poems in terms of what they say, comparing Dickinson’s ideas with those of her female contemporaries. And yet when we see her poems contrasted with those of others, the most glaring difference resides in their language. Nobody wrote like Dickinson—ever. Her challenge to convention is as verbal as it is ideological, and the two cannot really be separated. To bypass the words may help Petrino recuperate other writers who lack such ‘‘linguistic superiority’’ (207), but the omission leaves the mystery intact: if Dickinson’s ‘‘life story is in many respects a classic example of the nineteenth-century American woman writer,’’ how do we account for the ‘‘poetry that transcends her age and ours’’ (210)?
This book examines constitutional law and early American politics in the neglected Olmsted case (... more This book examines constitutional law and early American politics in the neglected Olmsted case (United States v. Peters). It is the story of a privateering adventure during the American Revolution that ended thirty years later in an armed rebellion ordered by the governor of ...
THIS IS A VERY EARLY STATEMENT OF MY IDEAS. THEY HAVE EVOLVED FROM HERE>.
This conference pap... more THIS IS A VERY EARLY STATEMENT OF MY IDEAS. THEY HAVE EVOLVED FROM HERE>.
This conference paper explores the relationship between the grassroots movement to spread Juneteenth and the politicians who adopt it as a state holiday.
During the Revolutionary era, two slaves, one named Leander from South Carolina and another named... more During the Revolutionary era, two slaves, one named Leander from South Carolina and another named Caesar from Massachusetts, legally verified their new free status after long battles to become free. These two cases expose some similarities in the slave systems of ...
IN 1783, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts pronounced Quock Walker-and all other slaves... more IN 1783, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts pronounced Quock Walker-and all other slaves in the commonwealth-free. In that stroke, the court transformed Massachusetts from the first colony to legalize slavery into the first state immediately to deny its citizenry ...
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Papers by Emily Blanck
This conference paper explores the relationship between the grassroots movement to spread Juneteenth and the politicians who adopt it as a state holiday.
This conference paper explores the relationship between the grassroots movement to spread Juneteenth and the politicians who adopt it as a state holiday.