Highbrows Hillbillies Hellfire

Author : Steve Goodson
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 0820329304
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Highbrows, Hillbillies, and Hellfire written by Steve Goodson and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2007-05-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the end of Reconstruction to the eve of the Great Depression, Atlanta was the New South's "Gate City." Steve Goodson's social and cultural history looks at the variety of public amusements available to Atlantans of the day, including theater, vaudeville, dime museums, movies, radio, and classical, blues, and country music. Revealed in the ways its people embraced or condemned everything from burlesque to opera is an Atlanta unsure of its identity and acutely sensitive of its image in the eyes of the nation. While the general populace hungered for novelty and diversion, middle-class Atlantans, white and black, saw entertainment as a source of--or threat to--status and respectability. Goodson traces the roots of this tension to the city's rapid and problematic growth, its uncomfortably diverse population, and its multiplying ties to national markets. At the same time he portrays some lively individuals who shaped Atlanta's entertainment scene. Among them are impresario Laurent DeGive, tightrope walker Professor Leon, patent-medicine salesman Yellowstone Kit, country music great Fiddlin' John Carson, and blues legends Bessie Smith and Blind Willie McTell. Goodson also brings alive the atmosphere of such venues as DeGive's resplendent Grand Opera House, George Johnson's tacky Museum of Living Wonders, the pioneering Trocadero vaudeville house, and the notorious 81 Theater on Decatur Street, an avenue whose decadent promise rivaled that of Beale in Memphis and Bourbon in New Orleans. Milestone trends and events are also showcased: performances of the play Uncle Tom's Cabin and showings of the film Birth of a Nation, visits by the Metropolitan Opera Company, the debate over Sunday entertainment, the beginning of broadcasts by "The Voice of the South"--radio station WSB--and the rise of Atlanta as the earliest capital of country and blues recording. Accepted historical views of public entertainment in America suggest that ethnicity and class would be the most pronounced forces shaping this aspect of Atlanta's popular culture. Goodson finds, however, that race and evangelical Christianity also heavily influenced the circumstances in which Atlantans went about their fun. With implications for the entire urban South, this is an engaging look at how and why its major city once grasped at sophistication and progress with one hand while pushing it away with the other.

Author : David Fort Godshalk
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 0807876844
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.48/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Veiled Visions written by David Fort Godshalk and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2006-05-18 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1906 Atlanta, after a summer of inflammatory headlines and accusations of black-on-white sexual assaults, armed white mobs attacked African Americans, resulting in at least twenty-five black fatalities. Atlanta's black residents fought back and repeatedly defended their neighborhoods from white raids. Placing this four-day riot in a broader narrative of twentieth-century race relations in Atlanta, in the South, and in the United States, David Fort Godshalk examines the riot's origins and how memories of this cataclysmic event shaped black and white social and political life for decades to come. Nationally, the riot radicalized many civil rights leaders, encouraging W. E. B. Du Bois's confrontationist stance and diminishing the accommodationist voice of Booker T. Washington. In Atlanta, fears of continued disorder prompted white civic leaders to seek dialogue with black elites, establishing a rare biracial tradition that convinced mainstream northern whites that racial reconciliation was possible in the South without national intervention. Paired with black fears of renewed violence, however, this interracial cooperation exacerbated black social divisions and repeatedly undermined black social justice movements, leaving the city among the most segregated and socially stratified in the nation. Analyzing the interwoven struggles of men and women, blacks and whites, social outcasts and national powerbrokers, Godshalk illuminates the possibilities and limits of racial understanding and social change in twentieth-century America.

Author : Michael Broyles
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253028663
Total Pages : 411 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Leo Ornstein written by Michael Broyles and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2007-10-15 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leo Ornstein: Modernist Dilemmas, Personal Choices traces the meteoric rise and heretofore inexplicable disappearance of the Russian-American, futurist-anarchist, pianist-composer from his arrival in the United States in 1906 through a career that lasted nearly a century. Outliving his admirers and critics by decades Leo Ornstein passed away in 2002 at the age of 108. Frequently compared to Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg, for a time Ornstein enjoyed a kind a celebrity granted few living musicians. And then he turned his back on it all. This first, full-length biographical study draws upon interviews, journals, and letters from a wide circle of Ornstein's friends and acquaintances to track the Ornstein family as it escaped the horrors of the Russian pogroms, and it situates the Russian-Jewish-American musician as he carved out an identity amidst World War I, the flu pandemic, and the Red Scare. While telling Leo Ornstein's story, the book also illuminates the stories of thousands of immigrants with similar harrowing experiences. It also explores the immeasurable impact of his unexpected marriage in 1918 to Pauline Mallet-Prevost, a Park Avenue debutante. Leo Ornstein: Modernist Dilemmas, Personal Choices finds Ornstein at the center of several networks that included artists John Marin, William Zorach, Leon Kroll, writers and activists Paul Rosenfeld, Waldo Frank, Edmund Wilson, and Clair Reis, the Stieglitz Circle, and a group of English composers known as the Frankfurt Five. Ornstein's story challenges directly the traditional chronology and narrative regarding musical modernism in America and its close relation to the other arts.

Author : Melvyn Stokes
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3031047370
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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Download or read book In the Shadow of The Birth of a Nation written by Melvyn Stokes and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-03-14 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection brings together many of the world’s leading scholars on race and film to re-consider the legacy and impact of D.W. Griffith’s deeply racist 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation. While this film is often cited, there is a considerable dearth of substantial research on its initial impact and global reach. These essays fill important gaps in the history of the film, including essential work on its sources, international reception, and African American responses. This book is a key text in the history of the most infamous and controversial film ever made and offers crucial new insights to scholars and students working in film history, African American history and the history of race relations.

Author : Amy Louise Wood
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807878118
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Lynching and Spectacle written by Amy Louise Wood and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lynch mobs in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America exacted horrifying public torture and mutilation on their victims. In Lynching and Spectacle, Amy Wood explains what it meant for white Americans to perform and witness these sadistic spectacles and how lynching played a role in establishing and affirming white supremacy. Lynching, Wood argues, overlapped with a variety of cultural practices and performances, both traditional and modern, including public executions, religious rituals, photography, and cinema, all which encouraged the horrific violence and gave it social acceptability. However, she also shows how the national dissemination of lynching images ultimately fueled the momentum of the antilynching movement and the decline of the practice. Using a wide range of sources, including photos, newspaper reports, pro- and antilynching pamphlets, early films, and local city and church records, Wood reconfigures our understanding of lynching's relationship to modern life. Wood expounds on the critical role lynching spectacles played in establishing and affirming white supremacy at the turn of the century, particularly in towns and cities experiencing great social instability and change. She also shows how the national dissemination of lynching images fueled the momentum of the antilynching movement and ultimately led to the decline of lynching. By examining lynching spectacles alongside both traditional and modern practices and within both local and national contexts, Wood reconfigures our understanding of lynching's relationship to modern life.

Author : Andrew M. Kaye
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
ISBN 13 : 082032910X
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Pussycat of Prizefighting written by Andrew M. Kaye and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1926, Atlanta's Theodore “Tiger” Flowers became the first African-American boxer to win the world middleweight title. The next year, he was dead. More than an account of Flowers's remarkable achievements, the book is a penetrating analysis of the cultural and historical currents that defined the terms of Flowers's success. Through the prism of prizefighting, the author reveals the personal cost African-Americans faced as they attempted to earn black respect while escaping white hostility.

Author : Gavin James Campbell
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 0807863351
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Music and the Making of a New South written by Gavin James Campbell and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2005-12-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Startled by rapid social changes at the turn of the twentieth century, citizens of Atlanta wrestled with fears about the future of race relations, the shape of gender roles, the impact of social class, and the meaning of regional identity in a New South. Gavin James Campbell demonstrates how these anxieties were played out in Atlanta's popular musical entertainment. Examining the period from 1890 to 1925, Campbell focuses on three popular musical institutions: the New York Metropolitan Opera (which visited Atlanta each year), the Colored Music Festival, and the Georgia Old-Time Fiddlers' Convention. White and black audiences charged these events with deep significance, Campbell argues, turning an evening's entertainment into a struggle between rival claimants for the New South's soul. Opera, spirituals, and fiddling became popular not just because they were entertaining, but also because audiences found them flexible enough to accommodate a variety of competing responses to the challenges of making a New South. Campbell shows how attempts to inscribe music with a single, public, fixed meaning were connected to much larger struggles over the distribution of social, political, cultural, and economic power. Attitudes about music extended beyond the concert hall to simultaneously enrich and impoverish both the region and the nation that these New Southerners struggled to create.

Author : Patrick Huber
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 0807832251
Total Pages : 442 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Linthead Stomp written by Patrick Huber and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the origins and development of American country music in the Piedmont's mill villages celebrates the colorful cast of musicians and considers the impact that urban living, industrial music, and mass culture had on their lives and music.

Author : Robin O. Warren
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 0786499273
Total Pages : 278 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Women on Southern Stages, 1800-1865 written by Robin O. Warren and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-10-10 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women played an integral role in the theater of the Antebellum and Civil War South. Yet their contributions have largely been overlooked by history. Southern actresses were important public figures who helped mold gender identity through their theatrical performances. Although cast in parts written by men, they subverted the norms of femininity in their public personas and in their personal lives. Educated and often wealthy but never accepted by the landed elite, women distinguished themselves by carving out an in-between class status, and many proved to be sophisticated entrepreneurs. Southern actresses also helped shape racial perceptions and regional politics as the South entered the Civil War.

Author : Peter La Chapelle
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226923002
Total Pages : 355 pages
Book Rating : 4.00/5 ( download)

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Download or read book I'd Fight the World written by Peter La Chapelle and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-09-09 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long before the United States had presidents from the world of movies and reality TV, we had scores of politicians with connections to country music. In I’d Fight the World, Peter La Chapelle traces the deep bonds between country music and politics, from the nineteenth-century rise of fiddler-politicians to more recent figures like Pappy O’Daniel, Roy Acuff, and Rob Quist. These performers and politicians both rode and resisted cultural waves: some advocated for the poor and dispossessed, and others voiced religious and racial anger, but they all walked the line between exploiting their celebrity and righteously taking on the world. La Chapelle vividly shows how country music campaigners have profoundly influenced the American political landscape.