The Negro and His Folklore in Nineteenth-Century Periodicals / / ed. by Bruce Jackson.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Texas Press Complete eBook-Package Pre-2000
• MitwirkendeR: Allen, Marcel W. F.,; Bacon, A. M.,; Barrow, David C.,; Barton, William E.,; Chandler Harris, Joel,; Crane, T. F.,; Dvorak, Antonin,; Kilham, Elizabeth,; Kinnard, J.,; Mason Brown, John,; McKim, Lucy,; Miller McKim, James,; Nathanson, Y. S.,; Norris, Thaddeus,; Owens, William,; Robinson Murphy, Jeanette,; Shepard, Eli,; Showers, Susan,; Smith, William B.,; Spaulding, H. G.,; Washington Cable, George,; Wentworth Higginson, Thomas,
• HerausgeberIn: Jackson, Bruce,
• Place / Publishing House: Austin : : University of Texas Press, , [2021]; ©1967
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: American Folklore Society Bibliographical and Special Series
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (398 p.)

In the eyes of many white Americans, North and South, the Negro did not have a culture until the Emancipation Proclamation. With few exceptions, serious collecting of Negro folklore by whites did not begin until the Civil War—and it was to be another four decades before black Americans would begin to appreciate their own cultural heritage. Few of the earlier writers realized that they had observed and recorded not simply a manifestation of a particular way of life but also a product peculiarly American and specifically Negro, a synthesis of African and American styles and traditions. The folksongs, speech, beliefs, customs, and tales of the American Negro are discussed in this anthology, originally published in 1967, of thirty-five articles, letters, and reviews from nineteenth-century periodicals. Published between 1838 and 1900 and written by authors who range from ardent abolitionist to dedicated slaveholder, these articles reflect the authors’ knowledge of, and attitudes toward, the Negro and his folklore. From the vast body of material that appeared on this subject during the nineteenth century, editor Bruce Jackson has culled fresh articles that are basic folklore and represent a wide range of material and attitudes. In addition to his introduction to the volume, Jackson has prefaced each article with a commentary. He has also supplied a supplemental bibliography on Negro folklore. If serious collecting of Negro folklore had begun by the middle of the nineteenth century, so had exploitation of its various aspects, particularly Negro songs. By 1850 minstrelsy was a big business. Although Jackson has considered minstrelsy outside the scope of this collection, he has included several discussions of it to suggest some aspects of its peculiar relation to the traditional. The articles in the anthology—some by such well-known figures as Joel Chandler Harris, George Washington Cable, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, John Mason Brown, and Antonin Dvorak—make fascinating reading for an observer of the American scene. This additional insight into the habits of thought and behavior of a culture in transition—folklore recorded in its own context—cannot but afford the thinking reader further understanding of the turbulent race problems of later times and today.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1838 The Persimmon Tree and the Beer Dance (Farmers' Register) -- 1839 Uncle Sam's Peculiarities. American Niggers.—Hudson River Steam-Boat Dialogues (Bentley's Miscellany) -- 1845 Who Are Our National Poets? (Knickerbocker Magazine) -- 1855 Negro Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern (Putnams Monthly) -- 1856 Songs of the Blacks (Dwighfs Journal of Music) -- 1861 Contraband Singing, by C. W. D. (Dwighfs Journal of Music) -- 1862 Negro Songs (Dwighfs Journal of Music) -- 1862 Songs of the Port Royal Contrabands (Dwighfs Journal of Music) -- 1863 Under the Palmetto (excerpt) (Continental Monthly) -- 1865 The Negro Dialect (Nation) -- 1867 Negro Spirituals (Atlantic Monthly) -- 1868 Literature of the Day: Slave Songs of the United States (review) (Lippincotfs Magazine) -- 1868 Songs of the Slave (Lippincotfs Magazine) -- 1870 Sketches in Color: IV (Putrmms Monthly) -- 1870 Negro Superstitions (Lippincotfs Magazine) -- 1877 Folklore of the Southern Negroes (Lippincotfs Magazine) -- 1881 Plantation Folk-Lore (review) (Popular Science Monthly) -- 1882 A Georgia Corn-Shucking (Century Magazine) -- 1883 Plantation Music (Critic) -- 1884 Banjo and Bones (Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art) -- 1886 The Dance in Place Congo (Century Magazine). -- 1886 Creole Slave Songs (Century Magazine) -- 1886 An Accidental Author (Lippirvcott's Magazine) -- 1888 Superstitions of the Negro (Cosmopolitan) -- 1891 Word Shadows (Atlantic Monthly) -- 1891 Certain Beliefs and Superstitions of the Negro (Atlantic Monthly) -- 1895 Music in America (Harpers New Monthly Magazine) -- 1895 Folk-Lore and Ethnology (Southern Workman) -- 1895 Folk-Lore and Ethnology: Conjuring and Conjure Doctors (Southern Workman) -- 1898 A Weddin' and a Buryin' in the Black Belt (New England Magazine) -- 1899 Recent Negro Melodies (New England Magazine) -- 1899 The Survival of African Music in America (Popular Science Monthly) -- Appendix I: A Slaveholder's Primer (De Bow's Review, 1851) -- Appendix II: Further Reading -- Index of Authors, Titles of Articles, and Periodicals -- Index of Songs and Verses