Staging Migrations toward an American West
Staging Migrations toward an American West: From Ida B. Wells to Rhodessa Jones
Marta Effinger-Crichlow
Copyright Date: 2014
Published by: University Press of Colorado
Pages: 264
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt83jhx6
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Staging Migrations toward an American West
Book Description:

Staging Migrations toward an American Westexamines how black women's theatrical and everyday performances of migration toward the American West expose the complexities of their struggles for sociopolitical emancipation. While migration is often viewed as merely a physical process, Effinger-Crichlow expands the concept to include a series of symbolic internal journeys within confined and unconfined spaces.

Four case studies consider how the featured women-activist Ida B. Wells, singer Sissieretta "Black Patti" Jones, World War II black female defense-industry workers, and performance artist Rhodessa Jones-imagined and experienced the American West geographically and symbolically at different historical moments. Dissecting the varied ways they used migration to survive in the world from the viewpoint of theater and performance theory, Effinger-Crichlow reconceptualizes the migration histories of black women in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America.

This interdisciplinary study expands the understanding of the African American struggle for unconstrained movement and full citizenship in the United States and will interest students and scholars of American and African American history, women and gender studies, theater, and performance theory.

eISBN: 978-1-60732-312-9
Subjects: History
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-vi)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. vii-viii)
  3. List of Figures
    List of Figures (pp. ix-x)
  4. Acknowledgments
    Acknowledgments (pp. xi-xvi)
  5. Introduction
    Introduction (pp. 1-18)

    When the Washington Metro System opened in the nation’s capital in 1976, my grandmother and mother took my brother, sister, and me to experience this modern wonder in our city. I instinctively knew this was a special occasion because my mother dressed us in new matching outfits for our field trip. I was amazed to see the enormous concrete arched ceilings over us as we rode the steep escalators down to the terra-cotta-tiled platforms. I looked around in awe as these shiny trains that moved like a superhero in one of my brother’s comic books carried thousands of passengers to...

  6. Chapter One “Tell My People to Go West”: Ida B. Wells
    Chapter One “Tell My People to Go West”: Ida B. Wells (pp. 19-60)

    These words, written by Ida Bell Wells in an 1892 editorial about the lynching of Thomas Moss and his business partners, convey Wells’s outrage over oppressive racial violence inflicted upon the black residents of Memphis. A witness claimed Moss begged “for his life for the sake of his wife and child and unborn baby.” In his final moments, he cried out to his attackers, “Tell my people to go West—there is no justice for them here.” Moss’s words first appeared in theMemphis Commercialon March 10, 1892.³ At the time of the lynchings, Wells was away from Memphis...

  7. Chapter Two “I’d Go [Wherever] They Said ‘Show’”: The Black Patti Troubadours
    Chapter Two “I’d Go [Wherever] They Said ‘Show’”: The Black Patti Troubadours (pp. 61-112)

    Classical black vocalist Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones made her New York concert debut on April 5, 1888. One critic remarked, “Mrs. M. S. Jones of Providence appeared here on that occasion, for the first time, and created a marked impression. Her voice is sweet, sympathetic and clear, and her enunciation a positive charm.”² After an appearance at Wallack’s Theatre on August 1, 1888, white American music critics compared Jones to the Italian prima donna Adelina Patti (1843–1919); they dubbed Jones “Black Patti” and reported that her amazing soprano voice mesmerized audiences.

    By the early 1890s, Jones’s respectable reputation was...

  8. Chapter Three “Wherever the Opportunity Was Goin’ to Be I’d a Been Gone”: Black Female Migrants in World War II’s Defense Industry
    Chapter Three “Wherever the Opportunity Was Goin’ to Be I’d a Been Gone”: Black Female Migrants in World War II’s Defense Industry (pp. 113-176)

    Ludie Mitchell: I heard that California was the most beautiful place in the whole world.²

    Ollie Hawkins: I hadn’t heard anything about California, to tell you the truth. It’s just—my husband had just decided he was going to come out and work in the shipyard ’cause he had went in the Army-section 8 discharge—so he decided he would come out here and work.³

    Olegurite Pruitt: Well I heard it was a nice place and that you could find nice jobs with good pay. That’s what I heard.⁴

    Berneice Paysinger: Well to me it was the land of opportunity.⁵...

  9. Chapter Four “I Want to Go Home”: Rhodessa Jones’s The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women
    Chapter Four “I Want to Go Home”: Rhodessa Jones’s The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women (pp. 177-224)

    At the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre in San Francisco, California, a tattered American flag hung onstage. A banner with the phrase “We the Other People of the United States” was suspended from upstage center. At the same time, another banner dangled from the stage with the words “While you were careless, cruel, greedy[,] Mr/Ms tired, poor huddled masses & homeless refuse[—] called[—]stopped by[—]Message[—]yearning to breathe free.” Various models of television sets were randomly stacked at stage left. A video clip on one TV showed a young black woman named Shana crying out in anguish, “I want to go...

  10. Epilogue Rhodessa Jones’s The Medea Project
    Epilogue Rhodessa Jones’s The Medea Project (pp. 225-234)

    FollowingSlouching Towards Armageddon, Rhodessa Jones continued to dedicate her life to providing female inmates and ex-offenders with a space to use their voices. The Medea Project createdPastime Paradise, Nobody Gets Out Alive(1999), which included students from the University of California, Berkeley;Can We Get There By Candlelight?(2001); andMy Life in the Concrete Jungle(2006). When authorities became less interested in the arts in California and more interested in their desire to maintain “law and order,” according to Jones, beginning in the late 2000s, The Medea Project became less of a fixture in the state’s penal...

  11. Conclusion
    Conclusion (pp. 235-240)

    By examining black women’s migration experiences, I have attempted to give voice to the varied and complex ways in which black women have imagined a West of possibilities for sociopolitical emancipation. I have also sought to uncover how they have engaged in theatrical and everyday performances for the individual self and for collectives. What I discovered is that even when they were triumphant, the physical and metaphorical migration experiences of Ida B. Wells, Sissieretta Jones and the Black Patti Troubadours, World War II defense industry workers, and Rhodessa Jones and The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women resembled winding roads....

  12. Bibliography
    Bibliography (pp. 241-262)
  13. Index
    Index (pp. 263-274)