African-American Families 1950s AB Annotated

African-American Families 1950s AB

Annotated Bibliography

African-American Families in the 1950s

Primary Sources

Lorraine Hansberry, 1992 (Screenplay) a Raisin in the Sun Los Angles CA: Columbia Pictures

Industries Inc.

The screenplay associated with the 1961 film a Raisin in the Sun has never been published, although an un-filmed version, i.e. that which Hansberry the playwright and author of the screenplay submitted for consideration to the filmmakers was published by Columbia pictures in 1992. The screenplay, though not exact to the one used for the film was used as a basis for the 1961 film, likely with significant alterations, done by various review boards to reduce the negative impact the film might have on the white community. This alone makes the screenplay a fascinating example of the slow progress that was made, despite the radical and vocal social upheaval that was taking place during the civil rights movement. A Raisin in the Sun is a descriptive condemnation of the social and economic state of African-American Families, during the 1950s, when economic and institutional segregation and therefore missed opportunity was at a peak, and as changes in local and national Jim Crow laws made way for majority community members and institutions to uphold segregation in a defacto manner, rather than as a result of the legal state. A Raisin in the Sun has an extended family of African-American's trapped within the squalor of a tenement apartment all needing and most not receiving much, the head of the household, Walter Younger struggling to make ends meet to support the extended family. The turn around occurs when the family receives a large insurance settlement, but the social depravity, segregation and challenges to individuals do not. The work demonstrates that it is not just economics that creates conflict in many African-American families at this time, but economics is a good place to start looking for change.

McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950)

http://www.blackpast.org/?q=primaryWEST/mclaurin-v-oklahoma-state-regents-1950

The development of Jim Crow segregation laws, that serve as a marked backlash from fears generated by emancipation, as well as African-American families and others seeking resolution for past wrongs marks a period of history that challenges most historians. The Above court case demonstrates that the challenges for African-American individuals and families to attempt to make a better life for themselves, through education was significant. White collar education was available, in a sort of second rate state and those who chose to seek education with whites faced legal and social alienation. The period of the 1950s is when the legal changes that disbanded the thousands of national and local segregation laws, which were particularly difficult to overturn because there were so very many and on so many levels. The importance of this court case is to show that specifically the legal state may have changed but it was expected that the social climate would not, and that this social climate change was not the question but the fact that the state was giving authority to institutions and individuals to segregate and therefore offer unequal opportunity, where it was offered at all. One absolutely crucial quote from the work, describing this phenomena follows; "(b) That appellant may still be set apart by his fellow students and may be in no better position when these restrictions are removed is irrelevant, for there is a constitutional difference between restrictions imposed by the State which prohibit the intellectual commingling of students and the refusal of students to commingle where the State presents no such bar. P. 641." The case is of a African-American grad student in Oklahoma that challenges the segregation her experiences at the University of Oklahoma, on the grounds that it is barring him from the discussion and interaction that are the basis of his career education.

Portwood, Shirley Motley. 2000. Tell Us a Story: An African-American Family in the Heartland. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Portwood has put together a collaborative collection of oral history, that includes many first hand accounts of life for African-American individuals and families in the 1950s and at earlier times. Her work is responsive to both repression and resistance and shows individuals who lived through some harrowing times, including slavery in a light that is responsive to the changes that were taking place in the 1950s. The 1950s was a time when the last of the generation of slaves were beginning to disappear from communities but their first generation children were attempting to make sense of the lives they led and the cautionary tales they had applied to their lives as a result. The work shows that for the 1950s African-American family it was a time of remembrance and resolution as well as a time to reflect on change and hope for even greater change in the future, with the inclusion of the fact that defacto segregation and suppression was still occurring in a rampant manner all over their lives.

Secondary Sources

Jewell, K. Sue. 2003. Survival of the African-American Family: The Institutional Impact of U.S. Social Policy. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Jewell develops a social history that demonstrates all the many disparities of the African-American vs. majority culture and how these disparities, legal, social and economic effected the family during the whole of the 20th century. Her treatment of the 1950s as a time when change was in the air but had not yet been realized and was therefore extremely frustrating for many individuals is spot on. The works premise is that the liberal social policy, which began to alter the legal and social landscape of America was largely unsuccessful, and in many ways remains so today. The challenges to African-American families can still be seen in the cultural climate that evolved from failed social policy. In other words changing the laws did little the actually change the lives of families.

Johnson, Fred L. 2005. Andrew Wiese. Places of Their Own: African-American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century. African-American Review 39, no. 4: 615..

Johnson details the manner in which suburbanization changed the lives of African-American families, in the 1950s. They to some degree sought the same ideal that white families did in the post war culture, to own a home in one of the growing suburban communities, and offer their children the same opportunities that were so painted golden in the era. The work demonstrates that though the families may have had the same intentions and developed ideals they were not given the same opportunities and segregation and discrimination still challenged African-American families, as it did in almost every other social environment, and communities were even passing their own residency laws that banned black families from ownership, but more importantly the social climate of conservatism and golden era seeking challenged them even more and this would not change until much later.