Word: negroness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Joplin's libretto has a big subject (how the Negro can improve himself) but an oversimplified solution (education). Its language is embarrassingly laden with darky dialect ("Aunt Dinah has blowed de horn,/And we'll go home to stay until dawn"). There are enough voodoo heavies, cavorting bears and right-thinking preachers to tax any producer's ingenuity...
...gospel songs that Mahalia sang were descended from the Negro spirituals of the old slave plantations. As the granddaughter of slaves, she came by the heritage naturally; as the daughter of a stevedore in New Orleans, she just as naturally learned to combine it with the new beat of urban blues singers like Bessie Smith. She went to work at 13 as a washerwoman. After moving to Chicago at 16, she was a hotel maid, laundress and baby sitter before her choir solos won her a job on a crosscountry gospel crusade. Chicago remained her home until the end. There...
...major parties, the nineteenth century beckons again. This time we come upon a man who is less well known than he deserves: Blanche Kelso Bruce. Born into slavery, Bruce as a young man opened and taught Kansas' first grade school for black children. He eventually became the first Negro to serve a full term in the U.S. Senate (1875-81), where he vainly fought against a bill to exclude Chinese immigration and fought for the rights of American Indians. He was later named to important posts by Presidents Garfield, Harrison, and McKinley...
...person on it is not yet electable. In this connection, one may want to ponder a series of six Gallup polls taken from 1958 to this past fall. White Americans were asked, "If your party nominated a generally well-qualified man for President and he happened to be a Negro, would you vote for him?" The number saying yes rose from 38 per cent in 1958 to 70 per cent today. That is encouraging, of course. Yet polls are not infallible, and people will often behave quite otherwise in the privacy of a voting booth than face to face with...
...them winds up on a party ticket. By so doing, they bid fair to acquire greater leverage than ever before--which is only just. In his book Nominating the President, a scholar in the field, Gerald Pomper, wrote nearly a decade ago: "It is not unlikely that a Negro eventually--and probably sooner rather than later--will be named to a national party slate, most likely as Vice-Presidential nominee." That "sooner" could well be imminent...