On the Sidewalk: 20th-Century African American Resistance to the Internalization of White Supremacy

Decades before James Brown said it loud, New Negro performing artist and civil and human rights activist Fredi Washington hollered, “I’m Black and I’m Proud!” In the parlance of her cohort – the early 20^th century artists/activists of the New Negro Renaissance – Washington denounced white supremacy and asserted, “I am an American citizen and by God, we all have inalienable rights.” While the opportunities afforded her were extraordinary, Washington’s belief in herself, and her inalienable rights as a citizen and as a human being, was not unique. During the Jim Crow era, myriad black people were secure in their sense of self-worth and their right not only to survive, but to thrive in the United States. Scholarship produced during the first two decades of the 21^st century amply demonstrates that black men and women of all walks of life refused to step off the sidewalk – physically or metaphorically – and resisted the internalization of white supremacy. Like Washington, they were proud, beautiful, and resolved to determine their own destiny long before Brown said it loud. Yet, sustained by the influence of late-twentieth scholarship, which focused primarily upon revealing the negative effects of segregation and racism upon the black community, coupled with images perpetuated by cultural producers and the media, the narrative of self-hating, terrified, inactive, and downtrodden black people prior to the Black Power and Black Is Beautiful movements endures. This project explores the foundation and durability of the dominant narrative, the tensions between it and the actuality of black insistence upon their inalienable rights, as well as the ways in which black activists manipulated the dominant narrative as an organizational strategy.