Civil Rights Childhood
Picturing Liberation in African American Photobooks
Published on 1. December 2014
Book
Hardback
384 pages
978-0-8166-9404-4 (ISBN)
Description
Childhood joy, pleasure, and creativity are not often associated with the civil rights movement. Their ties to the movement may have faded from historical memory, but these qualities received considerable photographic attention in that tumultuous era. Katharine Capshaw's Civil Rights Childhood reveals how the black child has been-and continues to be-a social agent that demands change.
Because children carry a compelling aura of human value and potential, images of African American children in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education had a powerful effect on the fight for civil rights. In the iconography of Emmett Till and the girls murdered in the 1963 Birmingham church bombings, Capshaw explores the function of children's photographic books and the image of the black child in social justice campaigns for school integration and the civil rights movement. Drawing on works ranging from documentary photography, coffee-table and art books, and popular historical narratives and photographic picture books for the very young, Civil Rights Childhood sheds new light on images of the child and family that portrayed liberatory models of blackness, but it also considers the role photographs played in the desire for consensus and closure with the rise of multiculturalism.
Offering rich analysis, Capshaw recovers many obscure texts and photographs while at the same time placing major names like Langston Hughes, June Jordan, and Toni Morrison in dialogue with lesser-known writers. An important addition to thinking about representation and politics, Civil Rights Childhood ultimately shows how the photobook-and the aspirations of childhood itself-encourage cultural transformation.
Because children carry a compelling aura of human value and potential, images of African American children in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education had a powerful effect on the fight for civil rights. In the iconography of Emmett Till and the girls murdered in the 1963 Birmingham church bombings, Capshaw explores the function of children's photographic books and the image of the black child in social justice campaigns for school integration and the civil rights movement. Drawing on works ranging from documentary photography, coffee-table and art books, and popular historical narratives and photographic picture books for the very young, Civil Rights Childhood sheds new light on images of the child and family that portrayed liberatory models of blackness, but it also considers the role photographs played in the desire for consensus and closure with the rise of multiculturalism.
Offering rich analysis, Capshaw recovers many obscure texts and photographs while at the same time placing major names like Langston Hughes, June Jordan, and Toni Morrison in dialogue with lesser-known writers. An important addition to thinking about representation and politics, Civil Rights Childhood ultimately shows how the photobook-and the aspirations of childhood itself-encourage cultural transformation.
Reviews / Votes
"Katharine Capshaw's new study-intersecting photography, children's literature, and the civil rights movement-is a rich and strikingly original addition to the growing scholarship on African American childhood. Many scholars will appreciate and be indebted to this important work." -Gerald Early, Washington University in St. Louis"Capshaw's analysis and contextualization of the works in question break entirely new ground, offering original ways of thinking about how the photographic book operated as a medium particularly suited to African-American authors, child readers, and messages about civil rights." -Julia Mickenberg, University of Texas at Austin "This is an important and engaging book that offers one of the few extended discussions of depictions of black childhood. "-International Review of Children's Literature
"Civil Rights Childhood will no doubt be an influential text in our understanding of the visual representations of black childhood now and in our future."-MELUS
"A fascinating, well-conceived and empirically rich study."-Visual Studies
"To read Capshaw is. . . to receive a lesson on the cultural importance and responsibility of literary scholarship. Civil Rights Childhood not only advances our scholarly understanding of the politics of childhood, but also enables readers to better contextualize so many of the images and injustices we continue to encounter."-International Research Society for Children's Literature
"Deeply researched and engagingly written."-Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth
"Civil Rights Childhood is notable for its steadfast and vocal commitment to its political project. Capshaw's continual engagement with the real implications of the work she analyzes and also of her own would make this book a useful one to use in the classroom."-CAA Reviews
"Impeccably researched. Capshaw does some incredibly impressive literary recovery work, shedding light on texts completely unfamiliar to many contemporary scholars of either children's literature or African American studies."-Children's Literature Association Quarterly
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Minnesota
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
71
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 178 mm
Thickness: 51 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-8166-9404-4 (9780816694044)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Katharine Capshaw is associate professor of English at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. She is the author of Children's Literature of the Harlem Renaissance, winner of the Children's Literature Association's 2004 award for best scholarly book.
Content
Contents
Introduction
1. Friendship, Sympathy, Social Change
2. Pictures and Nonfiction: Conduct and Coffee Tables
3. Today: Framing Freedom in Mississippi
4. The Black Arts Movement: Childhood as Liberatory Process
5. Blurring the Childhood Image: Representations of the Civil Rights Narrative
Conclusion: A Text for Trayvon
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Introduction
1. Friendship, Sympathy, Social Change
2. Pictures and Nonfiction: Conduct and Coffee Tables
3. Today: Framing Freedom in Mississippi
4. The Black Arts Movement: Childhood as Liberatory Process
5. Blurring the Childhood Image: Representations of the Civil Rights Narrative
Conclusion: A Text for Trayvon
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index