One of the most
exciting sites I have come across recently is the Modernist
Journals Project, a joint project of Brown University and the University of
Tulsa that is digitising key early 20th century English language magazines.
There's some astounding material there, not least numerous issues of 'The
Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races', the ground-breaking journal of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People edited by W.E.B. Du
Bois.
From Issue no.5 (March 1911), here's a poem by Rosalie
Jonas entitled Ballade des Belles Milatraisses. Its subject matter is the
Octoroon Balls of 19th century New Orleans where white men would meet
'mixed-race' women (octoroons were defined as one-eighth black, quadroons as
one-quarter), and from which black men were excluded - or almost. As often in
the history of American music and dance, black people were both excluded from
fully participating as equals while simultaneously being central to it as
musicians and performers. In this instance it is the fiddler who is "the one man
of 'colour' admitted" but with the instruction "Play on! Fiddler-man, keep your
eyes on your bow".
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