Racial Capitalism: Property Relationships of Black Families in the Age of Segregation
Outline
After 1865, Black Americans could no longer be bought and sold as property, but they continued to face significant barriers in their efforts to acquire property for themselves and fulfill the promise of "possessive individualism" in the United States. The subproject, anchored in the project area "Property Subjects," focuses its research questions on the multilayered conflictual nature of this historical configuration.
In particular, it examines the agency of Black Americans and their efforts to acquire and maintain property against all odds. The subproject focuses on families and their significance for making individuals part of a social and property order. The subproject explores property formations among Black families during Reconstruction and segregation in two key areas:
First, it examines small rural farmer families who owned their own farms from the end of the Civil War to about 1900. Second, it focuses on families in the emerging Black urban middle and upper class in the South between 1880 and 1930, referred to by W.E.B. Du Bois as the "talented tenth" and by sociologist E. Franklin Frazier as "Black bourgeoisie."
Our research is based primarily on family papers housed in the Stuart A. Rose Library at Emory University in Atlanta, GA, the Rubenstein Library at Duke University and the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture at the College of Charleston. The overarching goal of both research areas is to examine how these families operated within the Black communities and with the white U.S. society, and we will also look at internal family dynamics related to wealth formation.
Intertwined with race, gender is a particularly significant category of analysis for our subproject. Class and region (rural farmers and urban bourgeoisie) are also significant analytical categories so that the subproject analyzes property relations in the U.S.-American South during Reconstruction and segregation from a multi-layered, intersectional perspective. Most importantly, this subproject seeks to identify spaces in which Black Americans exercised agency during Reconstruction and segregation, demonstrating that the accumulation of property by Black families, despite strong obstacles, was a highly contested and deeply complex process.
Project Activities
Publications (selection)
Scientific publications
Monographs:
- Krämer, Felix (2024): Leben auf Kredit. Menschen, Macht und Schulden in den USA vom Ende der Sklaverei bis in die Gegenwart, Frankfurt/M.: Campus
Edited Volumes:
- Helen A. Gibson, Sofia Bianchi Mancini, Dirk Schuck and, Markus Vinzent (eds.): Relating to Landed Property, Frankfurt/M.: Campus.
Articles:
- Gibson, Helen A. (2024): “The Otherwise Cosmogram”, In: Gibson, H. A. Bianchi Mancini, S.; Schuck, D.; Vinzent, M. (eds.), Relating to Landed Property. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag.
- Krämer, Felix (2024): “Versklavung, Enteignung, Schuldknechtschaft”, In: Alexander Engel und Eva Brugger (eds.) Handbuch Koloniales Wirtschaften. 15. bis 21. Jahrhundert, Berlin: DeGruyter, (forth.).
- Packo, Moana J. (2024): “‘The Measure of Justice’: Locating the Fight for Land Reparations within Du Bois’ ‘General Strike,’”, In: Gibson, Mancini, Schuck and, Vinzent, eds., Relating to Landed Property, Frankfurt/M.: Campus, (forth.).
- Gibson, Helen A. (2024): “Granny Midwives’ Epistemic and Embodied Care”, In: Schmidt, K.; van Loon, J. (eds.), Herausforderung Solidarität. Konzepte – Kontroversen – Perspektiven, Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 303-316.
- Gibson, Helen A. (2024): "Teaching Towards Calvin Warren's Nonmetaphysical Historography", In: Löffler, P.; Rauscher, N.; Werner, W. (eds.) Participation in American Culture and Society, American Studies: Monograph Series. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 163-177.
- González Athenas, M.; Krämer, F. (2023): “Produzieren und argumentieren”, In: Netzwerk „Das Versprechen der Märkte“, Marktgeschehen. Fragmente einer Geschichte frühneuzeitlichen Wirtschaftens, Frankfurt/M.: Campus 2023, 127-136.
- Klein, B.; Krämer, F. (2022): "Transsektionalität als Fluchtlinie der Historiographie – James Weldon Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man“, In: FZG – Freiburger Zeitschrift für GeschlechterStudien 28 (2022), 89-106, https://doi.org/10.3224/fzg.v28i1.06.
- Gibson, Helen A. (2022): “Access to Labor and Leisure in Cars: Early Black Motorists' Automotivity in Miami”, In: Mondes du Tourisme 21 (2022), 103-125.
Blogposts, Reviews, Podcasts
- Felix Krämer with Jan Logemann (2023): Roundtable Discussion on „Racial Capitalism as a Concept for Writing U.S.-American History“, Annual Meeting of the German Association for American Studies on America and Ownership: Territory, Slavery, Jubilee, at University of Rostock. The event was subject of a H-Soz-Kult podcast episode (Juni 2023).
- Martschukat, Jürgen (2023): “America’s original identity politics. On historical interconnections of property, race and identity politics”, In: blog of the Collaborative Research Centre “Structural Change in Property”. (published on 25.04.2023)
- Helen Gibson (2023): Review of Brückmann, Rebecca: Massive Resistance and Southern Womanhood. White Women, Class, and Segregation. Athens 2021, In: H-Soz-Kult. (15.03.2023)
- Gibson, Helen A. (2022): Review: Ferreira da Silva, Denise: Unpayable Debt, London, Sternberg Press 2022, in: blog of the Collaborative Research Centre “Structural Change in Property”, “Unpayable Debt: Decolonial Redress Beyond the Knowable” (published on 22.12.2022).
- Packo, Moana J. (2022): Review: Knewitz, Simone: The Politics of Private Property. Contested Claims to Ownership in U.S. Cultural Discourse, Lanham, MD 2021, in: H-Soz-Kult, (02.05.2022).
Lectures (selection)
- Helen Gibson: “Reproductive Justice and (Racial) Capitalism: Grand Midwives as Political Economic Theorists.” Lecture prepared for the Ringvorlesung 2024/25, John. F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin (27.11.2024).
- “'Critical Fabulation' als historisch-philosophische Methode: Grand Midwives und das Verlernen der Propertisierung.”, Paper prepared for the XI. Tagung für Praktische Philosophie, Universität Passau (19.-20.09.2024).
- Helen Gibson: “Kosmologisches Verlernen: Granny Midwifery Jenseits des Eigentums.” Paper prepared for the Kolloquium Geschlechtergeschichte, Universität Basel, March 15, 2024.
- Julian Windhövel, “The Only Laboring Class We Have – Planter Class and Freedmen’s Bureau during early Reconstruction in Louisiana. 1864-1868”, Presentation of dissertation at the Annual Conference of the Historians of the German Association for American Studies, University of Erfurt, (3.-5.05.2024, upcoming).
- Felix Krämer, “Expropriated Freedoms: Indebtedness after the End of the Civil War”, Annual Meeting of the German Association of American Studies (GAAS/DGfA), “America and Ownership: Territory, Slavery Jubilee,” Rostock University (02.06.2023)
- Moana J. Packo, “On Time and Redress: ‘40 Acres and a Mule’ in Memory and Legacy”, Paper presented as part of the panel “Whiteness as Property: Histories and Practices of Racial Capitalism” at the Annual Meeting of the German Association for American Studies on America and Ownership: Territory, Slavery, Jubilee, at Rostock, University of Rostock (02.06.2023).
- Helen Gibson, “Spiritual Breath in Granny Midwifery.” Paper prepared for the Biennial Conference of the Nordic Association for American Studies (NAAS), Uppsala Universitet, Uppsala, Schweden, (25.-27.05.2023).
- Jürgen Martschukat, “Eine historisierende Betrachtung von Identitätspolitik” Conference “Geschichte der Gegenwart“, University of Siegen (17.-19.11.2022).
Events
- Helen A. Gibson and Julia-Alexandra Ackermann: “Epistemic Reparations: Attending to the Grievances and Harms of the Colonial/Racial/Capital”, A02 Project Workshop. (24.11.2023)
- Felix Krämer, Grit Grigoleit-Richter (Passau) and Moana J. Packo: “Whiteness as Property: Histories and Practices of Racial Capitalism.” Workshop for the Annual Meeting of the German Association of American Studies (GAAS/DGfA), “America and Ownership: Territory, Slavery Jubilee,” University of Rostock. (1.-3.06.2023)
- Helen Gibson, Sebastian Jobs and Nadja Klopprogge: “‘Knowing/Refusing ‘Value’: Reclaiming Kinship at the Expense of Capital.” Workshop for the Annual Meeting of the GAAS/DGfA, University of Rostock. (1.-3.06.2023)
- Helen Gibson and Barbara Lüthi: “Race and Propertization” Conference co-organized via the SFB TRR 294 and the Historisches Seminar of University of Erfurt at the Kleine Synagoge in Erfurt with contributions by Mia Bay, Cedric Essi, Helen Gibson and M.J. Packo. (18.-19.11.2023)
