Prove It On Me: New Negroes, Sex, and Popular Culture in the 1920s by Erin D. Chapman (review)

What does it mean to be modern if one must act in primitive and oppressive ways? How does one participate in a society when the principles upon which it is founded juxtapose civility with savagery? In Prove It On Me: New Negroes, Sex and Popular Culture in the 1920s, Erin D. Chapman considers the ways in which black women navigate racist and sexist ideologies while trying to be self-determining as one was wont to be in the New Negro era. In each chapter she reminds her audience of the significant cultural and historical issues with which blacks had to contend during this period, such as lynching, the proliferation of controlling images of blacks, and gender roles. Rather than provide pat responses to the aforementioned issues, Chapman argues that “the changing discourse of gender, sexuality, race, and economics affected the kinds of opportunities black women found available to them” (15). In so arguing she elucidates how African American women found ways to navigate the intricacies of insidious oppression that remained alive and well during a time of ostensible progress, liberation, and self-determination for all.

In 1886, in her address “Womanhood a Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race,” Anna Julia Cooper declared that “Only the BLACK WOMAN can say ‘when and where I enter . . . then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.’ ” Her announcement to an audience of black Episcopalian ministers was clear: there could be no success in any endeavor for racial uplift without the inclusion of the least of the race: black women and girls. By the time the 1920s rolled around, the interconnectedness of the images of black females and the healthy progress of the race remained intact. There were significant differences, however. Chapman demonstrates that while both black and mainstream societies continued to use images of the black female body to exhibit black civilization and modernity (or the lack thereof), their positioning in the public sphere was more complex. While the potential for economic freedom was greater than at any other point in American history, the images that accompanied products and/or services reified old racist notions of black Americans. These compromising figurations of black women’s role in society only helped to retard racial progress and make their status more bound to oppression than ever before.

The sorts of questions Prove It On Me conjures illuminate the ambiguous place in which black women dwelled in the early decades of the twentieth century. In 1920s’ U. S. A., more blacks exercised their increased spending power. Still, the nature of their participation in the marketplace required that they accept the ideology that blacks were less human than their white counterparts. Furthermore, the nation’s embrace of modernity was itself a desire for progress, but blended with nostalgia for the “good ol’ days.” The result: images of the modern mixed with images of the primitive. Chapman uses examples from popular culture where one can see tensions between the old and the new. Her reading of a 1924 advertisement for blueswoman Bessie Smith’s “Hateful Blues” contrasts with the song’s lyrics. In her analysis she notes:

Columbia Records’ advertisement . . . features a caricatured black woman with a wide, minstrel mouth and a mismatched outfit consisting of a checked skirt, striped stockings, and flower-print blouse brandishing a butcher knife as she chases a man whose high-top hat, coattails, and spats are the only evidence of his recent escape. Far from celebrating the independence and self-confidence of a woman who refuses to tolerate an abusive lover who “treated [her] wrong,” as the lyrics of the song clearly intended, this advertisement . . . played upon and updated minstrel stereotype of black women as overbearing shrews who dominate effeminate, lazy black men.

(96)

Chapman reads apt examples from popular culture of the day that repeats her refrain like a blues riff: Yes, there is evidence of the...