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• 1 2019-03-12T23:56:18+00:00 Scalar and Scholarly Communication 13 plain published 2019-11-05T13:48:39+00:00 Black Quotidian is a born-digital project that uses Scalar, an open-access, multimedia web-authoring platform that enables authors to assemble images, videos, maps, and other media and to juxtapose these resources with text. I designed Black Quotidian to explore the capabilities of Scalar in two ways. First, as a media historian, I have long appreciated Scalar’s multimedia capabilities. Visitors to Black Quotidian can read news coverage from the black press while also watching or listening to contemporaneous musical performances, athletic events, or political speeches that are difficult to describe textually. Using Scalar, Black Quotidian conveys the sounds, sights, and movements that are so important to African-American history.  The March 30, 1942  post, for example, features an article from the Atlanta Daily World describing pianist Hazel Scott performing in a Broadway production called “Priorities of 1942,” alongside a video clip of Scott playing two pianos in the film The Heat’s On (1943). 
  
  Similarly, the April 2, 1966 post focused on Texas Western Miners men’s basketball team, who upset Adolph Rupp’s Kentucky Wildcats, and became the first team to win the college title with five African-American starters. After reading Bill Nunn’s column in the Pittsburgh Courier, visitors can link out to a brief video clip of the team being introduced. As Alexander Weheliye notes, these types of mixes and juxtapositions are particularly important to understanding black cultural history. “The ‘mix,’ as it appears in black cultural production throughout the twentieth century, highlights the amalgamation of its components, or rather the process of this (re)combination, as much as it accentuates the individual parts from which it springs,” Weheliye argues.¹⁷  Whether it is witnessing Hazel Scott’s virtuosity or imagining the thrill television viewers got in seeing five black starters take the court, Scalar’s multimedia capabilities create a richer portrait of everyday black history.
  
  Second, Scalar offered new possibilities for structuring my research and writing, both in terms of the Black Quotidian’s development and its scope. This project developed gradually, without a predetermined plan for what each of the daily posts would cover. After each daily post was finished, I would share the link via Twitter. In this way, parts of the project were complete and were being read online, while the larger project was still under construction. What started as a handful of pages and media objects, soon grew to the hundreds, and eventually expanded to over 1,000 newspaper articles, images, and videos. My hope is that this accumulation of these daily posts conveys a sense of the breadth of African-American history and enables readers to explore the project in different ways. Readers do not need to visit every page, read every article, or click every link to learn more about black newspapers and how these newspapers recorded everyday life in black communities.
  
  Through these multimedia capabilities and possibilities for structuring, Scalar enabled me to communicate my research differently. Black Quotidian could only exist digitally and was intentionally designed to be different from a monograph or journal article. As Lara Putnam noted in the April 2015 Perspectives on History, “handcuffing scholarly dissemination” to the academic monograph “imposes opportunity costs” in terms of “collective knowledge,” “individual careers,” and “historians’ place in public debate.”¹⁸  I have come to view scholarly communication, via Twitter and elsewhere, as an everyday process rather than something that happens intermittently, at conferences, or through articles and books.  Scalar’s open-access format makes it possible to share primary sources about events and people—such as basketball and tennis star Ora Washington, Ghana’s independence, and Cleveland businessman and hairdresser Wilbert Black—with popular audiences in ways that simply are not possible in traditional print forms.
  
  
  
  Digital history represents a new way to continue traditions that have long been important for scholars of African-American history and culture. Early practitioners, such as Carter G. Woodson, who founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) in 1915 and initiated Negro History Week in 1926, viewed African-American history as a communal endeavor that required popular participation. For decades, teachers, preachers, and parents could write to Woodson and the ASNLH in Washington D.C. to request pamphlets and educational materials on black history. Scholars in the digital era have been similarly creative with regard to networking and circulating knowledge. Founded by Alondra Nelson in 1998, the Afrofuturism listserv and companion website brought together scholars, artists, and activists in both digital and analog spaces to explore how communities in the African diaspora engaged with science fiction, technology, and digital cultures.¹⁹  In 2000, Abdul Alkalimat called for eBlack Studies, arguing that “eBlack, the virtualization of the Black experience, is the basis for the next stage of our academic discipline.”  Drawing on decades of experience as a scholar-activist, Alkalimat led several digital initiatives, including the H-Afro-Am listserv (which shared daily information on black history and culture with subscribers) and the eBlackStudies.org website, which includes open access curricular resources and e-books, such as Introduction to African-American Studies: A People's College Primer.  “For both Nelson and Alkalimat,” Jessica Marie Johnson writes, “digital blackness could not be removed from life beyond the screen and could not be divorced from the politics of everyday black life.”²⁰
  
  From these starting points, black digital studies and practices have flourished over the past two decades, including online blogs and journals like Black Perspectives (founded by Christopher Cameron and edited by Keisha N. Blain, J.T. Roane, and Sasha Turner) and Fire!!! (edited by Marilyn Miller Thomas-Houston and Daryl Michael Scott); large-scale digital history projects like Colored Conventions (co-founded and directed by P. Gabrielle Foreman and Jim Casey) and BlackPast.org (founded by Quintard Taylor); and multimedia websites such as African Diaspora, Ph.D. (founded and curated by Jessica Marie Johnson), Marisa Parham’s digital essays and curation projects, and NewBlackMan (In Exile) (by Mark Anthony Neal). Drawing on deep traditions in African-American Studies, each of these projects are designed to use digital tools and methods to explore black history and cultures in new ways and to bring these materials to audiences within and beyond the academy. Black Quotidian aims to build on these important projects by using Scalar to reach new audiences in new ways.
  
  The next path examines how African-American newspapers popularized black history and encouraged readers to see black history as something that is made, and should be studied, everyday.
• 1 2019-03-12T23:56:45+00:00 February - Archived Posts 11 plain published 2019-08-26T19:12:02+00:00
  Click on date to view post:
  February 1, 1980: Atlanta Daily World on Carter G. Woodson and articles from 1926-27 on first “Negro History Week.”

  February 2, 1936: Atlanta Daily World and black press editorial cartoons on Ethiopian anti-colonial battle against Italy.

  February 3, 1948: Atlanta Daily World on efforts to block black voting rights on anniversary of passage of 15th Amendment.

  February 4, 1956: Pittsburgh Courier on Montgomery Bus Boycott, in honor of Rosa Parks’ birthday.

  February 5, 1977: New York Amsterdam News, “Roots Captivates Millions of T-Viewers.”

  February 6, 1982: Cleveland Call & Post advertisement for Wilber Black, the (Jheri) “Kurl King” and Black’s Pride Hair Care Center.

  February 7, 1944: Los Angeles Tribune ad for “Sweet ’n’ Hot” revue featuring Dorothy Dandridge.

  February 7, 1948: Cleveland Call and Post editorial cartoon on segregation of University of Oklahoma Law School and Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher.

  February 8, 1964: New York Amsterdam News covers NYC school boycott, the largest civil rights protest in U.S. history.

  February 9, 1935: Selection of articles from Norfolk Journal and Guide on anti-lynching work, Negro History Week, Imitation of Life, and Paul Laurence Dunbar.

  February 10, 1959: Philadelphia Tribune reports on voter registration efforts in the city.

  February 11, 1928: Valentine’s Day wishes from the Chicago Defender Junior.

  February 12, 1949: “Grow Old With Me” short story in Baltimore Afro-American.

  February 13, 1960: Greensboro sit-in protests in Norfolk Journal and Guide and Cleveland Call and Post.

  February 14, 1946: Los Angeles Sentinel on fire in Fontana that killed O’Day, Helen, Barry, and Carol Ann Short.

  February 15, 1975: Pittsburgh Courier editor-in-chief Hazel Garland on professional opportunities for retired black athletes and lack of black television news anchors.

  February 16, 1965: Chicago Defender on the death of Nat King Cole.

  February 17, 1979: Ad for The Warriors in New York Amsterdam News, and article by Amsterdam News intern Nelson George.

  February 18, 1944: Atlanta Daily World on Harry Alpin, the first African-American reporter to cover a White House press conference.

  February 19, 1910: Clubwoman Ida Cummings in the Baltimore Afro-American.

  February 20, 1969: “Bowling Around L.A” by Los Angeles Sentinel columnist Juanita Blocker.

  February 21, 1970: Black journalists’ statement of support for the New York Times’ Earl Caldwell and his right to protect confidential sources in the Black Panther Party.

  February 22, 1965: The black press on the murder of Malcolm X.

  February 23, 1957: Philadelphia Tribune on Thomas Edison (formerly Northeast) High School and how board moved school to create segregated facility.

  February 24, 1934: Carter G. Woodson in Pittsburgh Courier on “Forgotten Negroes.”

  February 25, 1939: Blanche Thompson, Irvin C. Miller, and “Brown Skin Models” revue in Norfolk Journal and Guide.

  February 26, 1949: Baltimore Afro-American on Satchel Paige and other black major league baseball players heading to spring training.

  February 27, 1937: New York Amsterdam News on Dr. Anna Cooper Johnson’s new dental office in Harlem.

  February 28, 1978: Philadelphia Tribune on MOVE conflict with Philadelphia authorities eight years before bombing.

  February 29, 1956: Chicago Defender on Leap Year tradition of single women courting bachelors.
• 1 2019-03-12T23:56:18+00:00 February 6, 1982 6 gallery published 2019-10-09T19:28:51+00:00 On February 6, 1982, the Cleveland Call and Post featured an advertisement for Black’s Pride Hair Care Center, a small business owned by Wilbert Black who called himself the (Jheri) “Kurl King.” Not being from Cleveland I had never heard of Wilbert Black or Black’s Pride, but there is a surprising amount of information available about Black and his hair care business in the Call and Post. Wilbert Black, for example, graduated from Erma Lee Barber College in 1966 and opened Black’s Pride a few years later at 1544 Hayden Avenue in East Cleveland. In 1971, Black and other Hayden area merchants expressed concern with the lack of off-street parking near their businesses and frustration with the number of parking tickets they and their customers received as a result. In 1973, the East Cleveland Urban Renewal project pushed Black’s Pride to a new location a half-mile away at 14248 Euclid Ave. Odessa Black, Wilbert's wife, opened a beauty salon down the street. The Call and Post described the move as a positive relocation to a “bigger, better and brighter shop” that was “ultra-modern.” The paper also noted, “Besides running the barber shop Black is also active in community involvement. He is treasurer of the Hayden Avenue Development Association for the rebuilding of the Hayden Area, and Chairman of Relocation for the Project Area Committee.” Throughout the 1980s, Black ran advertisements in the Call and Post that trace the rise and decline of the Jheri Curl, a permed hairstyle, over the course of the decade: November 21, 1981: Jeri-Kurl Special; June, 6, 1982: Boucié-Kurl, “The French Way”; March 22, 1984: “A Professional Curl At a Basement Curl Price”; January 17, 1985: Nostalgic Cotton Club Waves; January 8, 1987: Leisure Curl; July 14, 1988: Instant Weave Body Curl. The final advertisement, a March 23, 1989 ad for “European Body Wrap” suggests that Black was interested in following whatever salon trends might prove most lucrative.
  
  Shortly after Wilbert Black died of cancer in 2005, U.S. Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones described what he meant to her and many other customers of Black’s Pride:

  Mr. Black not only was my hairstylist, he was my friend. He was never too busy for me. He always made himself available, offering constructive criticism and encouraging words. He was my political ally…He loved the city of East Cleveland. From Euclid Avenue to Hayden Road to Noble Road, he was involved in every political campaign for candidates and issues. He worked the polls and did whatever it took to ensure that the people of East Cleveland exercised their right to vote.
   
  He was known as “The Curl King,” in all of his regalia—tuxedos, three-piece suits, Gator shoes and his hair always in place. He kept an immaculate salon with tasty treats like coffee, cookies, wine, cheese and champagne.
   
  He and Odessa were a model of success in marriage, friendship, business and parenting. Nothing was more fun than to hear them go back and forth with each other. They were a couple who loved each other, their profession and their children and grandchildren. His sons Darryl and Petey could not have had a better role model. He set the example for his sons and shared his knowledge with them.
   
  When Mr. Black found out he had cancer he got ready to fight. He handled his illness with such dignity. He kept going and going. I recall I tried to cancel my last appointment but he would not let me. He insisted that he would do my hair. He took his time and I refused to rush him. I wanted more than anything to just say “Rest, Mr. Black,” but he would not hear it. He was going to finish no matter what. Mr. Black, I am sure you are in heaven with the rest of your family, probably doing hair in your salon. I can imagine the immaculate decorations, the flowers, the seating, the stations, the cheerful greeting, and the broad smile. Rest well, my friend, my ally, my hero extraordinaire.