Mercy, Mercy Me: African-American Culture and the American Sixties (Race and American Culture)

Using an interdisciplinary approach, this book argues that American artistry in the 1960s can be understood as one of the most vital and compelling interrogations of modernity. James C. Hall finds that the legacy of slavery and the resistance to it have by necessity made African Americans among the most incisive critics and celebrants of the Enlightenment inheritance. Focusing on the work of six individuals--Robert Hayden, William Demby, Paule Marshall, John Coltrane, Romare Bearden, and W.E.B. DuBois-- Mercy, Mercy Me seeks to recover an American tradition of evaluating the "dialectic of the Enlightenment." "Focusing on the work of six individuals - Robert Hayden, William Demby, Paule Marshall, John Coltrane, Romare Bearden, and W.E.B. Du Bois - Mercy, Mercy Me recovers an American tradition of evaluating the "dialectic of the Enlightenment." Hall argues that the cultural actors he describes reflect and embody the complex connections of race and nation. Cosmopolitan in outlook and critical of a culture of congratulation, they highlight the close relationship between slavery and the construction of American citizenship as they document the destructive influences wrought upon the self by consumer capitalism, technology, and ritualized violence. The course of this study reveals an essential concern at the core of African-American art in the sixties - that the longing to look backward is always in danger of lapsing into nostalgia and so must constantly struggle with the horror of the very past it would champion. In its original account of black artistry and its recovery of overlooked works of the period, Mercy, Mercy Me marks a major contribution to our understanding of 1960s American culture."--Jacket Contents......Page 12 CHAPTER ONE: African-American Antimodernism and the American Sixties......Page 16 CHAPTER TWO: Mourning Song: Robert Hayden and the Politics of Memory......Page 52 CHAPTER THREE: Modern Doubt to Antimodern Commitment: Paule Marshall and William Demby......Page 91 CHAPTER FOUR: Meditations: John Coltrane and Freedom......Page 126 CHAPTER FIVE: The Prevalence of Ritual in an Age of Change: Romare Bearden......Page 164 CHAPTER SIX: W.E.B. Du Bois and Dedication to the Dead......Page 200 EPILOGUE: What’s Going On(?): “The Most Truly Modern of All People”......Page 238 Notes......Page 244 B......Page 288 C......Page 289 D......Page 290 G......Page 291 H......Page 292 M......Page 293 P......Page 294 T......Page 295 Y......Page 296

Using an interdisciplinary approach, this book argues that American artistry in the Sixties can be understood as one of the most vital and compelling interrogations of modernity. James C. Hall finds that the legacy of slavery and the resistance to it have by necessity made African-Americans among the most incisive critics and celebrants of the Enlightenment inheritance. Focusing on the work of six individuals—Robert Hayden, William Demby, Paule Marshall, John Coltrane, Romare Bearden, and W.E.B. DuBois—Mercy, Mercy Me seeks to recover an American tradition of evaluating the dialectic of the Enlightenment.

Using an interdisciplinary approach, this book argues that American artistry in the Sixties can be understood as one of the most vital and compelling interrogations of modernity. James C. Hall finds that the legacy of slavery and the resistance to it have by necessity made African Americans among the most incisive critics and celebrants of the Enlightenment inheritance. Focusing on the work of six individuals-Robert Hayden, William Demby, Paule Marshall, John Coltrane, Romare Bearden, and W.E.B. DuBois-Mercy, Mercy Me seeks to recover an American tradition of evaluating the "dialectic of the Enlightenment."