Description
Book SynopsisAfrican American Life and Culture in Orange Mound is an exploration of the conditions of living for residents of a segregated subdivision in the deep south from 1890 to 1919. It is also a study of contemporary approaches to community building during a time period of racial segregation and polarization. The town of Orange Mound, built by Elzey E. Meacham as an all-black subdivision for negroes, represents a unique chapter in American history. There is no other case, neither in the deep South nor in the far West, of such a tremendous effort on the part of African Americans to come together to occupy a carved out spaceeventually making it into a black community on the outskirts of Memphis on a former slave plantation. The significance of community continues to be relevant to our ever-evolving understanding of racial and ethnic formations in the South. This ethnography of community, family, and institution in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth-century Shelby County Tennessee reveals
Trade ReviewAfrican American Life and Culture in Orange Mound: A Case Study of a Black Community in Memphis, Tennessee, 1890-1980 is a fascinating portrait of a large, black neighborhood that has shaped Memphis in deep, enduring ways. A planned community built on farmland that was once part of the Deaderick Plantation, Orange Mound nurtured and supported generations of black families whose churches and schools defined their worlds. Like all black southern towns, Orange Mound sheltered its families, and Charles Williams captures their worlds in this important work. -- William Ferris, University of Mississippi
African American Life and Culture in Orange Mound is an excellent ethnographic study of a black community from its genesis during the last decade of the nineteenth century to near the end of the twentieth century. This study illuminates the lives of Orange Mound residents by allowing them to speak for themselves about how they made this community their own. In probing the lives and institutions within this very important community, Dr. Williams has made a significant contribution to American urban anthropology and history. -- Frank Moorer, Alabama State University
[T]he reader [of African American Life] is left with a sound piece of anthropological work that provides a solid basis for future research about Memphis's African American communities. * Journal of Southern History *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Chapter 1 -Introduction: The Problem -Research Design and Methodology Chapter 2 -The Deadericks -Gentlemen Planters in West Tennessee Chapter 3 -The Historical Orange Mound Community -Development and Demographic Characteristics -Socio-cultural Characteristics Chapter 4 -The Black Family in Orange Mound: Patterns of Integration and Disintegration -Kinship among the Orange Mounders -The Family of Cora Jones Thompson: A Case Study of an Atypical Orange Mound Family -The Family of Juanita Gray Miller: A Case Study of an Atypical Orange Mound Family -The Family of Fannie Carter Jackson: A Case Study of a Transitional Orange Mound Family Chapter 5 -Key Institutions -The Black Church in Orange Mound -Mt. Pisgah Christian Methodist Episcopal Church -Mt. Moriah Baptist Church -Beulah Baptist Church -Olivet Baptist Church: A Newcomer to the Orange Mound Community -Contribution of Black Churches Chapter 6 -The Black Schools of Orange Mound -The Orange Mound Day Nursery -Socio-Economic Structure, Orange Mound during the 1920’s -Orange Mound during the 1930’s Chapter 7 -Orange Mound within the Larger Context of Memphis Chapter 8 -Race and the Politics of Place -The Memphis and Charleston Railroad -Mid-South Refrigerated Warehouse Company -Street Corner Society in Orange Mound -Jewish Entrepreneurship in Orange Mound -Change and Persistence in Orange Mound -Police Relations and the Orange Mound Community Chapter 9 -A Victim of Its Own Success: The Demise of a Historical Black Community -Blight and Crime in the Orange Mound Community -Today’s Churches in Orange Mound -Traditional Churches of Orange Mound Need More Outreach in Order to Grow Chapter 10 Conclusion: Community Change, Persistence, and Policy Implications Bibliography Index About the Author
