“Call me African”: Black women and diasporic cultural feminism in Chicago, 1930-1980

“Call Me African”: Black Women and Diasporic Cultural Feminism in Chicago, 1930-1980 offers the first sustained history of diasporic cultural feminism in twentieth-century Chicago by chronicling the lives of four African American women: Margaret Burroughs, Gwendolyn Brooks, Christine Johnson, and Val Gray Ward. These women formed the nucleus of a thriving community of African American women cultural workers who claimed Blackness on a global stage. Together, they used cultural politics and the arts—namely public history, education, visual art, writing, and performance—to challenge white supremacy, disrupt masculinism within global Black liberation movements, and build community among African-descended women worldwide. These efforts transformed the US Midwest into a vital and dynamic center of diasporic feminist thought and protest. Indeed, Chicago Black women’s cultural productions not only reflected the Midwest’s connections to the worldwide African diaspora; they ultimately produced those connections. In telling this history, this dissertation deepens our understanding of the myriad ways Chicago Black women used history, art, and culture to link local structures to world politics. “Call Me African” rethinks the histories of Black Chicago, the African diaspora, and Black radicalism by appreciating Chicago as a distinct site of diasporic feminist activism. I introduce this concept to denote the transnational and feminist dimensions of these women’s lives and activism. These women consistently rejected perceptions of Black women as intellectually inferior and sexually promiscuous; they contested heteronormative social conventions and practices of respectability; they challenged the patriarchal structures of prominent Black organizations; and they sought to empower other women across the African diaspora. Through these efforts, diasporic cultural feminists exposed the moral depredations undergirding imperialism, gender oppression, nuclear armament, and global racial capitalism. Incorporating materials from more than fifteen archives in the United States and the United Kingdom, “Call Me African” locates the expressive arts as repositories of diasporic thought and provides a model for understanding less commonly studied geographic sites across the African diaspora. This dissertation extends the geographical scope of the African diaspora to include the Midwest, positions Black women as progenitors of Black internationalist and Pan-Africanist thought, appreciates the importance of space and place to the formation of diasporic politics, and reinterprets Chicago’s history through diasporic and feminist lenses. This study also raises questions about the ethical implications of historical inquiry by highlighting how constructions of race, gender, and sexuality inform archival representation. Finally, this project provides powerful lessons for understanding the Midwest’s centrality to global Black Lives Matter protests. As trailblazers of their day, Chicago’s Black women internationalists anticipated this moment by daring to imagine that another world was possible.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

History

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Hagedorn, Olivia M

Contributors dc:contributor

• McDuffie, Erik S
• Oberdeck, Kathryn J
• Asaka, Ikuko
• Burton, Antoinette
• Hertzman, Marc A

• African Diaspora
• Black Women
• Gender
• African American Midwest

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Olivia Hagedorn

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/115899

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F115899