Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940
by Chad Heap
Historical Studies of Urban America
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During Prohibition, "Harlem was the 'in' place to go for music and booze," recalled the African American chanteuse Bricktop. "Every night the limousines pulled up to the corner," and out spilled affluent whites, looking for a good time, great jazz, and the unmatchable thrill of doing something disreputable. That is the indelible public image of slumming, but as Chad Heap reveals in this fascinating history, the reality is that slumming was far more widespread--and important--than such show more nostalgia-tinged recollections would lead us to believe. From its appearance as a "fashionable dissipation" centered on the immigrant and working-class districts of 1880s New York through its spread to Chicago and into the 1930s nightspots frequented by lesbians and gay men, Slumming charts the development of this popular pastime, demonstrating how its moralizing origins were soon outstripped by the artistic, racial, and sexual adventuring that typified Jazz-Age America. Vividly recreating the allure of storied neighborhoods such as Greenwich Village and Bronzeville, with their bohemian tearooms, rent parties, and "black and tan" cabarets, Heap plumbs the complicated mix of curiosity and desire that drew respectable white urbanites to venture into previously off-limits locales. And while he doesn't ignore the role of exploitation and voyeurism in slumming--or the resistance it often provoked--he argues that the relatively uninhibited mingling it promoted across bounds of race and class helped to dramatically recast the racial and sexual landscape of burgeoning U.S. cities. Packed with stories of late-night dance, drink, and sexual exploration--and shot through with a deep understanding of cities and the habits of urban life--Slumming revives an era that is long gone, but whose effects are still felt powerfully today. show lessTags
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- Canonical title
- Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in American Nightlife, 1885-1940
- Important places
- USA; Harlem, New York, New York, USA
- First words
- For most Americans, the notion of "slumming" conjures up images of well-to-do whites' late-night excursions to the cabarets of Prohibition-era Harlem. Like the African American chanteuse Bricktop, they likely recall a time wh... (show all)en "Harlem was the 'in' place to go for music and booze," and "every night the limousines pulled up to the corner," disgorging celebrities and hundreds of other "rich whites...all dolled up in their furs and jewels." The more socially and politically attuned might recollect scenes of interracial camaraderie in which white jazz musicians and aficionados eagerly interacted with beloved black performers and patrons at Small's Paradise or budding civil rights activists attended fundraisers for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACOP) at the popular Lenox Club. -Introduction
In the mid-1880s, affluent white New Yorkers embraced a new form of urban amusement, forming "slumming parties," as they called them, to explore the immigrant and working-class districts of the city's Lower East Side. Copying... (show all) the latest London trend, they would father a small group of male and female friends, hire and police escort and, according to one newspaper account of these early excursions, set out to "see for themselves how the poorer classes live." -Chaper 1, Into the Slums: The Spatial Organization, Cultural Geography, and Regulation of a New Urban Pastime - Canonical DDC/MDS
- 305.8009773
- Canonical LCC
- F128.5
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- Genres
- Nonfiction, Anthropology, Sociology, History, General Nonfiction, Music
- DDC/MDS
- 305.8009773 — Society, government, & culture Social sciences, sociology & anthropology Social group - Age, Gender, Ethnicity Ethnic and national groups standard subdivisions / Ethnic and national groups with ethnic origins from more than one continent, of European descent standard subdivisions Biography And History North America Midwestern U.S.
- LCC
- F128.5 — Local History of the United States, Canada and Latin America United States local history New York
- BISAC
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- (4.50)
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- English
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- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 1
