UCLA

My dissertation examines the ways in which formerly enslaved black men constructed their gender identities. According to the cultural logic of the nineteenth century, black men were emasculated subjects who were rendered "boys" by the slave regime. However, I argue that former male slaves parlayed the cultural conditions of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction Eras into performative demonstrations of their manhood. My first chapter is an introduction to the intersectional study of black manhood. By delineating a historiography of the gender concept, I argue that the study of black men as gendered subjects demands scholarly attention. My second chapter centers on black soldiers during the Civil War. By handling, parading, and discharging firearms, I argue that armed black men signified a stark break from the Colonial and antebellum periods. By the war's end, I argue that the demilitarization of the Union Army, and the end of Reconstruction precluded black men from employing firearms as a means of constructing their black manly identity. My third chapter investigates the ways in which slavery and the Civil War impinged upon the bodies of black men during the postwar. By tracing the history of black male bodies, I argue that black men's physicality informed and constrained their postwar gender performances. This third chapter is crucial for not only understanding postwar black manhood; it provides theoretical implications for the study of corporeality and gender construction as well. My fourth chapter situates black manly values and beliefs within the context of the economy. I explore black manly identity in relation to the volatile economic milieu of Reconstruction policies, rising taxes, agricultural fluctuations, and the "Panic of 1873." Rather than pursue a middle-class model of self-made manliness, I argue that a historical ethos of cooperation best describes black men's economic roles. In my fifth and final chapter, I examine black men within the context of their families and communities. Here I explore black manhood relationally to black women and children, as well as to the larger black and white communities. I contend that postbellum freedom offered former male slaves novel opportunities to demonstrate their roles as husbands, fathers, and citizens. Moreover, I conclude that with the end of Reconstruction, the resurgence of white superiority undercut black men's performances as gendered subjects.