To ‘Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War

Hunter zeroes in on the political and cultural significance of working-class black dance in Atlanta and the efforts of elites to restrict it. Dance halls on Decatur Street were favored destinations for domestic workers. African-American reformers associated these spaces with “crime, drinking, and illicit sex” (168) that contributed to the “moral decay of the race” (168). The real issue, according to Hunter, was “control over black women’s and men’s bodies” (168). White employers wanted an obedient workforce of black bodies, while black reformers of the middle class “tried to mollify white animosity and racial prejudice […] by insisting that blacks conform to the standards of a chaste, disciplined, servile labor force—on and off the job” (168). Working-class black defiance of these expectations was expressed by dancing to the emergent form of the blues.

Hunter notes that dancing as a way of easing harsh conditions and expressing defiance dates back to the days of slavery and continued with the rise of dance halls in Atlanta in the 1870s. Modern dance halls normalized men and women dancing together in public. By the 1900s, the formal dance style that made this mingling seem more respectable to critics gave way to dancing that was “more inventive, less rigid in style and bodily movement, and encouraged lingering physical contact” (170). Based on the outpouring of criticism and efforts to regulate public dancing by city government and white authorities, Hunter concludes that there was no stopping working-class people from dancing.

There was also a class dimension to the meaning of dance. Middle-class African Americans and black elites tended to do their dancing in more exclusive places and did so to a rhythm that emphasized European rather than African roots. They objected most vigorously to the atmosphere of Decatur Street, which was out of alignment with their commitment to racial uplift and respectability.

Popular (vernacular) black dance:

challenged Euro-American conceptions of proper bodily etiquette. African-American dance emphasized the movement of body parts, often asymmetrically and independent of one another, whereas Euro-American dance demanded rigidity to mitigate its amorous implications (175).

The dance style reflected the tight link between music, dance, and culture. Blues music and the dance it inspired were an important part of an emerging black modernity. This aesthetic valued action over passivity, engagement between the performer/musician and the dancer, and served to “divert and drive away depression and resignation among workers whose everyday lives were filled with adversity” (176). As a hotbed of black musical innovation, Atlanta—and by extension, the working-class dancers who shaped the music—played an important role in defining this blues aesthetic.

When white employers singled out black female domestics for their blues dancing in public spaces, they were trying to assert control over their bodies and labor. The criticism that such dancing was indicative of sexual promiscuity tapped into stereotypes of working-class black women. From working-class women’s perspective, however, dancing represented a refusal to use their bodies for wage work only. Dance was sometimes called “work” or “working it,” emphasizing one’s control over one’s own body. The ideal woman in society was associated with non-work, but a woman who danced was carving out space for herself to engage with her femininity. The body-accentuating, exaggerated silhouettes of the clothing that both men and women wore in photos of dancers from this time emphasize the celebration of bodies that in other parts of culture were denigrated.

Black vernacular dance was a “transgressive cultural form” (183) reflecting the importance of “irreverence, transcendence, social realism, self-empowerment, and collective individualism” (183) in African-American culture of that time and place. Dancers asserted individuality in their movements but maintained a commitment to the group by keeping the rhythm.

Ultimately, when white employers sought to exert control over domestic workers who danced, it was an effort to make what was culturally constructed—“race, class, gender, and sexuality” (185)—look natural. In this case, they sought to make the bodies of laborers reflect an order in which they were reserved for producing wealth for others rather than pleasure, “renewal and recovery” (186) for the self. Black reformers’ efforts to control black bodies reflected a paternalistic belief that they had the right to take the lead in forging a path for all African Americans.