Mammy and Uncle Mose: Black Collectibles and American Sterotyping. by Kenneth W.

Goings;
Ceramic Uncles &Celluloid Mammies: Black Images and Their Influence on Culture. by Patricia
A. Turner
Review by: William L. Van Deburg
The Journal of American History, Vol. 82, No. 4 (Mar., 1996), pp. 1623-1625
Published by: Organization of American Historians
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Book Reviews 1623
tion statutes. Larson's examination of the eu-
genic impulse amid the movement's decline
complements the works by Daniel Kevles,
Leila Zenderland, and Philip Reilly, among
others, who have focused on national trends
and ideologies in the history of eugenics.
Concentration on the Deep South allows
particular attention to issues of race in the
eugenics movement. Racism, as Larson docu-
ments, was a consistent feature of eugenics
policies. Before World War II, African Ameri-
cans received little attention from proponents
of eugenics because most eugenicists assumed
that Blacks would contribute little to the prog-
ress of civilization. Excluded from hospitals
for the mentally ill and from the state training
schools, Blacks seldom became candidates for
sterilization. In states where African Ameri-
cans were admitted to state mental health in-
stitutions, however, African Americans under-
went the procedure with greater frequency.
In South Carolina, for example, in the years
between 1949 and 1960, 102 of the 104 steri-
lizations at the state mental health hospital
were performed on Black women. In the 1970s
reports in the national media of the forced
sterilizations of a twelve-year-old mentally re-
tarded African American girl in Alabama and,
of welfare mothers in South Carolina helped
bring about official repudiation of steriliza-
tion laws.
The exhaustive state-by-state examination
of the legislative process by which eugenics
was translated from ideology into state policy
is a useful contribution to the history of Amer-
ican eugenics and southern progressivism.
However, framing the issues entirely in terms
of state legislatures, physician proponents,
and women's groups who supported segrega-
tion and sterilization of the genetically unfit
tends to diminish the very individuals whose
lives were shaped most profoundly by such
legislation
-
those who underwent surgical
sterilization and their families. The close at-
tention to the medical-legal aspects of the
eugenics movement might have included, for
example, discussion of legal challenges to eu-
genic sterilization laws and of the families who
resisted the efforts of their fellow citizens to
improve American society through surgery.
Nevertheless, Larson's thoughtful analysis of
issues involved when the state intervenes in
the reproductive decisions of its citizens is both
timely and persuasive.
Susan E. Lederer
College of Medicine
Penn State University
Hershey, Pennsylvania
Mammy and Uncle Mose: Black Collectibles
and American Stereotyping. By Kenneth W.
Goings. (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1994. xxvi, 123 pp. Cloth, $35.00, ISBN
0-253-32592-7. Paper, $22.50, ISBN 0-253-
20881-5.)
Ceramic Uncles & Celluloid Mammies: Black
Images and Their Influence on Culture. By
Patricia A. Turner. (New York: Anchor, 1994.
xvi, 238 pp. Paper, $12.95, ISBN 0-385-
46784-2.)
Black-faced collectibles are like that embar-
rassing relative no one mentions out of polite-
ness. Yet these stereotype-laden knickknacks
continue to fascinate as they stare out at us
from antique dealers' curio cabinets. Rastus,
Diaper Dan, Jocko-their very names excite
the imagination even as they cause discomfort.
Vivid reminders of a time when whites as-
sumed that real-life African Americans dif-
fered little from their ceramic and chalkware
counterparts, the novelty figurines, postcards,
and period advertisements are, today, prized
by memorabilia collectors. But what is their
sociocultural meaning? What can they tell us
about the relationship of Blacks to the Ameri-
can mainstream? New studies by Kenneth W.
Goings and Patricia A. Turner address these
and other questions of interest to researchers
who treat material and popular culture arti-
facts as historical "texts."
Goings, a history professor at Florida At-
lantic University, traces the rise, the civil rights
and Black Power era decline, and the eventual
resurrection of such "surrogate African Ameri-
cans" from their origins in the trade cards of
the 1880s to today's plastic cookie-jar repro-
ductions. He does so in only 68 pages of text,
half of which contain historical background
material. Seventy-five black-and-white and
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1624 The Journal of American History March 1996
twenty-nine color plates-most illustrating
items from the author's personal collection -
add to the volume's price but are essential to
the telling of this complex story.
In Goings's conceptualization, caricatured
collectibles carry messages that are far from
benign. Huge lips, rolling eyes, and protrud-
ing posteriors give physical reality to racist
beliefs regarding Black "otherness." At the
same time, the attachment of the collectibles
to a romanticized Old South service ethic pro-
vides white owner-patrons with a therapeutic
sense of both race- and class-based superiority.
Particularly important in times of societal dis-
equilibrium, such images have aided in sec-
tional reconciliation and job market exclusion,
discouraged working-class unity, and falsified
Black identity. In this context, Aunt Jemima
becomes more than a simple advertising
"hook." She represents consumers' deep-
seated desire to "own" a servant - even one
for whom they have only "amused contempt
and pity."
Goings presents his ideas clearly. His family
histories ofJemima, the Cream of Wheat chef,
lawn jockeys, "pickaninnies," and "coons" are
well done. He handles matters of supply and
demand, complicity and blame judiciously.
Here, expanded coverage is warranted as one
longs for additional commentary on figures
such as the Gold Dust Twins and the Darkie
Toothpaste minstrel; on post-depression era
changes in Black portraiture; and on "positive"
memorabilia such as the "Lucky Joe" Louis
banks.
Nevertheless, while flea market devotees
may benefit from Goings's chronicle of the
"motivating historical forces and ideas behind
the creation of the collectibles," historians will
find this scene-setting material commonplace.
At times it is difficult to make connections
between events and stereotypes-a problem
made especially vexing by multiple misspell-
ings of such familiar names as A. Philip Ran-
dolph and Michael Schwerner. Balance also
suffers when some nine hundred words are
devoted to the 1930 NAACP (National Associa-
tion for the Advancement of Colored People)
campaign to defeat Judge John J. Parker's
Supreme Court nomination (the subject of
a 1990 Goings monograph), but Margaret
Mitchell and Gone with the Wind (1939) are
covered in a single paragraph. Finally, some
will feel that discussion of the 1980s collect-
ibles revival is too closely tied to the author's
reading of contemporary politics and provides
only a partial explanation for the fact that the
vast majority of today's forty-five thousand
collectors of Black memorabilia are African
Americans.
Turner's book is concerned with both "con-
temptible collectibles" and evolving Black cin-
ematic imagery. Organized via short bell
hooks-like chapter divisions and written in a
breezy, opinion-rich style, the study by the
folklorist at the University of California-Davis
ranges widely over the pop culture terrain.
Her sources of "insidious iconography" are
varied - from Disney films and episodes of
Miami Vice to Steve Urkel lunchboxes
and race-baiting postcards. Accompanied
by thirty-three illustrations of choice Afro-
Americana, the book is a great read and likely
will reach audiences beyond the academy and
the collector community.
Utilizing various psychological and film
studies conceptualizations to probe subcon-
scious beliefs inscribed in white-created im-
ages of Blacks, Turner does a good job of expli-
cating sexual and gender-related messages
hidden in the classic "Mammy" and "Alligator
Bait" figures. She links "patched pickanin-
nies" such as Buckwheat with the development
of social welfare policy and explains how the
media's juxtaposition of Michael, Reggie, and
Jesse Jackson represents an attempt to confine
a Black political figure to the more traditional
arenas of entertainment and sports. Her obser-
vations on soul music sound tracks to main-
stream coming-of-age movies, on "pet" Black
boys being raised by white benefactors on
Diff'rent Strokes and Webster, and on the
co-optation of Black history and heroism in
Mississippi Burning (1988) and Cry Freedom
(1987) make one wish for further development
of these lines of inquiry-perhaps in a book
devoted entirely to the mass media.
Some readers also will wish that the present
volume had concluded less abruptly-and
with a section summarizing connections be-
tween the material culture and the film studies
elements. Others likely will think the author
too nit-picky in regard to recent television series
that have made an honest effort to showcase
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Book Reviews 1625
well-rounded ethnic characters. Certainly, ad-
ditional insight on film-related topics could be
gained via a more fully developed comparative
perspective - sit-coms versus crime dramas, in-
dependent versus studio productions, Ameri-
can
Graffiti(1973)
versus Cooley High (1975).
Even so, Turner's work resonates with the type
of cutting edge commentary that bodes well
for future studies of Mammy and Uncle Mose.
William L. Van Deburg
University of Wisconsin
Madison, Wisconsin
Balancing Acts: American Thought and Cul-
ture in the 1930s. By Terry A. Cooney. (New
York: Twayne, 1995. xviii, 263 pp. Cloth,
$27.95, ISBN 0-8057-9060-8. Paper, $15.95,
ISBN 0-8057-9069-1.)
Terry A. Cooney argues that the 1930s were
not predominantly an era of radicalism in the
United States: rather than embracing "single-
minded" solutions to the problems posed by
the Great Depression, the significant framers
of both culture and social policy undertook
"balancing acts" reconciling the claims of tra-
dition and change, unity and heterogeneity.
In addition to examining New Deal policy
regarding banking and the treatment of
Native Americans and African Americans,
Cooney discusses a broad array of cultural prac-
tices: industrial design, philosophy, literature
and literary criticism, education, journalism,
radio, advertising, popular culture, documen-
taries. Our 1930s forebears' simultaneous
commitment to diversity and stability in their
efforts to "reexamine national identity in a
time of crisis," Cooney concludes, contains
valuable lessons for our own time.
While deploying the currently popular ter-
minology of diversity and heterogeneity, Bal-
ancing Acts undertakes a rearguard action with
an embedded conservative agenda. First,
Cooney's dismissal of the Left, specifically the
Communists, as marginal to the social strug-
gles and cultural productions of the decade
is based on unsubstantiated charges of dogma-
tism and manipulation rather than on a con-
sideration of the historical record: citing nei-
ther new archival work nor any recent
revisionary work on the 1930s Left (that of
Cary Nelson, Robin Kelley, orJames Murphy,
for example), Cooney remains enmeshed
within Cold War paradigms. This uninterro-
gated anticommunism proves particularly in-
jurious to Cooney's treatment of proletarian
literature, which emerges as simply the failed
product of New Masses critical prescriptions,
and to his analysis of African American strug-
gles against Jim Crow, which, detached from
their crucial grounding in the Left, are erron-
eously attributed to the NAACP (National As-
sociation for the Advancement of Colored
People), the "black cabinet," and various lib-
eral white New Dealers.
Second, Cooney's preoccupation with na-
tional identity is premised on a dubious con-
ception of the nation as body politic. Treating
the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg,
Frank Capra's movies, and mural art as media-
tions of ambivalences within the nation's
"public mood," Cooney reduces social conflict
to psychological "tension." Moreover, he em-
braces a naive epistemology that precludes any
conception of ideology: cultural texts have
nothing to do with the struggle for power and
simply reflect Weltanschauung. Cooney's clear
approval of centrist "balancing acts" distorts
the historical contradictions that made some
such acts necessary strategies for containment
in the depression era. Cooney's insistent yok-
ing of traditionalism with democracy also pro-
duces some anomalous heroes: the elitist New
Critics and New York Intellectuals, for in-
stance, are applauded for "resist[ing] narrow-
ing definitions of group or national culture."
Balancing Acts has the virtue of drawing
diverse materials under a single interdisciplin-
ary rubric. Because that rubric is problematic,
however, the book's central insight is banal.
If one is not persuaded of Cooney's premise
that there is such a thing as "national iden-
tity," and that the significant discursive and
political practices of the 1930s-or indeed of
any time, as he clearly implies-are those that
strive to create such an identity, one is left with
the less contentious, but also less interesting,
notion that culture simply reflects the con-
tradictory attitudes of its moment. Rather
than offering new knowledge about the de-
pression decade, Balancing Acts merely skims
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