“‘Won’t You Celebrate with Me?:’ The Black Family Through the Black Military Experience”

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

In keeping with the conference theme, this panel proposes to center the Black family – as inflected by Black military service – as a unique medium through which to understand the intersection of Blackness, citizenship, and identity in the past and present. The papers, described more fully below, will examine the representation of Black families made by Black soldiers, as well as the ways in which the military experience shaped those families and how those families shaped the military experience.

Paper #1 Edward Valetin: Dr. Valentin kicks off the panel with an exploration of the lives of post-Civil War Black soldiers working along America’s southwest border. Their actions - on occasion considered insubordinate by their superior officers - demonstrated the fluidity of geographic and racial boundaries. Thus, the self-determination of these families served as a bulwark against the racial fascism of the Nineteenth century.

Paper #2 Albert Thompson: Prof. Thompson’s paper will interrogate the ways in which the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 impacted the lives of Black families. Setting aside critiques of the ways that White Supremacy limited the provision of benefits to Black soldiers, Thompson will focus on the agency demonstrated by Black families as they sought to access these benefits to shape their social, political, and economic futures.

Paper #3 Selika Ducksworth-Lawton: Dr. Ducksworth-Lawton’s paper takes the panel into the latter half of the twentieth century as she examines the Black veteran-led Deacons of Defense. By inverting the subject of “hunting” in their quest for voting rights and racial integration, the Deacons expressed clear ideas about justice and gender. Accordingly, the Black family was central to the fight against the corruption of State actors and racist vigilante groups.

Sub Unit

• 106th Annual Meeting and Conference of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History

Chair

• Le'Trice D. Donaldson, Texas A&M University- Corpus Christi

Individual Presentations

• Black Veterans, Interracial Families, and Claims-Making in the Southwest Borderlands - Edward Valentin

• The African American Family and the Servicemen's Readjustment Act - Albert Thompson, Northern Virginia Community College

• Hunter and Hunted: The Deacons for Defense and Justice, Masculinity, Femininity, and Leadership in the Summer of 1965 - SELIKA M DUCKSWORTH-LAWTON, UW-Eau Claire

Commentator

• George White, Jr., City University of New York—York College

Zoom Meeting Host

• Le'Trice D. Donaldson, Texas A&M University- Corpus Christi