WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, Monde Libertaire - Ideas and struggles: Rebel lives (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 We all know that the USA is not a land of rights and freedoms for the

working classes, especially when they are black and women! Saidiya
Hartman recounts in her book Vies rebelles published by Éditions du
Seuil in 2024, snippets of the existence of these women leaving the
segregated South of the United States in search of a better life. They
reached the cities of the Northeast, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago
between 1890 and 1930. Obviously, their disappointment was as great as
their hopes. A sinister moral order, police violence, rape, child and
adult prostitution, racism, contempt structuring society. Famous people
have reported on it, but Saidiya Hartman focuses on the fate of the
"humble". How can we find traces of their lives? In police sources, the
writings of philanthropists, justice archives but also the notes of WEB
Du Bois (Les Noirs de Philadelphia: une enquête sociale published by La
Découverte in 2019).

Archival work and poetic writing

They are alive, these women vibrant with will, desire, all in their joy
of living free, a form of anarchism. History is alive. That of black
women and men, "absent from the national narrative and yet at the heart
of the great historical dynamics of the country that has become theirs:
the United States." as Audrey Célestine notes in her preface. It was
necessary to fight and mobilize researchers, historians, authors. To
translate this life, Saidiya Hartman relies on this archival work and on
poetic and informed writing. She allows us to see, feel, hear an era and
its aspirations. She opens the doors to the intimate and the reader will
feel "breaths, sighs, sobs." And the story becomes history.

You are in the streets of Harlem, Philadelphia, on the docks of the West
Side. You enter the rooms and kitchenettes rented throughout the Black
Belt, the workhouse of Blackwell's Island, the reformatory for women of
Bedford Hills, the gambling dens, dance halls and chop suey dives. The
photos complete the text and the gaze translates the feelings evoked
previously, in particular that of this child stripped naked and
photographed by a white man. "The terrible beauty of the slums", of the
ghetto, of the sordid streets, the degraded facades. The black and white
of the photos add to the drama of daily life.

The revolt against societal violence

The text reminds us of the rejection of blacks, the fear of whites who
demand the societal confinement of these people. The latter must keep
quiet and when one of them gets a job, "in another life, she would not
be forced to accept the unacceptable, and to pretend to be grateful,
into the bargain." The violence of society is reflected in facts, words,
insults, relationships. And this photo: toilets with three doors with
the words Ladies, Men, Colored.

They revolt, these women. Ida Wells who refused in 1884 to give up her
seat on the train, Esther Brown hated her working conditions. Without
forgetting Mattie, May, these strangers who want to be free to walk in
the street with men, unmarried, refuse to be arrested, assaulted. The
pages follow one another describing these odious facts, even a
full-blown lynching... They prostitute themselves, live alone, join the
dance, theater, and jazz circles of course, sources of openness to the
city. The law on unruly minors allows the "forces of law and order" to
play the arbitrary. Billie Holliday will suffer the consequences. Blacks
in the street, it's a crime of vagrancy... Others will cross paths with
Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons, whom we often talked about in the program Au
fil des pages on Radio libertaire and in the column Des idées et des
luttes on the Monde libertaire website.

And don't forget to observe their looks, like that of the young woman on
the cover of the book. "The crazy idea that drives this book is that
young black women were radical thinkers who tirelessly imagined other
ways of living and never stopped considering the multiple paths that
could lead to a different world."

* Saidiya Hartman
Rebel Lives
Intimate stories of black girls in revolt, queer radicals and dangerous
women
Ed. Seuil, 2024

https://monde-libertaire.fr/?articlen=8123
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