Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1997

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-4

Part 1, Chapters 5-8

Part 2, Chapters 9-12

Part 3, Chapters 13-16

Part 3, Chapters 17-20

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Index of Terms

Afterlife of Slavery

One of Hartman’s core recurring concepts is the “afterlife of slavery,” or the “the reach of the plantation into the ghetto” (29). Hartman uses this phrase to describe the connection between the injustices endured under slavery and the injustices endured centuries later. Jim Crow laws are one example of how Black southerners remained subjugated long after slavery’s end; even those who sought freedom by moving North still encountered marginalization. In Chapter 6, Hartman identifies city slums as “the symptom of a problem 250 years in its evolution” (94), tracing a clear line from slavery in the colonial era to poverty in the 19th and 20th centuries. The afterlife of slavery is also evident in the desires of the Black individuals highlighted in the text, which documents how a history of being property led them to prioritize self-possession over material possession. As Hartman observes, “most black folks […] didn’t adore property […] like white folks did […] what they sought was an escape from servility” (269-70).

The Great Migration

In the early 20th century, large numbers of African Americans migrated from the US South to northern cities like New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. This movement was motivated by the push of increased anti-Black violence in the South and the pull of job opportunities, especially as the demand for industrial workers increased during World War I.

Jim Crow Legislation

Instituted after the Reconstruction period (1877) and continuing until the 1950s, Jim Crow laws implemented racial segregation in the South. These laws are named after a blackface character in a minstrel show.

Tenement House

Tenement houses were constructed to address the increased demand for housing as urban populations swelled in the 19th century. In New York in particular, warehouses and former single-family homes were divided into apartments based in the city’s poorest neighborhoods. These tenements often failed to meet minimal living standards, lacking adequate plumbing, ventilation, lighting, and even windows. In 1867, New York passed its first Tenement House Act to regulate tenement housing, but as Hartman demonstrates, this law and its successors did little to alleviate the dire conditions and often had detrimental consequences. (History.com Editors. “Tenements.” History. 16 Nov. 2021.)

Tenement House Act (1901)

A result of the progressive era (1896-1916), the New York State Tenement House Act was designed to address the unsafe housing conditions of the New York City poor by regulating the construction of tenement houses. Through gradual revisions, the law evolved to increasingly target prostitution and vagrancy. Hartman writes, “While the Act did little to improve the housing of the black poor […], it did consolidate the meaning of prostitution, and suture blackness and criminality, by placing black domestic life under surveillance” (250).