The Double Bind of Black Manhood : The Language of Masculinity in African American Writings, 1800-1900

This dissertation describes the contested vision of African American masculinity in the work of 19th century abolitionists, African American activists, and Southern slaveholders. My project looks at the social and political battle over the meaning of African American masculinity from 1800 until 1900 through works of literature written by such authors as David Walker, William Whipper, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Chesnutt and Albion Turgée. In these texts, African American men participated in both self-fashioning and the performance of various visions of manhood while contending with the conditions created by both pro-slavery depictions of black inhumanity and abolitionist renderings of black victimhood.