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Full-Text Articles in History of Gender
"I Am A Arkansas Man:" An Analysis Of African-American Masculinity In Antebellum Arkansas, Tye Boudra-Bland
"I Am A Arkansas Man:" An Analysis Of African-American Masculinity In Antebellum Arkansas, Tye Boudra-Bland
ATU Theses and Dissertations 2021 - Present
This thesis examines the experiences of African-American men in the years leading up to and through the American Civil War in order to understand how they constructed their own sense of manhood. Contemporary slave narratives and abolitionists’ expositions routinely tailored their definitions of manhood to white notions of gender in order to garner white support. Prominent abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass tailored their language of resistance against slavers to cast them as honorable martyrs as opposed to vengeful slaves so as to undermine racist caricatures of brute violence. But black southern men struggled against the confines of their bondage and …