Performances of Aftermath: Race, Labor, and Crisis in the Progressive Era

Abstract

Performances of Aftermath: Race, Labor, and Crisis in the Progressive Era illuminates and theorizes the ways that categories of race, labor, citizenship were defined in a moment when they were most in crisis: the East St. Louis massacre of 1917. I define a mode of cultural production, “performances of aftermath,” through which racial regimes were challenged and reestablished during and in the wake of the East St. Louis massacre (commonly called a “race riot”) of 1917. Though performances of aftermath appear wherever racial regimes are threatened, they are particularly revealing of how the East St. Louis pogrom related to everyday life in the United States. I argue that a wide range of figures, including Ida B. Wells, Josephine Baker, U.S. congressmen, and militiamen in the Illinois National Guard improvised performances of aftermath to not only narrate, but perform—to make real—their own interpretations of the riots, histories of the present, and dreams for the future. “Performances of aftermath” names the strategies by which the pogrom's extreme violence was negotiated with everyday life—incorporated into the everyday in a project of white supremacy, or wrenched out of the everyday by those fighting for redress. The dissertation significantly expands the archive of the 1917 race riots and offers a method for understanding the enduring presence of both historical racial violence and antiracist organizing in contemporary life.