My work on Daisy Lampkin has preempted a previous project, a cultural history of American empire. But I stir the pot on that project occasionally. Here is a fun little rumination on US culture, empire, and the myth of the frontier that derives from it. 

Hollywood Westerns, one of the great wellsprings of American culture, are a particularly rich source of imperial—in this case, frontier—mythology. Take, for example, the 1939 Warner Bros. film, The Oklahoma Kid. That film starred Warner Bros.’ most bankable star, James Cagney, in the titular role as “Jim Kincaid.” Kincaid’s rival, the sinister “Whip McCord,” featured an up-and-coming Humphrey Bogart, still a few years shy of shaking the black-hat roles in which the studio had typecast him. Miscasting two quintessentially New York actors in a potboiling genre piece makes the picture a literal incarnation of Hollywood’s studio system.
 
The plot is set against the backdrop of the Oklahoma land rush of the 1890s, the land grab in which those who rushed the claims timeline to grab a piece of land before it was allowed came to be called “Sooners.” The land grab will soon bring Kincaid and McCord into conflict. Cagney's Kincaid—The Oklahoma Kid—as events make clear is an outlaw. Within the frontier logic of the film, however, he is a much different kind of outlaw than McCord.

I wouldn’t typically highlight the books of one publisher with whom I work, but over time it’s become clear to me that the books published by Savas Beatie really stand out. Publishing is a very expensive, low profit, and highly pressurized industry these days. I am privileged to work with any number of very high-quality publishers, including leading university presses such as the University of Virginia Press and Princeton University Press. No one puts out a better book at the price point than Savas Beatie does. (There are economic and intellectual reasons why academic presses price their books the way they do, but that’s a discussion for another day.)

Daisy Lampkin’s legacy runs deep throughout Pittsburgh’s civil rights history. One long-term Pittsburgh-ally of Daisy Lampkin was the legendary Homer S. Brown (right). Brown was the founder and first president of the Pittsburgh-branch of the NAACP, an organization with which Lampkin was deeply connected. Brown served with Lampkin on any number of boards and committees and shared daises with her for decades, galvanizing black Pittsburgh’s political power and building community institutions.

In the mid-1930s Brown was elected to the PA state legislature to represent the Hill district, carving out a reputation as a champion of fair housing and employment legislation. Since at least the 1920s, Lampkin and her political associates determined to exercise their newly won electoral muscle by demanding greater black patronage in exchange for their political support, a demand that went largely unheeded until Brown became Pittsburgh’s first black judge in 1950.

Brown’s son, Byrd, followed in his father’s footsteps leading Pittsburgh’s NAACP chapter himself, organizing and mobilizing for peace and civil rights, and running for mayor of Pittsburgh in 1989.  

​More photos after the jump: