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Nearly 4 million African Methodists belong to two denominations: African Methodist Episcopal and AME Episcopal Zion. The denominations grew out of schisms occurring in white Methodists’ churches in Philadelphia and New York City at the end of the eighteenth century, when black church-goers objected to the church’s segregationist seating practices. Developing into national denominations in the first half of the nineteenth century, the AME and AME Zion churches grew in the wake of the emancipation of slaves into two of the largest denominations among African Americans.
In the second half of the century the AME Church spread to Haiti, Liberia and South Africa.
After the 1920s, with the influx of large numbers of Southern Baptists into Northeastern cities, the denominations’ influence began to decline. While churches generally lost influence to the rising black professionals, African Methodist denominations lost out to both elite churches catering to these professionals and the more charismatic churches from Baptist to Holiness, catering to poorer blacks.
The last thirty years have witnessed a dramatic reversal of fortunes for African Methodist churches. Although still outnumbered by the Baptists, African Methodists have taken on a leadership role in the Congress of National Black Churches (CNBC), an organization that was virtually created through the AME church’s initiative (with the financial support of foundations who, in the 1970s, were looking for a more conservative alternative to Black Power).
This new strength comes, in part, from the denomination’s highly centralized bureaucracies, allowing them to have more influence in the CNBC than the decentralized Baptist denomination. But, more importantly, it derives from the denomination’s theology, which, by marrying together nationalist (African) and European (Methodist) traditions, speaks to the dual political and religious influences of many black suburbanites. Thus, the Ebenezer AME church, formerly located in Washington, DC, has revitalized itself by moving its congregation into a black Virginia suburb.
The renewed prominence of the African Methodist churches is apparent when we take into consideration their vocal support for Clarence Thomas, the fact that the first black community President Clinton visited after his inauguration was an AME Church, and the fact that Christopher Darden, prosecuting attorney in the O.J. Simpson trial, has been a prominent member of the largest AME church in Los Angeles, CA.
African Methodists have not created an alternative theology or liturgy from that of white Methodists that would preclude reunification (though the flexibility of Methodism has allowed for different kinds of hymns, more gospel in nature, to gain widespread acceptance in these churches). Yet they have resisted reintegration with white Methodists throughout their history because they have felt that the United States discriminated against them and so they need their own autonomous churches.
Industry:Culture
Newark grew in the nineteenth century as an industrial city in the shadow of New York City, and, like other cities, was heavily reliant on growing immigrant communities for its labor. Beginning in the 1920s, large industrial firms left the city creating slums like the “Hill District,” considered one of the worst ghettos in America. A brief boom during and after the Second World War encouraged southern black migrants to settle in Newark, but, by the end of the 1950s, with the white flight to the suburbs, the city began to decline rapidly By the mid-1960s the city had a disaffected black majority population, policed by a largely white police force. The black residents were victims of considerable police brutality, which resulted in the 1967 race riot, during which twenty-one African Americans died and 1,600 were injured. During this period, the city was also noted for the black nationalist cultural initiatives of Amiri Baraka. Since the mid-1980s, and the election of Mayor Sharpe James, the city claims to be undergoing a renaissance, with a new museum, performing arts center and bustling regional airport, though it still retains much of its negative reputation.
Industry:Culture
Newspapers have been entwined with American politics, culture and technology.
Evolving from publications devoted to political advocacy and commerce to those emphasizing news and dependent on advertising, newspapers began reaching a mass audience as the United States became an industrial and urban nation in the mid to late nineteenth century. These changes coincided with the invention of the telegraph in 1848 and the rise in literacy allowing for news to be disseminated rapidly and consumed by greater numbers of people, particularly a growing middle class.
By the late nineteenth century, newspapers generally took the form they have today.
The New York Times, owned by Adolph Ochs, contrasted sharply with the New York World, owned by Joseph Pulitzer, and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal.
While the Times fashioned itself as the paper of historical record, focusing on world and national events, the World and the Journal sought to entertain their audiences, with news about crimes, scandals, high society and the city in which their readers lived. Many of these distinctions still hold true, with the New York Daily News and the New York Post, along with other urban tabloids, carrying on the tradition of the now-defunct World and Journal.
Other fixtures of today’s newspapers developed in the 1920s. After the rise of public relations and propaganda, particularly during the First World War, journalists became skeptical of the reality presented to them by the government and other organizations. In response, newspapers became more interpretive, explaining the significance of events and trends to their readers. This coincided with the rise of specialized reporting, in which journalists became knowledgeable in the subject or government agency they were covering, decreasing their dependence on government officials. This period was also marked by the rise of syndicated political columnists, most notably Walter Lippmann, who brought even more subjectivity to newspapers.
These changes paralleled the growth in the federal government, which increased in size and function during the New Deal—a series of federal government programs designed to combat the Depression—in the 1930s. This complexity further encouraged the development of interpretive journalism as reporters sought to simplify the increasingly complex workings of government for their readers.
After the Second World War, two developments significantly altered the role of newspapers. The first was the United States’ transformation into a world power and the onset of the Cold War. Subject to news management and deception by government officials in the 1950s, the trust between journalists and political leaders began to unravel by the 1960s as the Vietnam War intensified. This distrust reached new heights in the early 1970s. In 1972 the New York Times and the Washington Post published the “Pentagon Papers”—a secret bureaucratic history of the Vietnam War—over the objections of President Richard Nixon. In addition, newspapers, particularly the Washington Post, brought to light the Nixon administration’s Water-gate crimes. These events highlighted newspapers’ shift to investigative journalism.
The other major development that altered newspapers’ future was television, which reached most American homes by the late 1950s. In addition to providing entertainment to millions of Americans, television served as an alternative news source. The networks’ evening news programs contributed to a sharp decline in the number of afternoon publications, leaving many cities with only a morning daily newspaper by the 1990s.
However, alternative weekly newspapers, such as the Boston Phoenix, African American newspapers, such as the Chicago Defender, and immigrant newspapers continue to offer city dwellers other sources of print news. More significantly television could provide news instantaneously and with pictures, meaning information in newspapers was often “old.” The public came to trust television journalists more than their newspaper counterparts, a trend that held into the late 1990s.
In response to television’s prominence, newspapers began emphasizing features as well as local—as opposed to national and international—news. Many newspapers, including the New York Times, began developing special sections devoted to topics such as home improvement and science, content similar to that of Time and Newsweek magazines. In addition, because it was more difficult for newspapers to break news on a regular basis, their stories became more analytical, explaining the significance of news events rather than simply reporting them.
The newspaper industry responded in other ways. In 1980 the Gannett Company launched a national newspaper, USA Today, which was intended to appeal to a news audience largely reliant on television. With shorter stories, plentiful graphics and color pages, USA Today shared many characteristics with television news. Even its curbside vending machines resembled television sets. In 1997 it trailed only the Wall Street Journal, a newspaper devoted to business news, in US daily circulation.
In the 1990s other changes affected American newspapers. Newspaper chains, such as Gannett and Knight Ridder, began owning a higher proportion of newspapers throughout the country By 1998 newspaper chains owned 80 percent of US daily newspapers, a 17 percent increase from 1986, marking a dramatic concentration of newspaper ownership.
Yet another change, the rise of the Internet, posed both a threat to and an opportunity for newspapers. By 1998, 20 percent of Americans got their news from the Internet at least once a week, though not necessarily from newspapers’ World Wide Web-sites, potentially reducing newspapers’ overall readership. However, the Internet gave newspapers the opportunity previously afforded only television and radio: to publish breaking news immediately.
Newspapers have been represented in a variety of films throughout the twentieth century. Citizen Kane (1941), directed by Orson Welles, was a thinly veiled movie on the life of William Randolph Hearst. The investigative work of the Washington Post, which helped uncover the Watergate scandal, was documented in the movie All the President’s Men (1976). The Paper, released in 1994, chronicled one day at a fictional New York City tabloid, focusing on the ethical aspects of news gathering.
Industry:Culture
Nicknamed “Star Wars” by its critics, SDI was first presented by President Reagan in 1983 as a system to defend against a nuclear missile attack. Influenced by Edward Teller, a scientist involved in the development of the hydrogen bomb and a model for the warcrazed advisor in Dr Strangelove (1964), Reagan announced the missile system on national television without full discussion with his military advisors. Development of such a defense system was unrealistic, though the multi-billion dollar expenditures that were forthcoming from Congress produced some scientific advances. The goal was impractical because the defense system was in-tended to keep intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) from striking the United States by intercepting them once they left the Earth’s atmosphere. Since the Soviet Union was developing new cruise missiles, which remained in the atmosphere, the system could never be a foolproof defense.
Recent developments have renewed the popularity of SDI: the much exaggerated success of the Patriot Missile during the Gulf War, which suggested that anti-missile systems might work (though striking a nuclear missile within the Earth’s atmosphere might be as disastrous as letting it strike its target); and the growing fear that the end of the Cold War may have made the world’s nuclear arsenals less secure. The fact that a terrorist organization, which might be a possible source of a nuclear incident, would be unlikely to attach a nuclear device to an ICBM has not been factored into the budgetary equation. Hence, it emerged anew as an initiative of the Clinton administration and an issue in the 2000 election.
Industry:Culture
No other city except perhaps New York City, NY, captures and reflects American imagination like Los Angeles. What began as an unpopulated, ecologically rich, mountainous and coastal land straddling numerous tectonic plates, evolved into one of the most densely populated, ethnically diverse and technologically developed cities in the world. In between these two extremes, Los Angeles was a gathering place for several indigenous groups, a Spanish colonial outpost and a northern Mexican frontier. LA remains a Promised Land for immigrants, an Anglo-American mecca and a global dreamscape.
At the heart of Los Angeles lies El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula, founded by the Spaniards in 1781. In 1998, beyond the city (estimated population 3,597,536) and county bearing the name, Los Angeles extends over approximately 33,000 square miles in five counties with over 15 million inhabitants. The original indigenous and Spanish inhabitants, and subsequent Anglo and African American settlers from the eastern United States, have been joined by large numbers of immigrants from every continent seeking a better life. In 1990 major local immigrant groups (populations over 100,000) included Armenians, Chinese, Filipinos, Guatemalans, Japanese, Koreans, Mexicans, Salvadorans and Vietnamese, a diversity that has accelerated since 1960s changes in US immigration law.
Yet, economic and demographic development of Los Angeles has been uneven. Local legislation in the early twentieth century favored race and class divisions, reinforced by social attitudes. The result was a highly segregated city where wealthy white suburbs bordered significantly poorer ethnic neighborhoods. A massive freeway system has fostered both segregation and metropolitan expansion, and added to the unique commuter character of Los Angeles’ growth pattern. Between 1970 and 1990, the population rose 45 percent, while developed land surface area increased at almost ten times this rate. LA styles in architecture (with flowing interiors open to outdoor living), fashion and food reflect this suburban wealth. Sports teams like Anaheim’s Mighty Ducks in hockey and amusements like Disneyland reflect centripetal growth as well (other major LA teams include the Lakers in basketball, Dodgers (moved from Brooklyn) in baseball and football’s Rams). Downtown development, including the Museum of Contemporary Art and surrounding office and residential towers, also has emphasized social and racial divisions.
These same divisions caused or exacerbated a number of major events in the city’s contemporary history In August 1965, after a decade of urbanrenewal programs destroyed African American neighborhoods and reduced already scarce employment opportunities and affordable housing, residents of the Watts community rebelled.
Fourteen thousand National Guard troops were deployed and a state of martial law was declared. Thirty-five died and property damage totaled over 1200 million. The Kerner Commission formed after the riots cited white-on-black racism as a major cause.
Five years after the Watts Rebellion, the peaceful August 29 Chicano moratorium against the Vietnam War turned into another riotous racial incident. In response to a minor theft of soda by teenagers at a local liquor store, Los Angeles police and sheriffs rushed to nearby Laguna Park where 30,000 adults and children had gathered. Among the casualties was Los Angeles Times reporter Rubén Salazar, who was killed by a teargas projectile fired by police into a crowded bar.
On April 29, 1992 what became known broadly as the 1992 Los Angeles riots began.
An acquittal of four white Los Angeles Police Department officers accused of using excessive force on African American motorist Rodney King sparked immediate protests that escalated into days of violence and rebellion. African American protesters were joined by Latinos who vented decades of oppression and frustration on targets in their own communities: local business owners and landlords. Korean immigrants in the affected areas were hit particularly hard. Arrests, deportations and other reprisals were severe but suspiciously slow, allowing the destruction of entire ethnic communities and furthering racial tensions. It was the largest American civil disturbance in the twentieth century with over $1 billion in damage and 13,000 arrests. The riots sparked uprisings in other urban areas nationwide.
Masking these serious socio-economic and political issues, however, are the glamorous and dangerous stereotypes of Los Angeles: Hollywood, mansions, movie stars, the fabulous Getty museum, earthquakes, wildfires and freeway shootings. In fact, whole books deal with the representation of the city especially in film, which has both made Los Angeles a constant setting and transformed it into anywhere in the universe via Hollywood sets. In 1981 former Hollywood studio-system actor, California governor and US President Ronald Reagan said: “Film is forever. It is the motion picture that shows all of us not only how we look and sound but—more important—how we feel.” Los Angeles has taken on a powerful public persona of its own, that of the decadent Hollywood star, extreme and highly visible in everything.
Separating the facts from the myths about Los Angeles’ history is difficult, but therein lies its future. Numerous scholars in the late 1990s dubbed Los Angeles the third-world capital of the United States and suggested that it is a microcosm of both national and global socioeconomic development. Global restructuring has caused a decline in the Los Angeles economy Coupled with people of white, European ancestry becoming the new “minorities” in Los Angeles and around the world, nativist politics have increased.
Policies such as California’s Propositions 187 and 209, restricting immigrant and ethnic rights, are examples of this trend. Los Angeles’ struggle for the future will be not just one of politics and economics, but ultimately one of definition of American identity.
Los Angeles has been highly documented, often by researchers affiliated with major local institutions like the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Southern California or the Glaremont Colleges.
Industry:Culture
Non-governmental and non-profit funds, usually from a single source and administered by trustees for various social and cultural purposes, represent a vital feature of American postwar society Foundations control hundreds of billions of dollars in funds and administer grants of more than $2 billion annually to augment and shape programs in social welfare, universities, museums, health, education and other areas. The origins of these foundations can be found in religious or charitable trusts that have existed worldwide for millennia. They also participated in the early American nation, although few major trusts today antedate those established by turn-of-the-century robber barons.
Their enduring authority can be seen in new moguls of the information age: a $5 billion gift by Bill and Melinda Gates to their foundation in 2000 made it the largest in the US, with assets of over $21 billion. In 1999, there were roughly 50,000 active grant organizations of this type; the largest 10,000 controlled $304 billion (92.3 percent of total assets) and awarded $14.3 billion (90 percent).
In the classic pattern, rich corporations, people or families constitute independent foundations (the dominant structure) as a return to society or to enhance the family and corporate image. Some of the largest private American foundations thus bear names associated with big businesses like Ford, Rockefeller, Gates, Mellon, Packard, Hewlett, Lilly, and Pew. Apart from the Gates Foundation, the other largest foundations by assets include the Lilly Endowment ($11.5 billion), the Ford Foundation ($9.5 billion) and the David and Lucille Packard Foundation ($8.9 billion). Ford has been the largest grantor, at $400 million annually followed by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Lilly; Gates and his wife distributed $16 billion in 1999, again setting new standards. This philanthropic route was also developed in the 1990s by George Soros, Ted Turner, Jim Clark of Netscape and others.
Other types of foundations, including many corporate foundations, rely on continuing donations rather than endowments. Operating foundations focus on special programs, while community foundations may draw from many sources to deal with the issues of a particular locality These non-profit enterprises facilitate the development of social, economic, political, artistic, scientific, medical and other projects. Some foundations are general in scope while others develop special initiatives—the Spencer Foundation in Education, the John and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in peace, the Annenberg foundation in communication/education, etc. Education is a favorite field, directly and through institutions as well as funding academic research. Health, social and international issues are also prominent causes. Yet, foundations are not simply philanthropic. They also move the nation’s cultural and social policies. Foundations, in many ways, react to certain national issues, like global warming, civic journalism, campaign finance reforms and national cultural policies, while they are also forerunners, trying to support studies to provide certain knowledge about issues and shifting national policies. Conservative foundations like the Heritage Foundation, however, promote very different agendas.
Concerns about non-profit independence demand government regulation of boards and policies. Worries range from their relations to corporations and taxes to continuing concerns about the involvement of non-profit groups with political parties.
The US government has also used the independent foundation model to promote research and the arts. The National Science Foundation, for example, was established during the Cold War (1950) to promote intersecting interests of scientific and technological development, science education and defense. It focuses especially on physical sciences, life sciences and engineering. It has also funded social science work, occasionally amid controversies about the implications of government funding like the scandals that highlighted misuse of anthropological data during the Vietnam War.
In 1965, following President Kennedy’s stress on American Arts, Congress created the National Foundation for the Arts and Humanities as another para-foundational independent agency One section, the National Endowment for the Arts, has promoted creation of and access to art in America. Yet it has also proved a catalyst for conservatives attacking its support for controversial performance artists or those like Robert Mapplethorpe who challenged generalized norms of sexuality and religion.
While the NEA has an independent board and head, controls on funding allow censorship and punishment to creep in. Another wing, the National Endowment for the Humanities, funds research and projects in academic arenas and museums as well as outreach programs. It has also been criticized for supposed leftism as well as academic irrelevance of projects, although it remains a major resource for scholars in its summer and long-term grants. The NFAH also includes a foundation devoted to museum services.
Industry:Culture
Non-profit foundation for film established in Washington, DC in 1967 under the aegis of President Lyndon Johnson’s support of the National Endowment for the Arts. Its mission is to preserve and advance film through restoration, cataloguing and training future filmmakers (primarily at its Los Angeles campus). It offers achievement awards, lectures and honorary degrees, publishes the journal American Film and operates a showcase theater at Disneyworld. Despite its success at restoring and cataloguing historical films and raising consciousness about the loss of American film heritage, its goals and accomplishments sometimes have been clouded by controversy.
Industry:Culture
Normative sexual practice in the United States, entailing sexual and other relations between those gendered as male and those gendered as female, usually in dyadic couples.
Reinforced by media images of love and romance, by legal and religious covenants of marriage and by social interactions, this norm is generally only called into question by recognition of alternative practice or calls to avoid implicit prejudices (heterosexist speech, for example) in politically sensitive settings. Given the widespread acceptance of the way “things are,” questions about heterosexuality—whether as a general practice or in reference to a specific figure like a celebrity—also evoke intense responses and defenses.
Industry:Culture
Northern Aboriginal peoples whose homelands stretched from Greenland to Siberia. In 1990, nearly 55,000 lived in Alaska, with others settled in the continental US. Their traditional social and cultural life, although varied within this geographic scope, had adapted to nomadic hunting and fishing in an often inhospitable climate, relying on a strong nuclear family. This has been radically changed by Christian missionaries, government intervention and new economic opportunities generated by tourism and oil.
These changes are often epitomized in the shift from dogsleds to snowmobiles, but they have also entailed cultural and linguistic dilemmas similar to those facing American Indians. In addition, environmental problems have also been concerns for Inuits. Despite these changes, the image of the traditional “Eskimo” remains stereotyped in American mass media, especially advertising.
Industry:Culture
Not only America’s middle and upper classes, but also its working classes have constituted a nation of home-owners for generations. Whether suburban ranch houses, urban row houses or, more recently lofts, condominia and co-ops, homeownership has been the mark of solid citizenship. Moreover, the generally detached home and yard enshrines principles of individuality family, freedom and responsibility In the 1990s, 70 percent of new immigrants acquired a home within twenty years of arrival; mortgages and government support, including tax breaks, reaffirm this centrality for old and new citizens. Apartments, primarily rental, denote the freedom of young adulthood or the post-familial conditions of old age—high density residential hotels, as Paul Groth (1994) notes, imply failure rather than alternative housing. Economic crises are measured, in turn, by downturns in home construction and the problems of first-time buyers.
The ideal of home-ownership was ingrained in American culture in the early Republic.
By the Victorian period, in Philadelphia, PA, for example, many workers acquired their own row houses while more elaborate cottages were built in streetcar and railroad suburbs. After the Second World War, Levittowns and other developments promised new suburban houses to expanding families of the baby boom. While mortgages represent imposing debts (an appropriate mortgage is calculated at four times annual family income), payments on interest are tax deductible, facilitating purchase. For many families since the 1970s, homes have become their primary investment, seemingly gaining in value every year. Losses have been terrifying signs of neighborhood decay (blockbusting, deindustrialization) or wider recession.
The ideal house also codifies basic elements of the American family including individual space, casual living (including outdoor areas) and display Kitchens as well as recreation rooms encourage “family time.” Bedrooms for each family member and even individual bathrooms foster privacy. Gender roles have been emphasized in women’s control of private spaces (kitchens and bedrooms) and display areas, while men are associated especially with dens/recreational rooms, garages/workshops and outdoor areas. Garages, additional rooms, architectural flourishes like cathedral ceilings, elaborate staircases and outdoor facilities also mark differences in status. These may be incorporated into building codes that require multi-acre lots or stylistic conformity Competition fosters continual home improvement (also a title of a popular 1990s sitcom satirizing do-it-yourself efforts), which can draw on accrued equity. Relations with neighbors and local institutions (schools are generally supported by property taxes) sustain the ideological centrality of the house for citizenship.
As housing follows inflation, issues of affordability and homelessness have underscored the resources necessary to sustain the American dream. Mobile homes, rental properties and transient housing offer alternatives without undercutting the centrality of “home” to individual and family identity. Co-housing and specialized retirement or dependent planning have challenged the spatial meanings of home, as have feminist critiques (Wright, Hayden). Yet, the identity of America and home is underscored by mass media that treat both the attainment of home-ownership and the violation of the home as central dramas of American life.
Industry:Culture
