Caroline Bond Day

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Caroline Stewart Bond Day (born November 18, 1889 in Montgomery , Alabama as Caroline Fagan Stewart, † May 5, 1948 in Durham , North Carolina ) was an American anthropologist and writer . She researched African American families with black and white ancestors in relation to their social circumstances. While anthropological studies of this time usually served to justify racial discrimination , Caroline Bond Day tried to dispel prejudice with her investigation. Since she followed a now outdated conception of genetics and worked within a race- theoretical approach shaped by white anthropologists, her research results are now largely out of date. Irrespective of this, she is considered a pioneer of black women scientists in a subject dominated by white, male scientists.

Life

Caroline's parents were Georgia Fagan (or Fagain) Stewart and Moses Stewart. Her mother was an elementary school teacher in Tuskegee , Alabama , which is where Caroline attended school. After Moses Stewart's death, Caroline's mother married John Bond, and Caroline changed her last name to Stewart Bond. Georgia and John Bond had two more children, Wenonah and John. Wenonah Bond became a sociologist; her granddaughter is the poet Elizabeth Alexander .

Caroline Bond Day graduated from school in 1908 and studied at the Tuskegee Institute , Atlanta University, and Radcliffe College . She then worked at Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College , Paul Quinn College, and for the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) and taught English at Prairie View State College in Texas . There she met Aaron Day Jr. know. They married in 1920. In the mid-1920s, Caroline Bond Day returned to Atlanta University, where she did both research and teaching. In the 1930s she also taught at Howard University . In 1939 she moved to Durham with her husband , who worked for an insurance company there. Despite wanting to start a PhD project , Caroline Bond Day did not publish any further academic papers after moving to Durham, possibly because of her chronic heart condition. She began teaching courses at North Carolina College for Negroes (now part of North Carolina Central University ), but gave up this work after a short time. Caroline Bond Day died on May 5, 1948 at the age of 59. The Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology at Harvard University keeps her academic papers .

Scientific work

Photos of Wenonah Bond from Caroline Bond Day's academic papers

Caroline Bond Day first studied English at the Tuskegee Institute , then at Atlanta University , where she received her bachelor's degree in 1912 . During this time she was particularly interested in the theater and starred in several Shakespeare performances. At Atlanta University she met WEB Du Bois , who was a professor there and presumably influenced Caroline Bond Day's interest in biological and sociological studies of the black population in the United States. After completing her bachelor's degree, she wanted to begin postgraduate studies at Radcliffe College , but her previous courses were not recognized there. That is why she began a second bachelor's degree, which she completed in 1919. She was one of the first African American women to graduate in anthropology. During this time, under the guidance of Professor Earnest Hooton , she began collecting genealogical data on black families in the United States. In the mid-1920s, Caroline Bond Day began teaching English, drama, and anthropology at Atlanta University, and continued her family history studies. She also included her own family and that of her husband in the study, as did the family of WEB Du Bois. In 1930 she received her Masters in Anthropology from Radcliffe College with the work Negro-White Families in the United States , which she published two years later.

She still worked for Earnest Hooton at the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology. Hooton relied on Day's help to attract members of the African American community to his studies. However, Hooton was of the opinion that a black scientist could not approach the subject with an open mind, and insisted on a review of her results by supposedly "neutral" white scientists.

Caroline Bond Day's research interest was in the black middle class of American cities. She explored family branches that arose from the union of a “pure” black person (as Day himself called it) and a “pure” white person. For her study, she created family trees of 346 families, consisting of 2,537 people, with black and white ancestors. She took anthropometric measurements of family members and tried to develop a typology on this basis. With this classification of individuals according to the alleged composition of their blood, Caroline Bond Day worked within the then common classification system of anthropology. Unlike other approaches that tried with the racial theory that racial segregation but to justify Caroline Bond Day wanted to refute "mixed" in their studies prejudices against people from such families. In doing so, she looked at the connections between genetic makeup and social living conditions. Among other things, it recorded the education, occupations, income, religion and interests of the people examined. In her analysis, she pointed out that according to these criteria, whites and blacks from the same social class have more similarities than differences. She attributed cultural differences to the different possibilities in a racist society rather than to biological differences.

Caroline Bond Day's studies are based on concepts of genetics that have been rejected today , including the notion that heredity takes place through the blood and that the genetic makeup of white people is dominant . For this reason, their research results are now largely out of date and were not taken into account in later research. Still, her study was innovative in its approach to refuting popular beliefs about the alleged disadvantages of genetic interbreeding. Caroline Bond Day's work also paved the way for future generations of black female anthropologists.

Writer

Caroline Bond Day wrote essays and short stories as well as the children's story A Fairy Story . In her article What Shall We Play , she discussed the roles theater offered to African-American actors and actresses. Her compilation of current plays, which offered an alternative to the traditional roles of English-language theater, she published in 1925 in the magazine The Crisis of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People . With her short story The Pink Hat , Caroline Bond Day won third prize in a competition organized by Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life in 1926 . In this story, the protagonist, who, like the author, is a black woman with black and white ancestors, begins wearing a pink hat. This suddenly gives her access to areas of society that she was previously denied. Finally she thinks back to her family. In the short story, autobiographical traits are seen.

Fonts (selection)

Specialist literature

  • A Study of Some Negro-White Families in the United States (1932).
  • Race crossing in the United States

Fiction

  • A fairy story
  • The Pink Hat , reprinted in Lorraine E. Roses, Ruth Elizabeth Randolph (Eds.): Harlem's Glory. Black Women Writing, 1900-1950. Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1997, ISBN 978-0-674-37269-6 , pp. 79-82.

literature

  • David L. Browman, Stephen Williams: Anthropology at Harvard. A Biographical History, 1790-1940. Peabody Museum Press, Cambridge 2013, ISBN 978-0-87365-913-0 , pp. 356-357.
  • Barbara A. Burg, Richard Newman, Elizabeth E Sandager: Guide to African American and African Primary Sources at Harvard University. Oryx Press, Phoenix 2000, ISBN 978-1-57356-339-0 , p. 44.
  • Anastasia Carol Curwood: Caroline Bond Day (1889-1948). A Black Woman Outsider Within Physical Anthropology. In: Transforming Anthropology. Volume 20, No. 1, 2012, pp. 79-89.
  • Lorraine E. Roses, Ruth Elizabeth Randolph (Eds.): Harlem's Glory. Black Women Writing, 1900-1950. Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1997, ISBN 978-0-674-37269-6 , p. 504.
  • Rubert B. Ross, Amelia Marie Adams, Lynne Mallory Williams: Caroline Bond Day. Pioneer Black Physical Anthropologist. In: Ira E. Harrison, Faye V. Harrison (Eds.): African-American Pioneers in Anthropology. University of Illinois Press, Urbana 1998, ISBN 978-0-252-06736-5 , pp. 37-50.
  • Werner Sollors , Caldwell Titcomb, Thomas A. Underwood: Blacks at Harvard. A Documentary History of African-American Experience at Harvard and Radcliffe. New York University Press, New York 1993, ISBN 978-0-8147-7973-6 , pp. 168-176.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Rubert B. Ross, Amelia Marie Adams, Lynne Mallory Williams: Caroline Bond Day. Pioneer Black Physical Anthropologist. In: Ira E. Harrison, Faye V. Harrison (Eds.): African-American Pioneers in Anthropology. University of Illinois Press, Urbana 1998, ISBN 978-0-252-06736-5 , pp. 37-50.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Werner Sollors, Caldwell Titcomb, Thomas A. Underwood: Blacks at Harvard. A Documentary History of African-American Experience at Harvard and Radcliffe. New York University Press, New York 1993, ISBN 978-0-8147-7973-6 , pp. 168-176.
  3. ↑ Elizabeth Alexander: It's Time to Break Our "Comfortable Silence" on Race. Retrieved July 27, 2020 (American English).
  4. ↑ a b c Lorraine E. Roses, Ruth Elizabeth Randolph (Ed.): Harlem's Glory. Black Women Writing, 1900-1950. Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1997, ISBN 978-0-674-37269-6 , p. 504.
  5. ^ Caroline Bond Day on the pages of the Association for Black Anthropologists
  6. ↑ a b c Allyson Vanessa Hobbs: A Chosen Exile. A History of Racial Passing in American Life. Harvard University Press 2014, ISBN 978-0-674-65992-6 , pp. 143-148.
  7. ↑ Allyson Vanessa Hobbs: A Chosen Exile. A History of Racial Passing in American Life. Harvard University Press 2014, ISBN 978-0-674-65992-6 , p. 124.
personal data
SURNAME Bond Day, Caroline
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Day, Caroline; Fagan Stewart, Caroline (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American anthropologist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH November 18, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Montgomery , Alabama
DATE OF DEATH May 5, 1948
Place of death Durham , North Carolina