Public/Private Consumption in the Performance of Respectability and Gentility at 71 Joy Street, Boston, MA

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Deepening Archaeology's Engagement with Black Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

71 Joy Street was home to several free Black families in the mid–late nineteenth century followed by working-class white tenants into the early twentieth century. Evidence of their daily lives and identity performances was discovered in a privy sealed after approximately 75 years of continuous use. The objects speak to the public and private dimensions of urban life in Beacon Hill: the heart of Boston’s free Black community until the turn of the twentieth century. The ability of the residents to deploy consumer goods in performances of gender, class, and racial identities is visible in patterns observed in the artifact assemblage. Strategies for maintaining a sanitary environment and healthy lifestyle, encoded in prevailing scientific theories of disease and contemporary etiquette manuals, are also instrumental in the performance of respectability and refined gentility. Such performances were instrumental in the community-wide struggle for equality led by resident activists, including individuals associated with 71 Joy Street. Black feminist intersectionality theory on the relationships between racism and sexism explains why Black women were considered primarily responsible for materializing their community’s respectability through their dress and maintaining clean well-ordered homes, including their yards, although etiquette manuals also identified and promoted men’s respectable dress and behavior.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Deepening Archaeology's Engagement with Black Studies   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36655.0