UA professor earns human rights award

Whether you see her at the grocery store or littered across popular culture, "Mammy," the image of the loyal, motherly slave woman, still grips the American imagination.

It is the topic of "Mammy" that caused Micki McElya, assistant professor of American studies, to win a human rights award for her book "Clinging to Mammy: the Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America."

"Clinging to Mammy" was among 10 works awarded the 2007 Myers Center Outstanding Book Awards Advancing Human Rights. The Boston-based Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights recognizes books "that extend our understanding of the root causes of bigotry and the range of options we as humans have in constructing alternative ways to share power," according to a press release.

"It is a great honor to be included among the winners of the Outstanding Book Award," McElya said. "This award is particularly meaningful to me because it recognizes the possibility for scholarship to promote social change and justice."

In her book, McElya explores the power and influence of the seemingly ubiquitous "Mammy" as she appears in films, songs and literature. The book uncovers the character's true extent as a myth and social presence ranging from advertising to the grocery store including even child custody cases, white women's minstrelsy, activism, anti-lynching campaigns and the Civil Rights Movement.

The book follows the image of "Mammy" from 1893 through the 1960s as it transformed individuals and public expectations of blacks, McElya said. It tells the story of Nancy Green, a working black woman in Chicago, how she became the symbol of Aunt Jemima and toured around the country many years and was not even remembered as Nancy Green in her eulogies, she said.

McElya said she also documents the effort by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in the 1920s to erect a national monument "in memory of the faithful colored mammies of the South." The U.S. Senate voted for a land grant for this monument, which was eventually defeated, while also pushing through an anti-lynching campaign.

Entering into the Civil Rights Movement, McElya said she aims the magnifying glass at the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and how the boycotting women fought the image of "Mammy" by standing up to their white employers.

McElya said she became a scholar after realizing the potential of history.

"You can understand from historical documents and secondary narrative sources that they tell a story of the past with the power to change our present," McElya said.

McElya earned her doctorate at New York University. She now researches cultural history and the history of women in the 19th and 20th centuries in America.

The Gustavus Myers Center was established to promote "living out diversity equitably" and encouraging "the increasing range of scholarly and advocacy of publications which help deal equitably with pluralism," according to a press release.

The human rights center was named in honor of Gustavus Myers, historian and author of "History of Bigotry in the United States," according to the press release. More information can be found at www.myerscenter.org.