Ebook: I Heard It Through the Grapevine: Rumor in African-American Culture

"Fried chicken will make you sterile; the FBI killed Martin Luther King, Jr.; the 'powers that be' facilitated the crack epidemic, the AIDS epidemic, and the murders of black children in Atlanta: Here, folklore scholar Turner (African-American and African Studies/UC Davis) offers an illuminating examination of why rumors like these persist in the African-American community. Turner explores why these rumors, and not others, took root in black culture across the US; how they got started; and what they represent to even well-educated, well-informed African-Americans. Like ancient myths warning about the powers of nature, she says, rumors that the Ku Klux Klan owns a popular fried-chicken chain and has inserted an ingredient that will sterilize black men remind African-Americans that they live in a white society still hostile to blacks. The author traces the idea that whites are bent on physically destroying blacks back to Africa and the slave trade, during which many Africans believed they were being transported across the ocean in order to be eaten. The brutality of slave life, then of white supremacist oppression, and, today, of incidents like the Rodney King beating stir those early fears, handed down in family stories and fanned by rumor. Why domestic fried chicken and not some vague international conspiracy? Because, says Turner, an individual can take action against danger by boycotting a fried-chicken chain, but a nebulous conspiracy is beyond personal control. The author tracks down and dismisses many rumors dealing with corporations—the KKK does not appear to own fried-chicken chains, fruit-drink manufacturers, or sneaker companies—but she finds CIA and FBI intrigues more difficult to refute. An epilogue introduces the most recent rumors in the black community, including that the contraceptive Norplant is being used as a tool of genocide. Highly repetitious in detail and argument—but, still, an intriguing and thorough analysis. (Five b&w illustrations—not seen)" --Kirkus Reviews

"This book divides into two basic parts. In Chapters 1 and 2, I discuss historical examples of "rumor" discourse and suggest why many blacks have---for good reason---channeled beliefs about race relations into familiar formulae, ones developed as early as the time of the first contact between sub-Saharan Africans and European white. Then in Chapters 3-7 it explores the continuation of these issues in late-twentieth-century African-American rumors and contemporary legends, using examples collected in the field. Because Turner was able to monitor these contemporary legends as they unfolded and played themselves out, rigorous analysis was possible. What follows, then, is an examination of the themes common to these contemporary items and related historical ones, and an explanation for their persistence. Concerns about conspiracy, contamination, cannibalism, and castration---perceived threats to individual black bodies, which are then translated into animosity toward the race as a whole---run through nearly four hundred years of black contemporary legend material and prove remarkable tenacious."

*About the Author*: Patricia A. Turner is Professor of African-American and African Studies at the University of California at Davis and the author of _Ceramic Uncles & Celluloid Mammies: Black Images and Their Influence on Culture_ (1994).