for African Americans to work out modern class and gender tensions through sexuality"-- xual discourse in black newspapers highlighted intraracial class and gender tensions that reshaped African Americans' struggles for racial progress and uplift in the early twentieth century. The black press, in this context, served as a public sphere for modern conceptions and discussions about sexuality. Coverage of bathing beauty pageants, divorce trials and sex scandals, interracial romance and male homosexuality coexisted with ideas and representations dedicated to transforming the African American public image into one that could help African American leaders make the case for full citizenship. The simultaneity of sexual images with racial uplift in the black press demonstrated that modern African Americans possessed the capacity to be at once respectable and sexual. To this end, the early twentieth-century black press functioned as more than a simple advocate for social change relative to racial progress. Rather, it embodied core tenets of American modernity and provided a space for African Americans to work out modern class and gender tensions through sexuality"-- Provided by publisher.
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