Barber of Natchez Reconsidered: William Johnson and Black Masculinity in the Antebellum South Buckner Timothy R.
Winner of the Jules and Frances Landry AwardHistorians have long considered the diary of William Johnson, a wealthy free Black barber in Natchez, Mississippi, to be among the most significant sources…
Specifikacia Barber of Natchez Reconsidered: William Johnson and Black Masculinity in the Antebellum South Buckner Timothy R.
Winner of the Jules and Frances Landry AwardHistorians have long considered the diary of William Johnson, a wealthy free Black barber in Natchez, Mississippi, to be among the most significant sources on free African Americans living in the antebellum South. Timothy R. Buckner's The Barber of Natchez Reconsidered reexamines Johnson's life using recent scholarship on Black masculinity as an essential lens, demonstrating a complexity to Johnson previously overlooked in academic studies.While Johnson's profession as a barber helped him gain acceptance and respectability, it also required his subservience to the needs of his all-white clientele. Buckner's research counters earlier assumptions that suggested Johnson held himself apart from Natchez's Black population, revealing instead a man balanced between deep connections to the broader African American community