"I AM A MAN" : latent doubt, public protest and the anxious construction of black American manhood.

The author surveys historical and contemporary perspectives on and affirmations of black manhood and masculinity in the US. Wallace examines antebellum assertions of black manhood in the writings of David Walker and Frederick Douglass, and notes how the Civil War--in which black enlistment and military service served to establish black manhood--in the cultural history of African American manhood, despite the disempowering and lynching violence that was to follow. The growth of black nationalism with Marcus Garvey and the later Black Power movement of the 1960s is discussed in terms of gender and affirnations of masculinity, and black feminist critiques of the emphasis on black masculine authority are explored. Wallace highlights the impact of gay and lesbian studies and queer theory to limn the discrete contours of, black middle-class, working-class, diasporic, Southern, Caribbean, nineteenth-century, twentieth-century, queer, even female, masculinities, each one simultaneously the same and discretely different from the other. The author notes the flowering of black masculinity studies in the 1990s and reviews the scholarly literature. Following the essay, a bibliography of recommended reading, a chronology of events from 1770 to 2004, and a glossary are presented.