Girls’ Verbal Play

This chapter presents African American girls talking about, as Daryl Dance in Honey Hush said: “men, sex, clothes, hair, cooking, children, and then back to men and sex.” These subjects are approached in a dramatic and distinctly Black way. Girls handclap to “I like coffee/I like tea,” play “The boys like the bacon/The girls like the eggs,” and perform “When I was a baby” using distinctive body motions, intricate clapping, and specific utterances of encouragement. The ring play “I was goin’ to the lake” presents a rare case where girls replace gentle mothering with open aggression. These childhood games represent lore learned by carefully watching and listening to each other and older female relatives and friends.

Boys’ Verbal Play

This chapter presents a select, but crucial, set of examples of boys at verbal play. Third grade boys play the “dozens,” fifth and sixth grade boys display joke telling abilities, and a young man of fourteen skillfully coordinates a babysitting group at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church Bingo. “Dozens” are fast and crude; jokes are a test of verbal competence (and are crude). They consist of patterned set pieces exploring sex, marriage, scatology, silly plays on words, i.e. much the same foolishness adults joke about. Gregory, the head of babysitting at St. Joan of Arc Bingo, employed humor and verbal acuity in order to control his young charges. He was adept at both Standard English and Black English vernacular and exhibited poise, a range of language abilities, and leadership qualities. Boys’ verbal play demonstrated the conservative element of schoolyard genres. “Dozens” have been collected since 1939, some of the jokes are re-cycled from the 1950s.

Introduction

This chapter covers the timeline from 1960 when New Orleans integrated its public schools, to 2011, the age of computers and the Internet. Integration had an immediate impact on children and their folklore – African American and white children began to communicate on the playground, sharing chants, jokes, jump rope rhymes, taunts, teases, and stories. Through the next forty-four years, schoolchildren of South Louisiana were able to conserve much traditional schoolyard lore while adapting to tremendous social and material changes and incorporating into play elements from media, computers, smartphones, and the Internet. As time passed African American vernacular became trendy among teenage whites. Black popular music became the music of choice for many worldwide. This is a story about how children, African American and “other” have learned to fit play into their rapidly changing society.

To Infinity and Beyond

Children’s play is adaptive and the electronic age offers an exciting range of new possibilities. Along with radio television, and IPods, children now play on YouTube, Facebook, Smartphones, Xboxes, Video games, and much more. Children blog, create their own videos, and send instant photos of each other to friends. This chapter covers electronic play, computer play, YouTube and video creation play, interest in Anime, and “flash mobs.” Electronic media are now, for many young people, the closest thing to a mentor. Television viewing and YouTube dictate modes of dress, attitude, morals, and behavior. The electronic world has enfolded the young of South Louisiana, like the young worldwide, into its eerie, flickering light.

History and Scope of This Project

This chapter discusses the method and manner used in compiling the folklore of South Louisiana children. Using varied means, recordings, note-taking, video, and questionnaires, schoolyard folklore collections were compiled over forty-four years. Recordings include children telling jokes and stories, playing ring and line games, chanting, singing, and break-dancing. The folklore collected presents children communicating in subtle and sophisticated ways. Over forty years the use of Black English vernacular remained the speech of choice for schoolyard and street. It entered the vocabulary of countless white teenagers who grew up in integrated schools. Play and laughter functioned as survival tools, and Black English vernacular provided a feeling of community and solidarity.

Conclusion

This chapter focuses on children’s folklore as ephemeral art. Children’s schoolyard lore teaches African American children and their friends, rhyme, rhythm, a form of public speaking, formalized game rules, cultural expectations, kinesic aptitude, and self-assurance. Schoolyard folkloric play lasts a short time, from around four to twelve years of age, but its influence can be profound. By age twelve schoolyard verbal play gets pushed off into some quiet corner of the mind, but the effects linger, as children move on to adolescent and mature pursuits equipped with facility in language, poise, a knowledge of game rules, and an awareness of cultural expectations. This book began with integration in 1967 in New Orleans, a process stressful for all, but particularly for African American children. It ends revealing that African American children managed to cling to their own mode of speech and their own play for over forty years. Play and verbal interactions still have the function of enabling children to be schoolyard artists.

The African American Child and the Media

The media had a far-ranging influence on the play of both white and African American South Louisiana children during the period 1967 to 2011. The movies, television, music videos, break dancing, radio, and specific performers like Prince and Michael Jackson electrified school children and gave them new fuel for play. MTV, VH1, and BET all hit the television screen in the early 80s and impacted the young. Black video artists provided African American youth with a sense of “this is us!” and video messages entered play, dance routines, cheerleading, and classroom behavior. Michael Jackson influenced children’s dance and play from 1969 on. His songs inspired all. The media continue to inspire and influence play as television sets proliferate and children watch and imitate even more.