Work, Play, and Performance in the Southern Tobacco Warehouse

This paper examines tobacco warehouses in the southern United States as sites of both work and play. Using a performative approach study architecture that is rooted folklife methodology, essay claims these quotidian working structures places celebratory potential amid strictures Jim Crow spatial segregation. In particular, it focuses on series massive dances held elaborately decorated during early-to-mid-20th century. During dances, Black celebrants turned restrictive social economic spaces warehouse into radical pleasure. The this are supported by conventional architectural documentation oral testimonies variety workers, musicians, dancers, who made use for often conflicting purposes. Told together, their narratives emphasize spatialized resistance to segregation, importance ephemeral archives individual stories memories vernacular history.