Epilogue: Forbidden Dreams
“If you were a typical American living in the early part of the 19th century, you had to plant,
tend, harvest and process your own food. You had to make your own clothing, and all of it had
to be strictly utilitarian: no decorations, unnecessary colours, or ‘style’. You worked from before
dawn until late at night. Your only source of entertainment was books, and most that were
available were moral parables. You spent your entire life within a fifty-mile radius of your home.
You believed that leisure was bad. There was no weekend.”
This quote is from Thaddeus Russell’s “A Renegade History of The United States” (2010). His
subtitle is “How Drunks, Delinquents and Other Outcasts Made America”. He argues that
“renegades”, disreputable and marginalised people, helped to shape freedoms we enjoy today.
Mainstream life, he argues, during most of American history was by our standards grim. The
moral guardians of American, from the Founding Fathers onwards, believed that for the
Republic to survive they had to inculcate certain “respectable” traits among the people: hard
work, thrift, abstinence, sobriety, modesty and restraint. “Puritan asceticism found a new voice
in the guise of republican simplicity.” But some groups of “renegade” Americans did not buy
into these restraints and in so doing promoted “new births” of freedoms that today we take for
granted. Mainstream America rejected and tried hard to suppress them, by campaigns of
disapproval, incarceration, and violence. Yet we owe these renegades, who included slaves and
blacks, saloon and brothel keepers, whores and working girls, immigrants and gangsters, a debt
of gratitude. Of what forbidden freedoms did they dream?
Slavery was America’s “original sin”, but slaves developed their own alternative culture of wild,
emotive music, partying and dancing from which sprang 19th century black minstrel songs and
ragtime, and 20th century jazz, blues and hip-hop. The saloons and brothels which proliferated
from the 18th century were disreputable but were also the first racially integrated public spaces
in America (“black and tan brothels”). Prostitution was rife in the cities of 18th and 19th century
American, with all the expected abuses. But madams became the first women to own property
and wealth in their own right, while whores were the first women to wear in public what
today’s women take for granted: red dresses, lipstick, cosmetics and perfume.
Young working men and women at the dawn of the 20th century, in contrast to the quote
above, discovered fun. They rejected the mainstream “puritanism and work” ethic, preferring
to squander their modest wages on movie palaces, dance-halls, and enjoy weekends at the
beaches of Long Island and Brooklyn, and pleasure parks like Coney Island (or “Sodom by the
Sea” the moral guardians called it). And above all, for the women, shopping (much frowned
upon) especially for fancy clothes to dress above their stations: “freakish” hats with plumes, silk
petticoats, elaborate lingerie waists, picture turbans, di’mont pendants, wide lace collars, gauze
stockings, pumps with the highest of heels, “fantastic pinchbeck imitations of the costly
costumes of women of large incomes”. Cigarettes, hugging and kissing, staying out late and
“smutty talk” were also indulged in.
Historian John Kasson says, “Coney Island declared a moral holiday for all who entered its gates.
Against the values of thrift, sobriety, industry and ambition it encouraged extravagance, gaiety,
abandonment, revelry.” One ride, the Barrel of Love, was a revolving drum which tumbled
riders on top of one another. Working class women drove this “revolution in desire”. American
capitalism could not afford to ignore its renegade consumers.
Criminals were another renegade group who promoted “new births of freedom”. Jewish
mobsters around 1900 ran vaudeville and burlesque theatres, nickelodeons showing dubious
films, and in the 20th century founded both Hollywood and Las Vegas. Italian gangsters
including Mafiosa ran speakeasies during the 1920’s Prohibition era (a major failure for the
moral guardians) where they provided illicit drink and illicit music to go with it, jazz. Louis
Armstrong’s first patron was Henry Matrange, the most powerful crime boss in early 20 th
century America. Some 18th century pirates pioneered “gay liberation” aboard their ships and in
the American ports they frequented. 20th century mobsters also ran gay clubs including the
famous Stonewall Inn; the famous raid on Stonewall in 1969 by federal agents is a key moment
in gay history, but the real target was not its homosexual clients but the mobsters who ran it.
They later funded the first “gay pride” marches.
Renegades also helped to win the Cold War. The Soviet authorities struggled to keep renegade
cultural influences from infecting its young people. They specifically targeted saxophones, wah
wah trumpet mutes, plucking of bass strings, reduced blues notes, over-rhythmic drumming,
zoot suits, ducktail, bouffant and rockability hairdos, gum (Russians chewed paraffin oil as a
substitute), Tango Boys, striped socks, tight and half-long pants, jeans, music films, bootleg
records, reel-to-reel tape recorders, swing, boogie-woogie, bebop, rock and roll, R and B, disco,
hip-hop and comic books. They failed; rock and roll became “the sound track of glasnost.”
Renegade groups also went through phases of seeking mainstream respectability. 19th century
slavery abolitionists and 20th century civil rights leaders wanted blacks to adopt white sobriety
and hard work. 19th century Irish-American community leaders organised politically, became
mayors, and appointed Irish police officers who became an American archetype. Earlier 20th
century Italian and Jewish community leaders also sought respectability, Frank Sinatra and Paul
Simon reflecting their success, as did mid-20th century Hollywood with the Hay Code and 1950’s
campaigners for gay liberation, and later for equal marriage.
Without these renegades we would not have many freedoms and pleasures we take for granted
and value. Modern popular music, fashion, leisure, weekends, and racial, gender and sexual
equality, would hardly exist. This is not to justify or celebrate slavery, prostitution or
delinquency, nor to glorify the renegades; most were selfish, amoral and irresponsible. But it is
to acknowledge their contribution, however unintended, to modern freedom. Jefferson said, “A
little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in
the physical. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government." However our
renegades rebelled in more fundamental ways, not politically, but in the very texture of how we
live. Their “forbidden Dreams” have not merely entered the modern American mainstream,
they define it. Let’s drink to that.