Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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ational fraternal organizations deeply associated with American college life and

imagery. The first, Phi Beta Kappa, was founded in 1776 at William and Mary College in

Virginia; it is now a national academic honor society. Social fraternities began in the

1820s; sororities followed in the 1850s, expanding with women’s educational

opportunities.

African American

fraternities and sororities began in 1906, while Latino

organizations took shape in the 1970s. Over fifty national fraternities and sororities have

4 million members at US

colleges and universities

Fraternities and sororities function as units of socialization and

community

on the

local college (chapter) level. During “rush” week, incoming students are selected and

ledged; initiation rites range from humorous events to brutal hazings involving physical

ain that have drawn negative publicity and university intervention. The selection process

has also led to charges of elitism and discrimination.

Some fraternities and sororities offer university housing; others exist as social and

service organizations charging only operating/membership fees. While the organizations

argue that they are a stabilizing influence for academics and service, critics have viewed

their parties as centers of alcohol and sexual excess. Hence, some colleges have banned

these organizations; nevertheless, in

Ivy League

schools and state university systems,

“Greek life” (from the traditional three Greek letter names of these groups) and the Pan-

Hellenic Council are central to student life and organization.

Similar organizations are associated with professional career choices and academic

honors within these fields, like Tau Beta Pi for engineering (founded 1885). “Greek”

associations have been especially strong in the formation of the African American

middle class;

black fraternities and sororities include roughly 1 million members.

Colorful albeit exaggerated images of fraternity and sorority life—

arties, camaraderie,

competition—abound in teen-oriented media, including

National Lampoon’

Anima

ouse

(1978). The realities of fraternity and sorority life, however, are both more

ordinary and more complex.

Further reading

Ross, L. (2000)

The Divine Nïne,

New York: Kensington.

GARY McDONOGH

Frazier, E.Franklin

b. 1894; d. 1962

African American

sociologist who made important contributions to understanding black

experience. Frazier generally used an

assimilation

model, arguing that Africans had been

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 456

stripped of their culture during the process of enslavement in Africa, the middle passage,

and slavery in the Americas, and tended to see black culture negatively

The Negro

Church

(1962) was becoming more like its white counterpart, while the

Blac

ourgeoisie

(1957) was characterized by people who had “escaped into a world of make-

believe.” Frazier’s ideas were picked up by people like Daniel Patrick

Moynihan,

whose

arguments about the black

family

being a “tangle of pathology” were based on

The

egro Famil

(1939). Though these ideas were largely discredited as “

laming the

victim” in the 1970s, they have found their way back into mainstream political discourse,

especially in arguments about the

underclass

and the need for

welfare reform

ROBERT GREGG

freedom

Freedom, according to the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, can be thought of in a negative and

a positive sense. The former, which can be traced back to the classical liberal philosophy

of Bentham and Mill, is the absence of obstacles and barriers that would prevent

individuals from realizing their various goals and aspirations. Here, promoting liberty is

rimarily a matter of removing, or at least minimizing, the constraints on what a person is

allowed to do. Positive liberty on the other hand, is a broader sense of the term, and arises

from a view of the individual as having a potential that requires active assistance in order

to be realized. Fostering

ositive liberty entails providing individuals with the goods and

services that they would require in order to achieve their aspirations.

Since the Second World War, there has been a fierce ongoing debate about the proper

role of institutions, both public and private, for furthering these different senses o

freedom. In large part the debate has been centered on questions of negative liberty

especially with regard to the following topics: recreational drugs,

abortion, guns,

gambling

and

pornography

. These issues have divided people into those who believe

that the government should remove its restraints with regard to one of these issues and

those who feel that, at least with regard to this particular subject, the government must

impose some restriction on individual behavior in order to promote the public good.

There has been a general trend towards increasing individual liberty with regard to these

topics, but this has not been constant. For example, while many drug laws were

liberalized in the 1970s, there was a backlash against this in the 1980s and 1990s with a

large increase in federal and state penalties for drug-related activities.

The debate about positive liberty has been less prominent, but it regularly crops up.

With regard to this the most significant period is clearly Lyndon

Johnson’s

“Great

Society” (1963–7). This was the largest attempt, since

Roosevelt’s

New Deal, to create

an active role for the state. The goal was to provide its citizens with freedom from

sickness, poverty hunger and ignorance so that they might achieve their greatest potential.

Entries A-Z 457

Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, public broadcasting, food stamps and many other

rograms were either instituted or initiated during this period. Much of the political and

social momentum since then has been against this approach, although the prominence o

the debate over nationalizing

healthcare

in the 1990s demonstrated that the issues are far

from settled.

While the distinction between negative and positive liberty is useful, it can also be

misleading as it may imply a sharp division between the two. However, what began as a

struggle to achieve a greater level of negative freedom may later turn into a battle for

more extensive positive freedom. For example, perhaps the most important struggle for

freedom in the postwar United States was the

civil-rights

crusade. In the 1950s and

1960s, it was initially concerned with removing the institutional barriers that had

restricted minorities from voting and had radically constrained where they could live, eat,

work, or attend school. Eventually many of these obstacles against

African Americans

were eliminated through

Supreme Court

decisions, like

Brown v. Board of Education,

and federal legislation such as the

Civil Rights Act

of 1964 and the Voting Act of 1965.

As these barriers were removed, however, there were others who felt that their removal

alone would not be adequate in promoting genuine freedom for African Americans. They

argued for a more activist role for institutions through such programs as

affirmative

action

and economic opportunity zones in poorer

neighborhoods

RODGER JACKSON

freedom rides

First organized by

CORE

in 1961, integrated groups would travel on Greyhound

buses

from

Washington, DC

down through Alabama and Mississippi, and would refuse to

conform to the segregationist practices in the bus stations regarding washroom facilities.

Such practices had been outlawed for terminal accommodations associated with interstate

travel by the

Supreme Court

in the 1960 decision of

Boynton

Virginia

After one bus was fire bombed in Anniston, and another was attacked in Birmingham,

students fresh from the lunch-counter

sit-ins

joined the rides and insisted that they

continue, against the opposition of

Attorney-General

Robert

Kennedy

. Kennedy agreed

to protect the riders with National Guardsmen, but many were arrested on arrival in

Jackson, Mississippi.

ee also:

segregation

ROBERT GREGG

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 458

Freedom Summer

Led by Bob Moses of

SNCC

through the Council of Federated Projects (COFO), an

umbrella group uniting Mississippi

civil-rights

organizations, the 1964 Freedom Summer

was designed to send white and black students from around the country into the state to

African Americans

. Whites responded by expanding their police forces and

organizing

Ku Klux Klan

and other white supremacist organizations to meet them.

Within a few days of Freedom Summer’s start, three volunteers—two white people

(Andrew Goodman and Micheal Schwerner) and one black person (James Chaney)—

disappeared. The

FBI

discovered their bodies six weeks later buried in an earthen dam.

The disappearance, discovery and revelations about Klan involvement increased media

interest in COFO’s work in Mississippi. This increased tensions between white and black

activists, the latter having witnessed many blacks disappear previously without media

attention. Registration of blacks in the state was limited, although the

Mississippi

Freedom Democratic Party

grew out of the Freedom Summer.

ROBERT GREGG

Freemen

Freemen, also known as Constitutionalists, believe that white Christian males are

sovereign citizens beyond the jurisdiction of governmental authority. Freemen have

established their own renegade judicial system, known as common-law courts,

autonomous townships and their own monetary system, which makes use of fraudulent

financial instruments. They derive their beliefs from segments of the Bible, the Magna

Carta, Articles of Confederation and the US Constitution. Freemen have been implicated

in a variety of offenses ranging from fraud to armed robbery In 1996 a group of Freemen

and their followers were engaged in an eighty-one-day stand-off with the

FBI

in Brussett,

Montana. In June 1996 the Freemen peacefully surrendered to the FBI.

BRIAN LEVIN

free speech

Entries A-Z 459

Bill of Rights; California, University, System; censorship

French Canadians

French in America

Although more than 10 million Americans claim French ancestry (more than Poles or

Native Americans), this pales beside the claims of German and Irish ethnics. Franco-

Americans are also divided by their historical experiences of coming to the US, directly

or through other colonial possessions. Yet, relations of international history culture and

class

tend to separate these immigrants from general American principles of ethnicity.

Perhaps no other European group is so closely identified with its homeland rather than

with an American ethnic identity

France has a strong historical image in the US as a historic co-revolutionary ally from

Lafayette and the American Revolution to shared struggles in the World Wars. The

Statue of Liberty consummate symbol of the US is, after all, a centennial gift from

France. France has also been a model of elegance for

fashion, architecture

and style,

and an image of sensuality from Bernhardt to Bardot. While hordes of American tourists

and expatriates, and mass cultural marketing—movies and

McDonald’s

—may alarm

French cultural critics (see

American images abroad),

the two countries maintain a

close, continuing relationship on many levels which seems to overshadow the immigrant

experience.

Direct migration from France to the US was also early and especially evident in the

formative periods of the American Republic, when France provided leadership and

service in American Catholicism and important commentaries on the American dream

through De Tocqueville and Crevecouer. This migration was swamped by larger waves

from other parts of Europe and later global

immigration

. French migrants (or claims to

“Frenchness”) are often associated with positions of education, art, fashion or other high

cultural realms; this might be exemplified in Jacqueline

Bouvier

Kennedy as a public

citizen of French descent. Between 1941 and 1990, however, French immigration

actually surpassed legal Irish immigration.

French-American citizenship has also been constituted through secondary migrations

and expansion. Early Huguenots settled in South Carolina, for example, were joined by

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 460

French West Indian planters escaping unrest in Hispaniola.

Cajuns

and

Creoles

Louisiana, meanwhile, were incorporated into the United States through acquisition o

this former French colony.

French Canadians, an ancestry claimed by 2–5 million Americans, represent a special

secondary migration in many

New England

areas where families sought industrial

opportunities in periods of underdevelopment in contiguous Quebec. These immigrants

uilt strong settlements around churches and families. Other French Canadians have

created more temporary “colonies” in the US around winter homes and retirement

complexes in

Florida

and the

Sunbelt

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, France has actively promoted a

anFrench identity of language and culture that often is represented through high cultural

and language activities—art shows, university programs,

film festivals

or the Alliance

Francaise. Yet despite this external support—or perhaps because of it—French

Americans lack the cohesive identity one associates with Germans, Irish or Italians. One

interesting test point for this identity in fact, will be seen in the growth of Caribbean

(Haitian) and African Francophones as American ethnics.

ee also:

Caribbean Americans; German Americans; Irish Americans; Italian

Americans; Onassis, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy

Further reading

Louder, D. and Waddell, E. (1983)

French America,

Louisiana State: Baton Rouge.

GARY McDONOGH

Friedan, Betty

b. 1921

In 1963 Betty Friedan published

The Feminine Mystique

. Interviewing hundreds o

American housewives and mothers, Friedan found deep dissatisfaction among many. An

instant bestseller, the book sparked the modern feminist movement, premised on the

notion that women are equal, socially and politically with men. This movement spawned

the

National Organization for Wo men (NOW)

in 1966, with Friedan as its first

resident, which aimed to eliminate barriers to full gender equality Though criticized by

many as appealing only to middle-class white professional women, Friedan’s

Feminine

ystique

and NOW were pivotal challenges to a society premised on gender inequality.

ee also:

feminism; gender and sexuality

SUSAN SCHULTEN

Entries A-Z 461

fried chicken

Staple of the

Southern

Sunday dinner table for both blacks and whites which is served

with corn bread, potatoes, gravy boiled greens with fatback, iced tea and followed by rich

ies. Recipes vary between regions and families, often incorporating differences in

coating (flour, breadcrumbs, batter) and seasoning (cinnamon, red pepper, etc.). While

attacked for unhealthy fat (and dehumanizing processing) and denatured in

fast-food

chains worldwide, fried chicken remains a symbol and delight of the South.

GARY McDONOGH

frisbee

A craze believed by many to have originated when Yale students began to throw upside-

down

pizza

pans borrowed from a New Haven restaurant. The first plastic disks were

developed by Fred Morrison and Warren Fancioni in the late 1940s. Frisbees were then

mass produced in the late 1950s by the company Wham-O. As the craze grew in the

1960s, a new non-contact sport developed called “Ultimate,” in which the objective is to

get the frisbee into the opposing team’s end zone. Ultimate is popular at the club level on

most US college

campuses

ROBERT GREGG

frontier

Throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the American frontier—the

mobile line of settlement—moved from the Eastern Seaboard to the West Coast. In 1890

the US Census Department declared the frontier closed, but, in 1893, historian Frederick

Jackson Turner argued that it continued to shape American identity. Current scholarship

in Western history and American studies complicates Turner’s thesis, arguing that in

addition to being a site of white conquest, the frontier was a space of intercultural contact

etween diverse Native American groups and Europeans, Africans and Asians. The

frontier has functioned powerfully as a contemporary metaphor for social and

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 462

technological innovation, recalled in John F.

Kennedy’s

claims for a “new frontier,” and

as a mediascape in genres like the

western

and

science fiction

STACILEE FORD

Frost, Robert

b. 1874; d. 1963

Poet. Frost’s poems of

New England, nature

, rural life and ordinary people constitute

a beloved legacy for many Americans who memorize lyrics from “Stopping By Woods

on a Snowy Evening” or “Fences” in school or remember him as a patriarchal public

figure. Critics and fellow poets have underscored the complexity of these apparently

effortless lines and their content, including glimpses of underlying terror which those

quoting his familiar lyricism often overlook.

GARY McDONOGH

Fulbright, James William

b. 1905; d. 1995

Educator and statesman, Fulbright was president of the University of Arkansas before

being elected to the Senate in 1945. He soon established the government-funded

international program for the exchange of students and professors that bears his name.

For three decades, Fulbright, who headed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was

also a beacon for globalism and critical thinking in foreign affairs. In the 1950s, he

opposed

McCarthyism

and, in the 1960s, also came to oppose the war in Vietnam.

Among his thoughtprovoking writings are

The Arrogance of Power

(1967) and

The

entagon Propaganda Machine

(1970).

GARY McDONOGH

Fuller, Richard Buckminster

b. 1885; d. 1983

Inventor, engineer and mathematician whose optimism about technology and growth

Entries A-Z 463

made him a scientific guru of the postwar era. Nimble in combining structures and

dynamics (and labeling his projects with catchy names like his Dymaxion corporation),

Fuller as inventor was best known for the geodesic dome (patented 1947), which

distributes stress artfully and efficiently and which was used in the striking US Pavilion

for Montreal’s Expo ’67. He also worked with general systems theory and the

applications of science and technology to world peace.

Operating Manual for Spaceship

arth

(1969) provides a strong sense of the relations of science, philosophy and global

vision in his work.

GARY McDONOGH

fusion

The history of this multiplex musical category tracks an advent in American music, as

well as the entanglements of a global

mass media

with local musics. Fusion as an

experiment in musical aesthetics and as a marketable category of music begins as an era

in the history of

jazz

. In the late 1960s, jazz musicians, pioneered by Miles

Davis

(for

example his recording “Bitches Brew,” 1970), combined “traditional”

azz musical forms

with those from

rock

music to form jazz fusion. Rock guitarist Jimi

Hendrix

and the

R&B

funk-rock of Sly and the Family Stone had particular influence on jazz music.

Throughout the 1970s, many jazz musicians continued to experiment with combinations

of acoustic and electric instrumentations, or left behind the acoustic sound altogether for

an amplified, electronic one. Rock rhythms and percussion styles replaced the bebop,

swing styles common to jazz music and were used more frequently as compositional

features. Rock musicians as well embraced fusion as a small number of rock bands

featured jazz ensemble arrangements with solo improvisation.

Fusion of the 1960s and 1970s heralded not only a blurring of the boundaries between

rock and jazz music, but also the emergence of a global sound. Jazz music had a history

of incorporating other musical styles, mostly from Africa and from Latin American

countries, and jazz fusion continued with this inclusive worldview. Fusion in the 1980s

and 1990s, however, represented the blending together of sounds, instruments, rhythms

and composition styles into a “polyphonic” genre of music referred to as world music,

world beat, global fusion, world fusion, or just fusion music that loosely encompasses

recordings of local musics from around the world to create the polyphonic forms

produced for consumption on a world market. The “fusion” of local traditional musics

with “Western” music is said to celebrate the recognition of other musical forms and

instrumentations, while at the same time symbolizing musical expression in a global

world. Paul

Simon’s

Grammy-winning “Graceland” (1986) recording, a blend o

American pop music with the music of black South African musicians, is held up as an

exemplar of contemporary fusion (although not without controversy). In the late 1990s

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 464

and early twenty-first century fusion represents what sometimes appears to be a hodge-

podge of musical productions that can include the coming together of so-called

“traditional” musics from Africa, Asia, South America, and so forth with what has been

referred to as a “universal pop aesthetic,” that is “Western” (Taylor, 1997). Fusion can

also include “new and old world music,” “ancient future world fusion” and “folk fusion

music” that can bring together the music of the Andes with Appalachian music, for

example.

While fusion grew from experimentation in musical aesthetics, it also was the product

of changing musical tastes and a record business increasingly oriented towards a world

market. Fusion’s “hybridity” marks a fluidity of economic and aesthetic relationships

etween the music traditions of local worlds and the modern, often Western, tastes of a

global culture. Although some would argue that hybridity has always been a feature o

music and fusion should only be applied to the American jazz and rock fusion music.