San Antonio College Library

The blackface minstrel show occupies a central and contested space in the history of American popular culture. Its imitations and parodies helped shape society's perceptions of African Americans - and of women - and made their mark on national identity, policymaking decisions, and other entertainment forms such as vaudeville, burlesque, the revue, and, eventually, film, radio, and television. Gathered here are rare primary materials - including firsthand...

"Rooted in African society and traditions, black slaves in America created a dynamic culture which lives on and keeps evolving. Present day hip hop and rap music are still shaped by the historical experience of slavery and the will to oppose oppression and racism. This volume is an authoritative introduction to the history of African Americans in U.S. popular culture, examining its development from the early nineteenth century to the present. Kevern...

Lee D. Baker explores what racial categories mean to the American public and how these meanings are reinforced by anthropology, popular culture, and the law. Focusing on the period between two landmark Supreme Court decisions -- Plessy v. Ferguson (the so-called "separate but equal" doctrine established in 1896) and Brown v. Board of Education (the public school desegregation decision of 1954) -- Baker shows how racial categories change over time. Baker...

"As the United States transitioned from a rural nation to an urbanized, industrial giant between the War of 1812 and the early twentieth century, ordinary people struggled over the question of what it meant to be American. As Brian Roberts shows in Blackface Nation, this struggle is especially evident in popular culture and the interplay between two specific strains of music: middle-class folk and blackface minstrelsy. The Hutchinson Family Singers,...

In 'Never One Nation', Linda Frost argues that during the eventful decades surrounding the Civil War, American identity was constructed not only nationally but also locally.

"The black man suffering at the hands of whites, the white woman sexually threatened by the black man. Both images have long been burned into the American conscience through popular entertainment, and today they exert a powerful and disturbing influence on American's understanding of race. So argues Linda Williams in this inquisitive book, where she probes the bitterly divisive racial sentiments aroused by such recent events as O.J. Simpson's criminal...

'Uncle Tom Mania' looks at the novel 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and the songs, plays, sketches, translations and imitations it inspired. In particular it shows how the theatrical mode of blackface minstrelsy, the question of enslavement, and America's emerging cultural identity affected how the novel was read and discussed. "Until Uncle Tom's Cabin, Meer says, little truly common ground existed on which the United States and Britain could debate slavery....