Description: In On Racial Icons, Nicole R. Fleetwood focuses a sustained look on photography in documenting black public life, exploring the ways in which iconic images function as celebrations of national and racial progress at times or as a gauge of collective racial wounds in moments of crisis.
Review Quotes: An innovative and dynamic study of blackness, iconicity, and visual culture. It is the conceptual arc of the book -an accruing examination of the meanings of the racial icon--that makes this study so effective. Fleetwood's focus of visual culture as public culture makes On Racial Icons an extraordinary resource for the interdisciplinary teaching and study of African American studies, American studies, visual culture studies, and media studies.-- "ALH Review"