Description: This collection of thirteen essays, edited by W. Fitzhugh Brundage, brings together original work from sixteen scholars in various disciplines to present a fresh look at the history of African Americans and mass culture. This book depicts popular culture as a crucial arena in which African Americans struggled to secure a foothold as masters of their own representation and architects of the nation's emerging consumer society.
Review Quotes: "This anthology deftly illuminates the revealing innovation and experimentation that characterized black culture, American popular culture, and the fruits of their cross-pollination in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These rich essays make abundantly clear the extraordinary impact of African Americans and African American culture on the making of modern American popular culture."--Waldo E. Martin Jr., University of California, Berkeley