Annemarie Bean

The first volume to consider African-American performance between and beyond the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and the New Black Renaissance of the 1990s.

Plays, People, Movements

A Sourcebook of African-American Performance

James V. Hatch

Brooks McNamara

Chair Department of Performing Arts Brooks McNamara

A sourcebook of contemporary and historical commentary on America's first popular mass entertainment. As the blackface minstrel show evolved from its beginnings in the American Revolution to its peak during the late 1800s, its frenetic dances, low-brow humor, and lively music provided more than mere entertainment. Indeed, these imitations and parodies shaped society's perceptions of African Americans-and of women-as well as 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 accounts of minstrel shows, minstrelsy guides, jokes, sketches, and sheet music-and the best of contemporary scholarship on minstrelsy.

Annemarie Bean

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