African American Culture: an Encyclopedia of People, Traditions, and Customs [3 Volumes] by
Covering everything from sports to art, religion, music, and entrepreneurship, this book documents the vast array of African American cultural expressions and discusses their impact on the culture of the United States. According to the latest census data, less than 13 percent of the U.S. population identifies as African American; African Americans are still very much a minority group. Yet African American cultural expression and strong influences from African American culture are common across mainstream American culture--in music, the arts, and entertainment; in education and religion; in sports; and in politics and business. African American Culture: An Encyclopedia of People, Traditions, and Customs covers virtually every aspect of African American cultural expression, addressing subject matter that ranges from how African culture was preserved during slavery hundreds of years ago to the richness and complexity of African American culture in the post-Obama era. The most comprehensive reference work on African American culture to date, the multivolume set covers such topics as black contributions to literature and the arts, music and entertainment, religion, and professional sports. It also provides coverage of less-commonly addressed subjects, such as African American fashion practices and beauty culture, the development of jazz music across different eras, and African American business. Identifies influential aspects of African American culture through entries on such topics as African Americans in sports, in such musical genres as blues, gospel, hip hop, and jazz; and in such religions as Christianity, Islam, and Yoruba Makes clear the numerous ways African Americans have produced, maintained, and evolved their culture in the United States Enables readers to truly comprehend what "diversity" is by gaining substantive knowledge of how a particular group of persecuted people has learned to thrive artistically and culturally in the United States
Jubilee: the emergence of African-American culture by
Introduction by Winton Marsalis. Slaves came to the Americas from many different parts of the African continent, bringing with them distinct languages, religions, and expressive arts. Jubilee shows the many ways that these diverse peoples united, forged their own identity, and laid the foundations for truly unique African-American social, cultural, political, and economic expressions throughout the Western Hemisphere. Jubilee is written by Howard Dodson, chief of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Cultureone of the most prominent institutions of black scholarship in the world. Essays by leading voices in African-American history and literature, including Henry Louis Gates, Jr., John Hope Franklin, Amiri Bakara, Annette Gordon-Reed, and Gail Buckley will explore topics such as abolition and emancipation, changes in family life and social development, religion, and the evolution of language, literacy, and education through the end of Reconstruction. This illuminating text is surrounded by more than 200 stunning illustrations, culled from the Schomburgs collection of more than 5 million items. From slave ship manifests, manumission papers, and some of the earliest photographs of slaves to carved items that echo African sculpture and freedom quilts with African motifs, the book is richly illustrated in an interactive way that brings to life this crucial transition from slavery to freedom.
The Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance by
Away from the bustling nightlife of 1920s Harlem, a literary and cultural rebirth was taking place among African American writers, artists, and performers. Producing works that reflected the racial realities of the era between the end of the Civil War and the beginnings of the civil rights movement, these cultural luminaries helped define a new black consciousness. Readers will learn how the Great Migration and changing opportunities for African Americans informed the vibrant creative period known as the Harlem Renaissance. Bridging social and literary history, this volume provides an interdisciplinary overview and serves as a companion to multiple subject areas.
The Hip-Hop Generation : young Blacks and the crisis in African American culture by
The Hip Hop Generation is an eloquent testament for black youth culture at the turn of the century. The only in-depth study of the first generation to grow up in post-segregation America, it combines culture and politics into a pivotal work in American studies. Bakari Kitwana, one of black America's sharpest young critics, offers a sobering look at this generation's disproportionate social and political troubles, and celebrates the activism and politics that may herald the beginning of a new phase of African-American empowerment.
Hoo-Doo Cowboys and Bronze Buckaroos: Conceptions of the African American West by
"Hoo-Doo Cowboys and Bronze Buckaroos" undertakes an interdisciplinary exploration of the African American West through close readings of texts from a variety of media. This approach allows for both an in-depth analysis of individual texts and a discussion of material often left out or underrepresented in studies focused only on traditional literary material. The book engages heretofore unexamined writing by Rose Gordon, who wrote for local Montana newspapers rather than for a national audience; memoirs and letters of musicians, performers, and singers (such as W. C. Handy and Taylor Gordon), who lived in or wrote about touring the American West; the novels and films of Oscar Micheaux; black-cast westerns starring Herb Jeffries; largely unappreciated and unexamined episodes from the "golden age of western television" that feature African American actors; film and television westerns that use science fiction settings to imagine a "postracial" or "postsoul" frontier; Percival Everett's fiction addressing contemporary black western experience; and movies as recent as Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained." Despite recent interest in the history of the African American West, we know very little about how the African American past in the West has been depicted in a full range of imaginative forms. "Hoo-Doo Cowboys and Bronze Buckaroos" advances our discovery of how the African American West has been experienced, imagined, portrayed, and performed.
Encyclopedia of African American Music by
African Americans' historical roots are encapsulated in the lyrics, melodies, and rhythms of their music. In the 18th and 19th centuries, African slaves, longing for emancipation, expressed their hopes and dreams through spirituals. Inspired by African civilization and culture, as well as religion, art, literature, and social issues, this influential, joyous, tragic, uplifting, challenging, and enduring music evolved into many diverse genres, including jazz, blues, rock and roll, soul, swing, and hip hop. Providing a lyrical history of our nation, this groundbreaking encyclopedia, the first of its kind, showcases all facets of African American music including folk, religious, concert and popular styles. Over 500 in-depth entries by more than 100 scholars on a vast range of topics such as genres, styles, individuals, groups, and collectives as well as historical topics such as music of the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, and numerous others. Offering balanced representation of key individuals, groups, and ensembles associated with diverse religious beliefs, political affiliations, and other perspectives not usually approached, this indispensable reference illuminates the profound role that African American music has played in American cultural history. Editors Price, Kernodle, and Maxile provide balanced representation of various individuals, groups and ensembles associated with diverse religious beliefs, political affiliations, and perspectives. Also highlighted are the major record labels, institutions of higher learning, and various cultural venues that have had a tremendous impact on the development and preservation of African American music. Among the featured: Motown Records, Black Swan Records, Fisk University, Gospel Music Workshop of America, The Cotton Club, Center for Black Music Research, and more. With a broad scope, substantial entries, current coverage, and special attention to historical, political, and social contexts, this encyclopedia is designed specifically for high school and undergraduate students. Academic and public libraries will treasure this resource as an incomparable guide to our nation's African American heritage. Advisory board of prominent scholars of African American music More than 500 entries by more than 100 scholars Many entries composed by world-renowned scholars and authors who have studied, researched, and written extensively on specific topics Emphasis on the social and historical contexts of African American music through entries on significant musicians, social issues, political and legal concerns, and turning-point events ; Entries that cite numerous print and electronic resources for student research. A selected, general bibliography of the most important works on African American music Numerous illustrations
Cats of Any Color : Jazz black and white by
It was none other than Louis Armstrong who said, "These people who make the restrictions, they don't know nothing about music. It's no crime for cats of any color to get together and blow." "You can't know what it means to be black in the United States--in any field," Dizzy Gillespie oncesaid, but Gillespie vigorously objected to the proposition that only black people could play jazz. "If you accept that premise, well then what you're saying is that maybe black people can only play jazz. And black people, like anyone else, can be anything they want to be."In Cats of Any Color, Gene Lees, the acclaimed author of three previous collections of essays on jazz and popular music, takes a long overdue look at the shocking pervasiveness of racism in jazz's past and present--both the white racism that long ghettoized the music and generations of talentedblack musicians, and what Lees maintains is an increasingly virulent reverse racism aimed at white jazz musicians. In candid interviews, living jazz legends, critics, and composers step forward and share their thoughts on how racism has affected their lives. Dave Brubeck, part Modoc Indian,discusses native Americans' contribution to jazz and the deeply ingrained racism that for a time made it all but impossible for jazz groups with black and white players to book tours and television appearances. Horace Silver looks back on his long career, including the first time he ever heard jazzplayed live. Blacks were not not allowed into the pavilion in Connecticut where Jimmie Lunceford's band was performing, so the ten-year-old Silver listened and watched through the wooden slats surrounding the pavilion. "And oh man! That was it!" Silver recalls. Red Rodney recalls his early days withCharlie "Bird" Parker, and pianist and composer Cedar Walton tells of the time Duke Ellington played at the army base at Ford Dix and allowed the young enlisted Walton to sit in. Tracing the jazz world's shifting attitude towards race, many of the stories Lees tells are inspiring--Brubeck cancelling23 out of 25 concert dates in the South rather than replace black bass player Eugene Wright, or Silver insisting that while he strives to provide his fellow black musicians opportunities, "I just want the best musicans I can get. I don't give a damn if they're pink or polka dot." Others areprofoundly disturbing--Lees' first encounter with Oscar Peterson, after a Canadian barber flatly refused to cut Peterson's hair, or Wynton Marsalis on television claiming that blacks have been held back for so many years because the music business is controlled by "people who read the Torah andstuff."From the old shantytowns of Louisville, to the streets of South Central L.A., to the up-to-the-minute controversies surrounding Marsalis's jazz program at Lincoln Center, and the Jazz Masters awards given by the NEA, Cats of Any Color confronts racism head-on. At its heart is a passionate plea torecognize jazz not as the sole property of any one group, but as an art form celebrating the human spirit--not just for the protection of individual musicians, but for the preservation of the music itself.
Slave Songs of the United States by
First published in 1867, Slave Songs of the United States represents the work of its three editors, all of whom collected and annotated these songs while working in the Sea Islands of South Carolina during the Civil War, and also of other collectors who transcribed songs sung by former slaves in other parts of the country. The transcriptions are preceded by an introduction written by William Francis Allen, the chief editor of the collection, who provides his own explanation of the origin of the songs and the circumstances under which they were sung.
Black Resonance : iconic women singers and African American literature by
"Black Resonance" analyzes writings by Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Gayl Jones, and Nikki Giovanni that engage such iconic singers as Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Mahalia Jackson, and Aretha Franklin. The book focuses on two generations of artists from the 1920s to the 1970s; each chapter pairs one writer with one singer to crystallize the artistic practice they share: lyricism, sincerity, understatement, haunting, and the creation of a signature voice.
Pictures and Progress: early photography and the making of African American identity by
Pictures and Progress explores how, during the nineteenth century and the early twentieth, prominent African American intellectuals and activists understood photography's power to shape perceptions about race and employed the new medium in their quest for social and political justice. They sought both to counter widely circulating racist imagery and to use self-representation as a means of empowerment. In this collection of essays, scholars from various disciplines consider figures including Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and W. E. B. Du Bois as important and innovative theorists and practitioners of photography. In addition, brief interpretive essays, or "snapshots," highlight and analyze the work of four early African American photographers. Featuring more than seventy images, Pictures and Progress brings to light the wide-ranging practices of early African American photography, as well as the effects of photography on racialized thinking.
The Family of Black America by
Collects photographs by noted Black photographers which trace the history of the Black American family in the twentieth century, and celebrates the renewed commitment to family displayed at the Million Man March.
Library of Congress Digital Collections
Kager Mays, African American Civil War soldier (between 1864 and 1865). Image from the Gladstone Collection of African American Photographs, Library of Congress.
A Spectacular Leap: black women athletes in twentieth-century America by
When high jumper Alice Coachman won the high jump title at the 1941 national championships with "a spectacular leap," African American women had been participating in competitive sport for close to twenty-five years. Yet it would be another twenty years before they would experience something akin to the national fame and recognition that African American men had known since the 1930s, the days of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens. From the 1920s, when black women athletes were confined to competing within the black community, through the heady days of the late twentieth century when they ruled the world of women's track and field, African American women found sport opened the door to a better life. However, they also discovered that success meant challenging perceptions that many Americans--both black and white--held of them. Through the stories of six athletes--Coachman, Ora Washington, Althea Gibson, Wilma Rudloph, Wyomia Tyus, and Jackie Joyner-Kersee--Jennifer H. Lansbury deftly follows the emergence of black women athletes from the African American community; their confrontations with contemporary attitudes of race, class, and gender; and their encounters with the civil rights movement. Uncovering the various strategies the athletes use to beat back stereotypes, Lansbury explores the fullness of African American women's relationship with sport in the twentieth century.
African-American Art by
From its origins in early eighteenth century slave communities to the end of the twentieth century, African-American art has made a vital contribution to the art of the United States. African-American Art provides a major reassessment of the subject, setting the art in the context of the African-American experience. Here, Patton discusses folk and decorative arts such as ceramics, furniture, and quilts alongside fine art, sculptures, paintings, and photography during the 1800s. She also examines the New Negro Movement of the 1920s, the era of Civil Rights and Black Nationalism during the 1960s and 70s, and the emergence of new black artists and theorists in the 1980s and 90s. New evidence suggests different ways of looking at African-American art, confirming that it represents the culture and society from which it emerges. Here, Patton explores significant issues such as the relationship of art and politics, the influence of galleries and museums, the growth of black universities, critical theory, the impact of artists collectives, and the assortment of art practices since the 1960s. African-American Art shows that in its cultural diversity and synthesis of cultures it mirrors those in American society as a whole.
Harlem Renaissance : Art of Black America by
In the 1920s, Harlem was the capital of Black America and home to an epochal African-American cultural flowering called the Harlem Renaissance. This book presents the work of the most important visual artists of the day, including Meta Warrick Fuller, Aaron Douglas and Palmer Hayden.
Among Others: Blackness at MoMA by
Among Others: Blackness at MoMA begins with an essay that provides a rigorous and in-depth analysis of MoMA's history regarding racial issues. It also calls for further developments, leaving space for other scholars to draw on particular moments of that history. It takes an integrated approach to the study of racial blackness and its representation: the book stresses inclusion and, as such, the plate section, rather than isolating black artists, features works by non-black artists dealing with race and race- related subjects. As a collection book, the volume provides scholars and curators with information about the Museum's holdings, at times disclosing works that have been little documented or exhibited. The numerous and high-quality illustrations will appeal to anyone interested in art made by black artists, or in modern art in general.
Film Blackness : American cinema and the idea of black film by
In Film Blackness Michael Boyce Gillespie shifts the ways we think about black film, treating it not as a category, a genre, or strictly a representation of the black experience but as a visual negotiation between film as art and the discursivity of race. Gillespie challenges expectations that black film can or should represent the reality of black life or provide answers to social problems. Instead, he frames black film alongside literature, music, art, photography, and new media, treating it as an interdisciplinary form that enacts black visual and expressive culture. Gillespie discusses the racial grotesque in Ralph Bakshi's Coonskin (1975), black performativity in Wendell B. Harris Jr.'s Chameleon Street (1989), blackness and noir in Bill Duke's Deep Cover (1992), and how place and desire impact blackness in Barry Jenkins's Medicine for Melancholy (2008). Considering how each film represents a distinct conception of the relationship between race and cinema, Gillespie recasts the idea of black film and poses new paradigms for genre, narrative, aesthetics, historiography, and intertextuality.
Black Directors in Hollywood by
Hollywood film directors are some of the world' most powerful storytellers, shaping the fantasies and aspirations of people around the globe. Since the 1960s, African Americans have increasingly joined their ranks, bringing fresh insights to movie characterizations, plots, and themes and depicting areas of African American culture that were previously absent from mainstream films. Today, black directors are making films in all popular genres, while inventing new ones to speak directly from and to the black experience.This book offers a first comprehensive look at the work of black directors in Hollywood, from pioneers such as Gordon Parks, Melvin Van Peebles, and Ossie Davis to current talents including Spike Lee, John Singleton, Kasi Lemmons, and Carl Franklin. Discussing 67 individuals and over 135 films, Melvin Donalson thoroughly explores how black directors' storytelling skills and film techniques have widened both the thematic focus and visual style of American cinema. Assessing the meanings and messages in their films, he convincingly demonstrates that black directors are balancing Hollywood' demand for box office success with artistic achievement and responsibility to ethnic, cultural, and gender issues.
Tyler Perry's America: Inside his films by
Tyler Perry is the most successful African-American filmmaker of his generation, garnering both accolades and controversies with each new film. In Tyler Perry's America, Shayne Lee digs into eleven of Perry's highest-grossing films to explore key themes of race, gender, class, and religion, and, ultimately, to discuss what Perry's films reveal about contemporary African-American life. Filled with slapstick humor, musical wizardry, and religious imagery, Tyler Perry's films have inspired legions of fans, and yet critics often dismiss them or demean their audience. Tyler Perry's America takes the films seriously in their own right. After providing essential background information on Perry's life and film career, the book looks at what the films reveal about post-civil rights America and why they inspire so many people. The book examines the way the films explore social class in America--featuring characters from super-rich Wesley Deeds to homeless Lindsey Wakefield--and the way Perry both celebrates upward mobility and critiques soulless wealth. The book discusses the way religion fills the films--from gospel music to biblical quotes, the power of sexuality, and more. Lee also devotes a chapter to Madea, one of Perry's most controversial and complicated characters. Tyler Perry's America is a thought-provoking examination of this powerhouse filmmaker which highlights the way Perry's films appeal to viewers by connecting a rich African-American folk-cultural past with the promise of modern sophistication.
Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black urban modernity by
The rise of cinema as the predominant American entertainment around the turn of the last century coincided with the migration of hundreds of thousands of African Americans from the South to the urban "land of hope" in the North. This richly illustrated book, discussing many early films and illuminating black urban life in this period, is the first detailed look at the numerous early relationships between African Americans and cinema. It investigates African American migrations onto the screen, into the audience, and behind the camera, showing that African American urban populations and cinema shaped each other in powerful ways. Focusing on Black film culture in Chicago during the silent era, Migrating to the Movies begins with the earliest cinematic representations of African Americans and concludes with the silent films of Oscar Micheaux and other early "race films" made for Black audiences, discussing some of the extraordinary ways in which African Americans staked their claim in cinema's development as an art and a cultural institution.
Contemporary Black American Cinema: Race, gender and sexuality at the movies by
Contemporary Black American Cinema offers a fresh collection of essays on African American film, media, and visual culture in the era of global multiculturalism. Integrating theory, history, and criticism, the contributing authors deftly connect interdisciplinary perspectives from American studies, cinema studies, cultural studies, political science, media studies, and Queer theory. This multidisciplinary methodology expands the discursive and interpretive registers of film analysis. From Paul Robeson's and Sidney Poitier's star vehicles to Lee Daniels's directorial forays, these essays address the career legacies of film stars, examine various iterations of Blaxploitation and animation, question the comedic politics of "fat suit" films, and celebrate the innovation of avant-garde and experimental cinema.
Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present by
From King Kong to Candyman, the boundary-pushing genre of the horror film has always been a site for provocative explorations of race in American popular culture. In Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from 1890's to Present, Robin R. Means Coleman traces the history of notable characterizations of blackness in horror cinema, and examines key levels of black participation on screen and behind the camera. She argues that horror offers a representational space for black people to challenge the more negative, or racist, images seen in other media outlets, and to portray greater diversity within the concept of blackness itself. Horror Noire presents a unique social history of blacks in America through changing images in horror films. Throughout the text, the reader is encouraged to unpack the genre s racialized imagery, as well as the narratives that make up popular culture s commentary on race. Offering a comprehensive chronological survey of the genre, this book addresses a full range of black horror films, including mainstream Hollywood fare, as well as art-house films, Blaxploitation films, direct-to-DVD films, and the emerging U.S./hip-hop culture-inspired Nigerian "Nollywood" Black horror films. Horror Noire is, thus, essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how fears and anxieties about race and race relations are made manifest, and often challenged, on the silver screen."
How to Analyze the Films of Spike Lee by
This title explores the creative works of famous filmmaker Spike Lee. Films analyzed include Do the Right Thing, When the Leeves Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, Malcolm X, and Bamboozled. Clear, comprehensive text gives background biographical information of Lee. "You Critique It" feature invites readers to analyze other creative works on their own. A table of contents, timeline, list of works, resources, source notes, glossary, and an index are also included. Essential Critiques is a series in Essential Library, an imprint of ABDO Publishing Company.
A History of African American Theatre by
This is the first definitive history of African-American theatre. The text embraces a wide geography investigating companies from coast to coast as well as the anglophone Caribbean and African-American companies touring Europe, Australia, and Africa. This history represents a catholicity of styles - from African ritual born out of slavery to European forms, from amateur to professional. It covers nearly two and a half centuries of black performance and production with issues of gender, class, and race ever in attendance. The volume encompasses aspects of performance such as minstrel, vaudeville, cabaret acts, musicals and opera. Shows by white playwrights that used black casts, particularly in music and dance, are included, as are productions of western classics and a host of Shakespeare plays. The breadth and vitality of black theatre history, from the individual performance to large-scale company productions, from political nationalism to integration, is conveyed in this volume.
A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama, and Performance in the Harlem Renaissance, 1910–1927 by
The Harlem Renaissance was the Time When Harlem Came Alive with theatre, drama, sports, dance, and politics. David Krasner paints a vibrant portrait of the exciting years 1910 to 1927 and the diverse events they encompassed: the prizefight between Jack Johnson and Jim "White Hope" Jeffries; the first glimpse of new dance styles pioneered by Aida Overton Walker and Ethel Waters; the social significance of Zora Neale Hurston's play, Color Struck; and the extravagant production of Star of Ethiopia pageants that emphasized African heritage. These were the fertile years when the residents of northern Manhattan were at the vanguard of artistic ferment, leading their downtown counterparts while at the same time playing a pivotal role in one of the most important political movements of the twentieth century: black nationalism. A Beautiful Pageant is a thrilling piece of work that lets us see the heady years of the Harlem Renaissance in a new and compellingly political light. It is a classic destined to become the standard work on the subject for years to come. Book jacket.
Jookin': The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African-American Culture by
Katrina Hazzard-Gordon offers the first analysis of the development of the jook--an underground cultural institution created by the black working class--together with other dance arenas in African-American culture. Beginning with the effects of African slaves' middle passage experience on their traditional dances, she traces the unique and virtually autonomous dance culture that developed in the rural South. Like the blues, these secular dance forms and institutions were brought north and urbanized by migrating blacks. In northern cities, some aspects of black dance became integrated into white culture and commercialized. Focusing on ten African-American dance arenas from the period of enslavement to the mid-twentieth century, this book explores the jooks, honky-tonks, rent parties, and after-hours joints as well as the licensed membership clubs, dance halls, cabarets, and the dances of the black elite. Jook houses emerged during the Reconstruction era and can be viewed as a cultural response to freedom. In the jook, Hazzard-Gordon explains, an immeasurable amount of core black culture including food, language, community fellowship, mate selection, music, and dance found a sanctuary of expression when no other secular institution flourished among the folk. The jook and its various derivative forms have provided both entertainment and an economic alternative (such as illegal lotteries and numbers) to people excluded from the dominant economy. Dances like the Charleston, shimmy, snake hips, funky butt, twist, and slow drag originated in the jooks; some can be traced back to Africa. Social dancing links black Americans to their African past more strongly than any other aspect of their culture. Citing the significance of dance in the African-American psyche, this study explores the establishments that nurtured ancestral as well as communal links for African-Americans, vividly describing black dances, formal rituals, such as debutante balls, and the influence of black dance on white culture.
African-American Concert Dance: the Harlem Renaissance and beyond by
African-American Concert Dance significantly advances the study of pioneering black dancers by providing valuable biographical and historical information on a group of artists who worked during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s to legitimize black dance as a serious art form. John O. Perpener sets these seminal artists and their innovations in the contexts of African-American culture and American modern dance and explores their creative synthesis of material from European-American, African-American, Caribbean, and African sources. Perpener begins with Hemsley Winfield, a versatile performer and director whose company, the New Negro Art Theatre, launched the careers of Edna Guy, Randolph Sawyer, and Ollie Burgoyne, among many others. Also profiled are Charles Williams, who directed the Hampton Creative Dance Group at the Hampton Institute in Virginia, and Asadata Dafora Horton, a native African who established himself as the preeminent purveyor of African dance and culture in America during the 1930s. Dafora's African Dance Troupe, which at one point came under the umbrella of the WPA Federal Theatre Project, was a focal point of the famous "voodoo" Macbeth, an all-black production set in Haiti and directed by the young Orson Welles. Stepping onto the path cleared by these early innovators, two important artists combined dance with anthropology to expand the reach and scope of African-American dance. Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus both studied anthropology and engaged in extensive fieldwork that infused their dances with Caribbean and African influences. Dunham founded two ambitious training schools, one in New York and one in East St. Louis, while Primus's projects included an African Arts Center in Monrovia, Liberia, dedicated to collecting dance material, teaching, and organizing professional performances. Perpener examines the politics of racial and cultural difference and their impact on these early African-American dance leaders. In particular he documents the critical reception of their work, detailing the rigid preconceptions of African-American dance that white critics imposed on black artists. He also surveys important black dancers and choreographers since 1950, including Talley Beatty, Donald McKayle, Alvin Ailey, Eleo Pomare, Rod Rodgers, and Dianne McIntyre, and discusses how they have extended and diverged from traditions established by their predecessors.
Her are some terms you can try when searching in Library resources to find information about the African Americans experience: