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Dancing Down the Barricades
Sammy Davis Jr. and the Long Civil Rights Era
Brief Description
A deep dive into racial politics, Hollywood, and Black cultural struggles for liberation as reflected in the extraordinary life and times of Sammy Davis Jr. Through the lens of Sammy Davis Jr.'s six-decade career in show business—from vaudeville to Vegas to Broadway, Hollywood, and network TV—Dancing...
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Dancing Down the Barricades
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Description
A deep dive into racial politics, Hollywood, and Black cultural struggles for liberation as reflected in the extraordinary life and times of Sammy Davis Jr.
Through the lens of Sammy Davis Jr.'s six-decade career in show business—from vaudeville to Vegas to Broadway, Hollywood, and network TV—Dancing Down the Barricades examines the workings of race in American culture. The title phrase holds two contradictory meanings regarding Davis's cultural politics: Did he dance the barricades down, as he liked to think, or did he simply dance down them, as his more radical critics would have it?
Davis was at once a pioneering, barrier-busting, anti–Jim Crow activist and someone who was widely associated with accommodationism and wannabe whiteness. Historian Matthew Frye Jacobson attends to both threads, analysing how industry norms, productions, scripts, roles, and audience expectations and responses were all framed by race against the backdrop of a changing America. In the spirit of better understanding Davis's life and career, Dancing Down the Barricades examines the complexities of his constraints, freedoms, and choices for what they reveal about Black history and American political culture.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780520409668
Publisher: University of California Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 26 November 2024
Country: United States
Imprint: University of California Press
Illustration: 20 b-w
Audience: Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 20.0mm
Width: 152.0mm
Height: 229.0mm
Weight: 499g
Pages: 344
About the Author
Author of seven books on race and US political culture, Matthew Frye Jacobson is Sterling Professor of American Studies and History at Yale University.
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Dancing Down the Barricades
A deep dive into racial politics, Hollywood, and Black cultural struggles for liberation as reflected in the extraordinary life and times of Sammy Davis Jr. Through the lens of Sammy Davis Jr.'s six-decade career in show business—from vaudeville to Vegas to Broadway, Hollywood, and network TV—Dancing Down the Barricades examines the workings of race in American culture. The title phrase...Hardback$5699Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks
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