Media, Culture, and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle.

Edited by Brian Ward. (Gainesville and other cities: University Press of Florida, c. 2001. Pp. [x], 312. $55.00, ISBN 0-8130-2074-3.)

In his introduction Brian Ward observes that scholars of black protest have tended to fix on such "conventionally understood political activities" as litigation, legislation, nonviolent direct action, "and later the urban dots, paramilitary tactics, and new black electoral politics" (p. 1). Ward counters by invoking Harold Cruse, a founding father of black studies, who insisted that no protest movement can succeed "unless it is at one and the same time a political, economic and cultural movement" (p. 1; emphasis in original). Ward's richly interdisciplinary anthology builds on Cruse's perspective by according black culture a central place in our understanding of the racial upheavals after World War II.

The thirteen articles in this volume consist mainly of papers presented at a 1998 conference on civil fights and race relations held at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. They encompass the media's benign neglect of black violence during the movement's "nonviolent" phase and their shrill coverage of "Black Power"; "black-oriented radio," which catered to far more blacks, North and South, than black journals did; cinematic and TV portraits of the South, from the all-white pastoral idyll of The Andy Griffth Show to melodramas like In the Heat of the Night that offered up "redneck" scapegoats for the sins of institutional racism; the role of blues, gospel, jazz, and even pop music (not simply oft-quoted hymns like "We Shall Overcome") in trumpeting black freedom; glowering images of black pimps and other "social bandits" in the American cultural landscape; Nat Turner's second revolt, as blacks in the late 1960s contested Hollywood's bid to dramatize the life of this slave rebel; and black and white literary homages to Martin Luther King Jr., whose protest legacy has often faded amid hazy public memories of his "dream."

Ward's editorial style favors clarity over jargon (the puckish wit in his acknowledgments is a heartening sign), although the loosely tethered articles range in appeal. Some, like Julian Bond's graceful and authoritative reflections on the media, should command a broad readership; others will reach mainly specialists (to which Ward may well reply, thus the problem). The authors collectively take aim at the politically driven, King-centered, uncritically celebratory "master narrative" by which Americans generally understand the black freedom struggles (pp. 8-9). Yet as contributions to scholarship, these articles may be best appreciated as nicely textured elaborations of themes that historians have long accepted. When, on occasion, some of these otherwise worthy studies claim more, they tend to falter.

As a sample of the strengths and limits of the anthology, consider David L. Chappell's engaging essay, "Hip Like Me: Racial Cross-Dressing in Pop Music Before Elvis." Using cross-dressing as a metaphor for the borrowings between black and white musical genres, Chappell posits that such cultural interchanges in the postwar decades, though lacking overt political content, eased the way for contemporary civil rights crusades. Chappell deftly moves beyond the standard morality tale of creative blacks and parasitic whites by showing "how racial division often turned into a hall of mirrors" (p. 107), with black and white artists freely adopting and adapting each other's compositions and styles. Even soul singer James Brown's 1968 "anthem to black consciousness, 'Say it Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)'" was, according to Chappell, "the ultimate testimony to racial cross-dressing" because, as Brown recalled of the children scooped off the street for the rousing chorus, "Most of 'em were white or Asian" (p. 113).

Yet when Chappell asserts that "racial cross-dressing" in entertainment was "just as important" as political and social protest in overcoming Jim Crow (p. 104), the quality of metaphor is strained. Surely if musical, linguistic, folkloric, and other cultural intimacies could corrode racism as effectively as social and political action, slavery would scarcely have survived its infancy, instead of awaiting the cataclysm of Civil War to eradicate it after more than two centuries of growth. Ward himself observes that while cultural shifts "could at least open up the potential for more progressive racial views," during the 1960s "precious little of that potential was realized" (p. 5; emphasis in original). As for the feuds between militant groups like US and the Black Panthers over a black aesthetic and the proper role of black culture in the freedom struggle, he notes that they "took place against a background of massive black indifference" (p. 189). Ward's judicious concession may provide, as well, a sober caution to scholars as they continue to integrate black culture into the "master narrative."

ROBERT WEISBROT
Colby College