Dancing down the Barricades : Sammy Davis Jr. and the Long Civil Rights Era.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jacobson, Matthew Frye.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Davis, Sammy, Jr., 1925-1990.

Davis, Sammy.

African Americans--Civil rights--History--20th century.

African Americans.

Entertainers--United States--Biography.

Entertainers.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (392 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Dancing Down the Barricades

Place of Publication:

2023.

Berkeley : University of California Press, 2023.

Summary:

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, analyzing 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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Author’s Note

Preface: The Long Civil Rights Era

1. Star Rising at Twilight

2. “A Concentrated Bunch of Haters”

3. The All-Negro Cast, and Other Black Spaces

4. The Vegas Strip, Network TV, and Other White Spaces

5. “Division Is Not Our Destiny”

6. Writing Wrongs in Yes I Can

7. “The Skin Commits You”

Coda

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-520-39181-0

OCLC:

1356002971