2023/02/07 Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-283) and index.
Contents:
Star rising at twilight : a childhood in vaudeville -- "A concentrated bunch of haters" : war time in Wyoming -- The all-negro cast, and other black spaces -- The Vegas Strip, network TV, and other white spaces -- "Division is not our destiny" : interracial romance and Golden boy -- Writing wrongs in Yes I can -- "The skin commits you" : civil rights itinerary -- Coda : what is the "post" of "post-civil rights"?
Summary:
"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? Sammy Davis Jr. was at once a pioneering, barrier-busting, anti-Jim Crowactivist and someone who was widely associated with accommodationism and wannabe whiteness. Historian Matthew Jacobson attends to both threads, analyzing how industry norms, productions, scripts, roles, and audience expectations and responses were all framed by race, against a 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 historyand American political culture"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.