3. “Negroes Laughing at Themselves”? Black Spectatorship and the Performance of Urban Modernity

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Illustrations ix
4. Preface xiii
5. Acknowledgments xxi
6. Introduction: A Nigger in the Woodpile, or Black (In)Visibility in Film History 1
7. Part one. Onto the Screen
8. 1. “To Misrepresent a Helpless Race”: The Black Image Problem 23
9. 2. Mixed Colors: Riddles of Blackness in Preclassical Cinema 50
10. Part two. Into the Audience
11. 3. “Negroes Laughing at Themselves”? Black Spectatorship and the Performance of Urban Modernity 93
12. 4. “Some Thing to See Up Here All the Time”: Moviegoing and Black Urban Leisure in Chicago 114
13. 5. Along the “Stroll”: Chicago’s Black Belt Movie Theaters 155
14. Part three. Behind the Camera
15. 6. Reckless Rovers versus Ambitious Negroes: Migration, Patriotism, and the Politics of Genre in Early African American Filmmaking 189
16. 7. “We Were Never Immigrants”: Oscar Micheaux and the Reconstruction of Black American Identity 219
17. Conclusion 245
18. Notes 251
19. Bibliography 311
20. Index 327