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Article: W. T. Lhamon, Jr. Jump Jim Crow: Lost Plays, Lyrics and Street Prose of the First Atlantic Popular Culture.(Book Review)
- Article from:
- African American Review
- Article date:
- June 22, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 African American Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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W. T. Lhamon, Jr. Jump Jim Crow: Lost Plays, Lyncs and Street Prose of the First Atlantic Popular Culture. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2003. 457 pp. $39.95.
Following World War II, blackface minstrelsy slipped quietly into a restless grave. Old timers paid tribute to the nation's first mass entertainment by publishing their "good-old-days" memoirs, while other Americans nodded their heads and hummed, "I'm glad that you're dead, you rascal, you."
Brander Mathews's autopsy found that the popularity of vaudeville, cliche-ridden material, and competition from the new musicals with women in chorus lines had caused minstrelsy's demise.
When Robert C. Toll ...