Disturbing the Peace: Black Culture and the Police Power after Slavery

Bryan Wagner

Published by Harvard University Press 2009

Disturbing the Peace

Black Culture and the Police Power after Slavery

Bryan Wagner

https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674054769

Overview
Contents

About this book

W. C. Handy waking up to the blues on a train platform, Buddy Bolden eavesdropping on the drums at Congo Square, John Lomax taking his phonograph recorder into a southern penitentiary—Wagner gives a new account of black culture by reading these myths in the context of the black vernacular tradition’s ongoing engagement with the law.

Reviews

Bryan Wagner’s Disturbing the Peace is a great book. I am enriched and fundamentally challenged by its erudition, its attention to detail and the force of its extremely powerful arguments. It is my sense that anyone working in black studies has to contend with this work—but not only that. Anyone who contends with this work will find their own work richer for having done so.
-- Fred Moten, Duke University

An audacious and pathbreaking history of legal terror… If the police power criminalized blacks in the New South, the invention of the vernacular tradition sugared over this onslaught of violence. Wagner exposes the fantasy of folklore. After Disturbing the Peace, it will be impossible to hear Leadbelly or read Uncle Remus without knowing what it means to market emphatic inequality as universal culture.
-- Colin Dayan, author of The Story of Cruel and Unusual

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
ILLUSTRATIONS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
INTRODUCTION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. THE BLACK TRADITION FROM IDA B. WELLS TO ROBERT CHARLES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
2. THE STRANGE CAREER OF BRAS- COUPÉ Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	58
3. UNCLE REMUS AND THE ATLANTA POLICE DEPARTMENT Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	116
4. THE BLACK TRADITION FROM GEORGE W. JOHNSON TO OZELLA JONES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
NOTES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	239
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	297
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	299

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 320

eBook

Published: February 28, 2010
ISBN: 9780674054769