Envisioning Freedom: Cinema and the Building of Modern Black Life

Cara Caddoo

Published by Harvard University Press 2014

Envisioning Freedom

Cinema and the Building of Modern Black Life

Cara Caddoo

https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674735590

Overview
Contents

About this book

In Cara Caddoo’s perspective-changing study, African Americans emerge as pioneers of cinema from the 1890s to 1920s. But as it gained popularity, black cinema also became controversial. Black leaders demanded self-representation and an end to cinematic mischaracterizations which, they charged, violated the civil rights of African Americans.

Author / Editor information

Caddoo Cara :

Cara Caddoo is Assistant Professor of American Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Reviews

According to Cara Caddoo’s lively, readable, richly detailed new history of African-American film cultures at the turn of the 20th century, the cinema was a central motor force for the formation of racial identity and community in the era of Jim Crow. Envisioning Freedom, which packs a tremendous amount of fascinating incident into a relatively short page count, introduces us to black church leaders in the Midwest who invested heavily in film technology as a tool for their ministries, embattled black theater owners in the segregated South, and the pioneers of African-American independent cinema at home and abroad. And Caddoo’s account of the mass protest movement that arose against D.W. Griffith’s racist epic The Birth of a Nation provides a moving case study in the age of Ferguson and the New Jim Crow.
-- Phillip Maciak Slate

In this brilliant, pathbreaking work, Caddoo reveals how moving pictures transformed black modern sensibility and how rural migrants envisioned new meanings of freedom. Richly detailed and filled with stunningly original insights, this bold and ambitious book sets a new standard for studies of black migration, urban history, and cinema.
-- Thavolia Glymph, author of Out of the House of Bondage

This is a big, bold book and an easy, seductive read. Caddoo, a talented historian, traces the lost plotlines of mass culture, political struggle, and public space in the age of Jim Crow, plotlines that have been buried for too long beneath more familiar legal dramas and movement histories.
-- Matthew Pratt Guterl, author of Josephine Baker and the Rainbow Tribe

Excellent…A scholarly work, it’s both readable and revelatory.
-- Thomas Gladysz Huffington Post

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction: Picturing Freedom Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Exhibitions of Faith and Fellowship Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	13
2. Cinema and the God- Given Right to Play Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	42
3. Colored Th eaters in the Jim Crow City Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	64
4. Monuments of Progress Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	94
5. The Fight over Fight Pictures Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	116
6. Mobilizing an Envisioned Community Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	139
7. Race Films and the Transnational Frontier Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
Conclusion: Picturing the Future Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	199
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	277
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	281

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Audience: College/higher education;Professional and scholarly;General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 280
Illustrations
- Other: 8 halftones, 3 maps

eBook

Published: October 13, 2014
ISBN: 9780674735590