Gender and Race in Antebellum Popular Culture

Sarah N. Roth

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781107043688
• eBook ISBN: 9781139990486
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

In the decades leading to the Civil War, popular conceptions of African American men shifted dramatically. The savage slave featured in 1830s' novels and stories gave way by the 1850s to the less-threatening humble black martyr. This radical reshaping of black masculinity in American culture occurred at the same time that the reading and writing of popular narratives were emerging as largely feminine enterprises. In a society where women wielded little official power, white female authors exalted white femininity, using narrative forms such as autobiographies, novels, short stories, visual images, and plays, by stressing differences that made white women appear superior to male slaves. This book argues that white women, as creators and consumers of popular culture media, played a pivotal role in the demasculinization of black men during the antebellum period, and consequently had a vital impact on the political landscape of antebellum and Civil War-era America through their powerful influence on popular culture.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Table of contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 “The Old Child and the Young One”
• 2 “More Terrible Than the Uncaged Hyena”
• 3 “How a Slave Was Made a Man”
• 4 “Patient Sufferer, Gentle Martyr”
• 5 Impotent Rebels, Heroes, and Martyrs
• 6 “An Intrepid, Dauntless Heroine”
• 7 “We Have Struck for Our Freedom”
• 8 “Victory!”
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index