Looking at the Stars

Black Celebrity Journalism in Jim Crow America

Carrie Teresa

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780803299924
• eBook ISBN: 9781496215451
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Social Sciences

As early as 1900, when moving-picture and recording technologies began to bolsterentertainment-based leisure markets, journalists catapulted entertainers to godlike status, heralding their achievements as paragons of American self-determination. Not surprisingly, mainstream newspapers failed to cover black entertainers, whose "inherent inferiority"precluded them from achieving such high cultural status. Yet those same celebrities came alive in thepages of black press publications written by and for members of urban black communities. In Looking at the Stars Carrie Teresa explores the meaning of celebrity as expressed by black journalists writing against the backdrop of Jim Crow–era segregation. Teresaargues that journalists and editors workingfor these black-centered publications, rather than simply mimicking the reporting conventions ofmainstream journalism, instead framed celebrities as collective representations of the racewho were then used to symbolize the cultural value of artistic expression influenced by the black diasporaand to promote politicalactivism through entertainment. The socialconscience that many contemporary entertainers of color exhibit today arguably derives from the wayblack press journalists once conceptualized the symbolic role of "celebrity" as a tool in the fightagainst segregation. Based on a discourse analysis of the entertainment content of the period's most widely read black press newspapers, Looking at the Stars takes into account both the institutional perspectives and the discursive strategies used inthe selection and framing of black celebrities in the context of Jim Crowism.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Untangling Discourses of Representation in Black Press Celebrity Reporting
• 2. Early Crossover Black Celebrities and the Onus of Collective Representation
• 3. Black Celebrities Uplift the Race
• 4. The Mythologizing of Black Celebrities
• 5. The Marginalization of Black Female Celebrities as Race Representatives
• 6. National Heroes, Foreign Villains, and Unhyphenated Americans
• 7. Journalistic Commemoration and the Construction of a “Felt” Past
• 8. The Politics of Black Press Celebrity Journalism
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index