Black City Cinema: African American Urban Experiences in Film

Abstract

Acknowledgments Introduction: Migrations, Movies, and African American Cities on the Screen 1. The Antebellum Idyll and Hollywood's Black-Cast Musicals (Hallelujah, The Green Pastures, Cabin in the Sky, Stormy Weather) 2. Harlem is Heaven: City Motifs in Race Films from the Early Sound Era (Scar of Shame, Within Our Gates, Two Gun Man From Harlem, Dark Manhattan) 3. Cotton in the City: The Black Ghetto, Blaxploitation, and Beyond (Cotton Comes to Harlem, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, Superfly, Bush Mama) 4. Welcome to Crooklyn: Spike Lee and the Rearticulation of the Black Urbanscape (She's Gotta Have It, Do the Right Thing) 5. Out of the Ghetto, into the Hood: Changes in the Construction of Black City Cinema (Boyz N the Hood, Menace II Society) 6. Taking the A-Train: the City, the Train, and Migration in Spike Lee's Clockers (Posse, Clockers) Epilogue: New Millennium Minstrel Shows? African American Cinema in the Late 1990s (Down in the Delta, Shaft (2000)) Notes Index