Birth of a Notion; Or, the Half Ain't Never Been Told: A Narrative Account with Entertaining Passages of the State of Minstrelsy and of America and the True Relation Thereof (from the Ha Ha Dark Side)

Looks at black identity in American history and popular culture from a performative African American perspective. This work takes readers on a tour of 19th-century American history, from the 1830s and the rise of the abolitionist movement, to Reconstruction and the Industrial Revolution in the 1860s, and to the beginning of the 20th century.