Black Bostonians and the Politics of Culture, 1920-1940

Lorraine Elena Roses (Author)

9781625342423

Paperback / softback, published 8 February 2017

240 pages, 11 black & white illustrations
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.438 kg

"Roses’s thoroughly researched histories of several theater companies and biographies of their founders and players provide evidence for her measured analysis of why black theater thrived in ways that, say, literature did not. [...] As a sourcebook, Black Bostonians is amazing. Roses’s research is deep and her footnotes are meticulous. [...] Black Bostonians and the Politics of Culture is defined by its expansiveness and inclusiveness." — ALH Online Review, XXVI.1 (2018)

In the 1920s and 1930s Boston became a rich and distinctive site of African American artistic production, unfolding at the same time as the Harlem Renaissance and encompassing literature, theater, music, and visual art. Owing to the ephemeral nature of much of this work, many of the era's primary sources have been lost.

In this book, Lorraine E. Roses employs archival sources and personal interviews to recover this artistic output, examining the work of celebrated figures such as Dorothy West, Helene Johnson, Meta Warrick Fuller, and Allan Rohan Crite, as well as lesser-known artists including Eugene Gordon, Ralf Coleman, Gertrude ""Toki"" Schalk, and Alvira Hazzard. Black Bostonians and the Politics of Culture, 1920-1940 demonstrates how this creative community militated against the color line not solely through powerful acts of civil disobedience but also by way of a strong repertoire of artistic projects.