Jim Crow wisdom: memory and identity in black America since 1940

How do we balance the desire for tales of exceptional accomplishment with the need for painful doses of reality?

How hard do we work to remember our past or to forget it?

These are some of the questions that this book addresses in its exploration of race memory from the dawn of the modern civil rights era to the present.

Relying on social science, documentary film, dance, popular literature, museums, memoir, and the tourism trade, the author explores the stories black Americans have told about their past and why these stories are vital to understanding a modern black identity.