Hoodlums

by William L. Van Deburg

"Ranging from black slaveholders and frontier out-laws to serial killers and gangsta rappers, Hoodlums examines the pivotal role of black villains in American society and popular culture. Here William L. Van Deburg offers the most extensive treatment to date of the "black badman" and the challenges that this figure has posed for race relations in America. He first explores the evolution of this problematic racial stereotype in the literature of the early Republic - documents in which the enslavement of African Americans was justified through exegetical claims. Van Deburg then probes antebellum slave laws, minstrel shows, and the works of proslavery polemicists to consider how whites conceptualized blacks as members of an inferior and dangerous race. Turning to key works by blacks themselves, from the writings of Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du Bois to classic blaxploitation films like Black Caesar and The Mack, Van Deburg demonstrates how African Americans have combated such negativ