Description
Book SynopsisA critical examination of racial discrimination in television broadcasting during the civil rights era
Trade Review“
Watching Jim Crow is a highly original, sophisticated, and important piece of scholarship that will undoubtedly influence a variety of fields ranging from legal theory to cultural studies. One of the most striking things about this work is the compelling way it crosses barriers that have blinkered both scholarly and commonsense thinking about law, media, and culture.”—Thomas Streeter, author of
Selling the Air: A Critique of the Policy of Commercial Broadcasting in the United States“Watching Jim Crow is a powerful blend of memory, history, and careful analysis. For those who lived through the days and years chronicled here, especially those of us who lived in the places Steven D. Classen studies, the memories are painful, the history is precise, the analysis essential. Classen’s strong recognition that television is something people do is a challenge not only for scholars, but for policymakers and citizens who recognize how much remains to be done.”—Horace Newcomb, director of the George Foster Peabody Awards at the University of Georgia
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction: Reconstruction 1
1: Broadcast Foundations 31
2: Consuming Civil Rights
52
3: Trouble around the Ponderosa 75
4: Programming/Regulating Whiteness 107
5: Blacking out: Remembering TV and the Sixties
140
6: Not Forgetting 174
Appendix: Chronology 197
Notes 205
Bibliography 245
Index 263
