Frankie and Johnny take center stage : African American folk culture in 1930s America -- Lead Belly's Ninth Symphony : Huddie Ledbetter and the changing contours of American folk music -- Pistol Packin' Mama: imperiled masculinity in Thomas Hart Benton's a social history of the state of Missouri -- Whiteface Marionettes: John Huston's comic melodrama -- The finest woman ever to walk the streets : Mae West's outlaw exploits in She Done Him Wrong -- The lynching of Johnny : Sterling Brown's social realist critique -- Epilogue. African American women's voices and the tightrope of respectability
