Introduction -- The minstrel show and the melee: Irish, Jewish, and African Americans in popular culture and politics -- Practical censorship: Irish American theater riots -- Immoral ... in the broad sense: censoring racial ridicule in legitimate theater -- Shylock and Sambo censored: Jewish and African American campaigns for race-based motion picture censorship -- Are the Hebrews to have a censor?: Jewish censors in Chicago -- Without fear or favor: free-speech advocates confront race-based -- Censorship -- Conclusion
Summary
A drunken Irish maid slips and falls. A greedy Jewish pawnbroker lures his female employee into prostitution. An African American man leers at a white woman. These and other, similar images appeared widely on stages and screens across America during the early twentieth century. In this provocative study, M. Alison Kibler uncovers, for the first time, powerful and concurrent campaigns by Irish, Jewish and African Americans against racial ridicule in popular culture at the turn of the twentieth century. Censoring Racial Ridicule explores how Irish, Jewish, and African American groups of the era resisted harmful representations in popular culture by lobbying behind the scenes, boycotting particular acts, and staging theater riots. Kibler demonstrates that these groups' tactics evolved and diverged over time, with some continuing to pursue street protest while others sought redress through new censorship laws
