• Preface to the 20th-Anniversary Edition by Greil Marcus


• Introduction


• Part I


• 1. Blackface and Blackness: The Minstrel Show in American Culture


• 2. Love and Theft: "Racial" Production and the Social Unconscious of Blackface


• 3. White Kids and No Kids At All: Working Class Culture and Languages of Race


• 4. The Blackening of America: Popular Culture and National Cultures


• Part II


• 5. "The Seeming Counterfeit": Early Blackface Acts, the Body, and Social Contradiction


• 6. "Genuine Negro Fun": Racial Pleasure and Class Formation in the 1840's


• 7. California Gold and European Revolution: Stephen Foster and the American 1848


• 8. Uncle Tomitudes: Racial Melodrama and Modes of Production


• Afterword to the 20th-Anniversary Edition by the Author


• Notes


• Bibliography


• Index

Eric Lott is Professor of English at the University of Virginia.

Drawing on recent research in cultural studies and social history, Eric Lott examines the role of the blackface minstrel show in the political struggles of the years leading up to the Civil War.