General Resources

General Histories

Fryer, Peter. Black People in the British Empire: An Introduction. London: Pluto Classics, 1988.

———. Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain. 1984, rev. edn. London: Pluto Books, 2010.

Gilroy, Paul. There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack. Routledge, 2013. Green, Jeffrey P. Black Edwardians: Black People in Britain 1901-1914. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2012.

Gopal, Priyamvada. Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent. London: Verso Books, 2019. Link to Verso

Jenkinson, Jacqueline. Black 1919: Riots, Racism and Resistance in Imperial Britain. Liverpool University Press. Accessed May 10, 2020. https://doi.org/10.5949/UPO9781846315138.

Matera, Marc. Black London: The Imperial Metropolis and Decolonization in the Twentieth Century. California: University of California Press, 2015.

Nwankwo, Ifeoma Kiddoe. Black Cosmopolitanism: Racial Consciousness and Transnational Identity in the Nineteenth-Century Americas. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.

Olusoga, David. Black and British: A Forgotten History. Main Market edition. Picador, 2016. Link to Amazon; link to WorldCat

Perry, Kennetta Hammond. Race, Empire, and the Formation of Black Britain. Oxford University Press.

Ramdin, Ron. The Making of the Black Working Class in Britain, upd. edn. London: Verso, 2017.

Books specifically about Black British theatre experience

Bourne, Stephen. Black in the British Frame: The Black Experience in British Film and Television. London: A&C Black, 2005.

———. Black Poppies: Britain’s Black Community and the Great War. History Press, 2014. ———. Elisabeth Welch : Soft Lights and Sweet Music. Lanham, Md. : Scarecrow Press, 2005. http://archive.org/details/elisabethwelch00bour.

———. Evelyn Dove: Britain’s Black Cabaret Queen. Jacaranda Books Art Music Limited, 2016.

———. Motherland Calls: Britain’s Black Servicemen & Women 1939-45. History Press, 2012.

———. Nina Mae McKinney: The Black Garbo. Bear Manor Media, n.d.

———. The Motherland Calls: Britain’s Black Servicemen & Women 1939-45. The History Press, 2012.

Brown, Jayna. Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern. Duke University Press, 2008. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822390695

Gonzalez, Anita. ‘Framing and Naming Black British Dance’. In British Dance: Black Routes, edited by Christy Adair and Ramsay Burt, 167–76. London: Routledge, 2017.

Books about individual performers

Brocken, Michael, and Jeff Daniels. Gordon Stretton, Black British Transoceanic Jazz Pioneer: A New Jazz Chronicle. Rowman & Littlefield, 2018.

Black musicians and the recording industry

Brooks, Tim. Lost Sounds Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890–1919 Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2010.

Lott, Eric. Love and Theft : Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Lotz, Rainer E. ‘Black Diamonds Are Forever: A Glimpse of the Prehistory of Jazz in Europe’. The Black Perspective in Music 12, no. 2 (1984): 217–34, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1215023.

———. ‘Black Music Prior to the First World War: American Origins and German Perspectives’. In Cross the Water Blues: African American Music in Europe, edited by Neil A. Wynn, 66–88. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.
———. Black People: Entertainers of African Descent in Europe, and Germany. Bonn: Birgit Lotz Verlag, 1997.

———. ‘Black Women Recording Pioneers.’ IAJRC Journal 40, no. 2 (2007): 32–41, ProQuest: Music and Performing Arts Collection.

———. German Ragtime and Prehistory of Jazz: The Sound Documents. Essex: Storyville Publications, 1985.

———. ‘Will Garland and the Negro Operetta Company’. The Black Perspective in Music 14, no. 3 (1986): 291–302, doi:10.2307/1215068.

———. ‘Will Garland and His Negro Operetta Company’. In Under the Imperial Carpet: Essays in Black History 1780–1950, edited by Rainer E. Lotz and Ian Pegg, 130–44. Crawley: Rabbit Press 1986.

Oliver, Paul. Black Music in Britain: Essays on the Afro-Asian Contribution to Popular Music. Open University Press, 1990.

Parsonage, Catherine. ‘A Critical Reassessment of the Reception of Early Jazz in Britain.’ Popular Music 39, no. 2 (2003): 315–36.

———. The Evolution of Jazz in Britain, 1800–1935. London: Routledge, 2017.

Books about Black US theatre experience

Batiste, Stephanie. Darkening Mirrors: Imperial Representation in Depression-Era African American Performance. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.

Brown, Jayna. Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009.

Elam, Harry J. “The Black Performer and the Performance of Blackness: The Escape; Or, a Leap to Freedom by William Wells Brown and No Place to Be Somebody by Charles Gordone.” In African American Performance and Theater History: A Critical Reader, 288–305, 2001.

Haskins, James. Black Dance in America : A History through Its People. New York : HarperTrophy, 1992. http://archive.org/details/blackdanceinamer00hask.

Hill, Constance Valis. Brotherhood in Rhythm: The Jazz Tap Dancing of the Nicholas Brothers. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

———. ‘Buddy Bradley: The Invisible Man of Broadway brings Jazz Tap to London’. In Proceedings of the Society of Dance History Scholars, Fifteenth Annual Conference, edited by Christena L Schlundt, 77–84. Riverside: University of California, Riverside, 1992.

———. ‘Jazz Modernism’. In Moving Words: Re-writing Dance, edited by Gay Morris, 198–212. London: Routledge, 2005.

Hill, Constance Valis. Tap Dancing America: A Cultural History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Klein, Jeanne. ‘The Cake Walk Photo Girl and Other Footnotes in African American Musical Theatre.’ Theatre Survey 60, no. 1 (2019): 67–90.

Kraut, Anthea. Choreographing Copyright: Race, Gender, and Intellectual Property Rights in American Dance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Link: Worldcat Link: Amazon

Riis, Thomas Laurence. Just Before Jazz: Black Musical Theater in New York, 1890-1915. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.

Sampson, Henry T. Blacks in Black and White : A Source Book on Black Films. Metuchen, N.J. : Scarecrow press, 1995. http://archive.org/details/blacksinblackwhi0000samp.

Seniors, Paula. Beyond Lift Every Voice and Sing : The Culture of Uplift, Identity, and Politics in Black Musical Theater. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2009.

Tanner, Jo A. Dusky Maidens: The Odyssey of the Early Black Dramatic Actress. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1992.

Performance Studies

DeFrantz, Thomas F., and Anita Gonzalez, eds. Black Performance Theory. Duke University Press Books, 2014.

Wilkinson Catanese, Brandi. The Problem of the Color[Blind]: Racial Transgression and the Politics of Black Performance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011. https://www.press.umich.edu/368267/problem_of_the_colorblind.

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